The life of a wandering, adventurous soul never truly experiences monotany. Just when the dog has found a routine and I feel like a complete yuppie walking with my briefcase back and forth to work, my life gets a little douse of adventure.
I've been drawn to Alaska my entire life. There's something about a place where the natural order is the dominating force that intrigues me. Although I have spent a fair amount of time in the Alaskan bush, I can honestly say that I still feel like a "kid in a candy store" every time my feet sink in to the tussocks of the tundra. Alaska is a place where the scale of the landscape is too large for a human to comprehend. It's a place where ones eye gazes over a valley to a mountain that is a New England state's width away. The Alaskan wilderness is immense.
Denali is one of those places that everyone has to see. The highest point of land in North America, Denali (Mount McKinley) is a temple of ice and rock. Formed by the compression of earths crust, Denali was thrusted upwards as two of earths plates collided and sheared themselves against each other. The pinnacle of the mighty Alaska Range, mountaineers call it the "coldest mountain on earth" for its frigid temperatures. The backcountry of Denali is home to caribou, grizzly bear, dall sheep, wolves, fox, snowshoe hare, wolverine and lynx.
Alaska is a breeding ground for the best bush pilots in the world. During my time in exploration geology, I've had the privaledge of working with a number of outstanding pilots. Most namely, I had the honor of working with Wild Bill Michel. Wild Bill was simply of surgeon in the air. He was flawless.
It's a whiteout. I'm on the some peak in the Kuskokwim country of SW Alaska moving an exploration camp to it's winter storage site on a ridge out of sight. My field partner is huddled next to a twiggy fire shaking profusly. We've been on the ridge in a blizzard for twelve hours as Wild Bill has been slingling load after load of camp tents, gear, drill rigs, etc. up to us. Slinging gear is a common practice in which a helicopter has a line with a hook attached to the bottom of the craft. Someone on the ground hooks the load, the bird transports it and it is unhooked in a new location. Today I drew the lucky straw of unhooking the gear on a spiny ridge at 6,000 feet. The conditions are horrendous. There are times that Wild Bill makes an attempt to get up to us but is turned away by shifting mountain valley winds. Some attempts are detoured by the white out. In short, winter is closing in and we have to get the camp broken down!
With my partner huddled against a palette shivering with the early signs hypothermia and a relentless blizzard bearing down off the Bering Sea, Wild Bill simply handed me the sling load every time, literally dropping the hook in my outstretched hand time and again. He was an artist with wings.
Flipping through paper on a bus ride near Talketna, a familiar face was printed in the pages. Wild Bill had crashed into a mountain ridge at the edge of Denali National Park. The reality of life in the north too often takes the best.
As we flew southeast on the redeye out of Anchorage the northern lights danced along the late summer frontier of the great boreal wilderness. I feel small every time I come home from AK. For some reason, this time left me feeling inspired. It has taken the dedication of so many brave, smart and hard working people to make a life in the Alaskan bush. These people show me the dreams I have are possible.
