They say a picture is worth a thousand words. In this series I’ve chosen one picture per post which brings out strong memories for me and has a story attached to it. This story is about a beautiful morning along the Nabesna Road in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, my last morning in Alaska.
It all started with a cigarette.
I haven’t been a regular smoker for many years, but sometimes when I had worked a long season guiding tours and the days were turning cooler as summer turned to fall, I’ve been known to pick up a pack. Usually before that pack is finished I’ll remember why I quit, but those first couple remind me why I started to begin with. And so it was that on a sunny afternoon in early fall I found myself smoking a cigarette outside of my hotel a few miles from LAX International Airport.
This was a hotel we used for our staff during turnarounds between tours in L.A, and there were a few other of our vans than mine in the parking lot that day. A fellow tour leader who I didn’t know had seen me get out of my van, so she came over and introduced herself. We made small talk about what trips we were doing and what else we were up to with a few days off in L.A. and she told me she was filling out an application to return to Alaska to work the following summer. In the company I work for, Alaska is like the Promised Land, it’s somewhere everyone seems to want to go spend the summer, but in the old days it was somewhere you only got to go once. One season in the great north land, and that was it. More recently, she told me, we had started running some high-end tours and they needed some experienced leaders to run them so the application process was open to everyone.
We chatted some more, and it got me thinking and when I went in, I filled out the application. It had been a decade since I had run my season in Alaska, and surely they wouldn’t send me back, but I had a plan. When they rejected me, I’d put a sad face on and they’d ask me where I wanted to go instead. I’d say ‘Hawaii’ and get to spend some time in the Aloha State. It seemed deliciously devious, and it just might work.
My plan started out well. I was, in fact, rejected from returning to Alaska, and I put it out of my mind for the winter. You can imagine my surprise the following spring when I got a call from the big boss telling me he needed me to make a beeline for Vancouver, run a quick 2 week trip in Western Canada, and then head straight for Anchorage for a 4 trip season in Alaska. My mind was blown, and my plan shattered, but this was exciting news. I never imagined I’d get a second shot at Alaska!
My first season in Alaska had been a tough one. I was seven years into my guiding career and thought I was long overdue to head north. When I finally made it, I had been burnt out and jaded towards both the company and guiding in general. I hadn’t prepared as well as I should have, wasn’t in good enough shape to do the hikes I wanted to do, and spent much of the summer staying up late getting drunk in frontier bars and sleeping in. When I had left at the end of that summer, I had accomplished very little of what I had worked so hard to get. I had never been more disappointed in myself and soon thereafter I had taken a multi-year break from guiding.
All of these things coursed through my head as I started driving north. I ran the quick trip in Canada and met an amazing girl. Although nothing happened on the trip itself, we had a powerful connection and would talk every day for most of the next year. I thought we were soulmates. She was in my head too on the weeklong drive from Vancouver to Anchorage. It was a lot of time to think , but everything seemed to somehow be falling into place.
My summer was amazing. I had great groups and got to see some of the most spectacular scenery on earth. I had a few beers here and there in my favorite old bars, but mostly went to bed early and was up early to make every day count. I did all the hikes I had missed out on during my first time there including the incredible Bonanza Mine hike in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park (one of the stories in Episode 0 of my podcast) and the mind-blowing hike to the Harding Icefields. I saw whales breach in the Kenai Fjords and Grizzly Bears wander through stands of fireweed on the tundra with Denali as a backdrop. I went ice-climbing on the Root Glacier and kayaking in the Columbia Ice Fields. I had a few weeks off in the middle, and the girl I had been talking to came to visit me. We wandered and laughed and talked and fell madly and hopelessly in love under the midnight sun. I told her about my plans to set out that winter on my own in a kitted out van to explore the U.S. one state at a time and write and take photos, and asked her if she wanted to join me. She said she’d love to. It was the best summer of my life.
We got a late tour booking so I ended up staying in Alaska until the second week in September. I had never been there that late in the year. It was beautiful, and fall arrived very quickly that far north. The days got shorter, the nights longer and colder. The leaves changed colors and snow began to fall. Perhaps best of all, I got to see the Northern Lights on several occasions, a phenomenon I had only seen once before.
After finishing that last tour, I turned my headlights south again. My next trip would start in Las Vegas. I stopped to say goodbye to a few people and to see a handful of things I wanted to check out on my way out of the state. As daylight faded on what would be my last night in Alaska, I turned off of the highway and down the Nabesna Road, the north entrance into Wrangell-St. Elias National Park. It was full dark when I pulled into a little roadside campsite, not much more than a pit toilet and a picnic table, and set up camp for the night. I had a small fire and couple of beers and enjoyed the peace and solitude. I celebrated one heck of a summer in the far north – a summer that took a decade to get right.
When I woke the next morning, this was the scene that greeted me. The incredible snow-dusted Wrangell Mountains reflected in a small lake with fall colors evident among the evergreens. It was one of the most breathtaking and beautiful vistas I’d ever seen, and I had seen a few in my day. I enjoyed the view and a cup of coffee, took some photos, and then headed back to the highway to start the long journey home.
As I drove away down the dirt road, my soul was nourished from this amazing beauty and an incredible summer spent in the 49th state. My heart was full of love for a beautiful girl who was waiting for me across the continent in Florida, and my mind was occupied with thoughts of second chances and new beginnings. It was a wonderful drive.
It didn’t work out with the girl, because life on the road was as foreign and unimaginable to her as a stationary life is to me. And the trip I was planning, this trip, hasn’t worked out the way I had dreamed it would, and now has come screeching to a halt thanks to the unforeseeable events of the last couple of months. Life has a way of doing that. But on the day I woke up to this scene, anything was possible and I was as alive as I’d ever been.
And to think, it all started with a cigarette.
