Way back in 2012, I had the opportunity to ramble quite a bit, despite being deeply mired in the morass of graduate school. After a summer working on the Blackfeet Reservation (a story for a later installment), I flew to Fairbanks, Alaska in mid-August, where I would be working through December.
Homesteading tasks completed, I drove south for Denali National Park, and the first of two pre-work backpacking trips, in a spacious, borrowed, two-door 1991 Nissan Sentra. This particular ride had served as an all-purpose truck for its owner, who hauled nearly everything necessary to build a home either on or in this little car. Its storied history also included a non-fatal moose encounter - the moose, the driver, AND the chassis all survived the incident. The car's roof needed a bit of adjusting, and a new windshield had to be installed, but otherwise it was still in operating condition. Equipped with a set of Blizzak tires, this front-wheel drive car could make tracks nearly anywhere - a fact it proved to me over and over during my tenure in the far north.
About 100 miles south, the car was parked, and I wandered into the Ranger Station. The walls and tables were gloriously decorated with topo maps of the area. The ranger handed me a 3-ring binder containing planning details on the various sections I could explore. I learned there are no trails in Denali - and that they request you only travel on durable surfaces (rock and creekbeds). I recognized that I would likely be failing this request very soon. My levitation skills are rusty. Levity, on the other hand, remains well-honed.
After choosing the route I would take over the next several days and purchasing permits, I drove back out of the park and parked behind a gravel berm on the side of the highway. Incredibly, I was able to fit my backpacking mattress on the fully-reclined passenger seat and then fit my frame on top of this surface for a sleep of relative comfort.
In the morning, I awoke to a drizzle on the tin roof of this miniature mobile cabin. Wanting to belt-and-suspenders my waterproofing, I stopped at a shop in Healy for some garbage bags. They didn't sell bags. But they did have some. The kind attendant indicated that she would be going into the backroom for a few moments, and if I should acquire a few bags she had left on her counter during her absence and scurry on out, all would be well with the world. I acquired and scurried.
After parking the car and filling my backpack with all that one heart could desire and one frame could tote, I walked over to where a bus would pick up adventurers and transport them down the road. Visitors can drive down the first 15 miles of the road to Savage River, and I had done so the day before. Beyond that point, you must walk, ride a bicycle, take the bus, or win one of the lottery slots to drive the full length in September after the park is mostly shuttered.
A few others were waiting for the bus when I arrived. These hardy souls had large plastic totes filled with goodies. They were to be dropped at their campsite at the end of the road, on the shores of Wonder Lake, with the parks eponymous peak soaring into the sky above. Another person with a small knapsack would be dropped at the lodge in Kantishna. The old school bus roared into view, we all boarded, and it roared out.
Along the way, we stopped occasionally to pile out of the bus for a grander view of our surroundings than could be had from within the dirt-caked bus. No bears were sighted, but we all hoped so hard that some among us imagined ursine phantoms galloping across the slopes in search of fresh berry bushes.
After over an hour of motoring along, the bus crawled to a halt, disgorging me and my goods. Stupidly ecstatic, I bounded over the roadway and dropped down its banks en route to the braided stream below. My voice grew in song with each step I took away from the last vestiges of civilization just departed. Ringing in boisterous ebullience, I turned the corner to find two young females of my species returning from their hike into the wilderness and seemingly none-too-pleased by my vocal calisthenics. No matter, they were soon just as much a part of the past as was the bus and the roadway.
This braid of the torrent of melting water running off the mountains to the south served as a suitable pathway for some time until I veered off along a path running between tussocks towards my imagined destination. Tussocks? Teetering clumps of unstable grass islands, about 10" across - stand on top and they topple you off, walk around them in their surrounding moats and be forced to waddle like a lifelong cowboy. Up the path went to a bluff. A lone caribou browsed in the distance, raising his head to survey my threat-level, then returning to his daily fare.
The rains began. The peaks I was treading towards grew dim as sheets of precipitation hid them more and more. My route reentered a braided waterway, now increased in strength, in keeping with the increased rate of descent from the peaks I was gaining on, albeit within a haze of suspended moisture. Afternoon brought decreasing light and I began to cast about for a campsite - keeping in mind protection from the ever-growing wind, avoidance of flash-floods and bears, and a reasonable place to cache my bear canister about 50 yards from my tent.
The rain pounded and the wind roared so hard, I huddled behind some small brush for a slight reprieve while gathering my mental resources to find a spot for the night. My cheap rain pants had by this time disintegrated into two flapping leg-sleeves, poorly hinged by a gaping, breezy window where it should have covered my crotch and backside. Cozy.
Soon an elevated, graveled corner appeared, sheltered by a shoulder of grassy knoll. The tent grew into a yellow bubble, unfailingly cheerful despite the onslaught of element upon it. Huddled over my stove, I boiled water and ate couscous and sardines. Setting the bearcan far downwind of my home, I tried to perform the delicate task of stripping wet outer layers while slipping into the tent, all while keeping the dryer inner layers as dry as possible. Inside, I snuggled into my bag, pulled Carlos Castaneda's The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge out and settled in for a few hours of reading beneath the drum of the rain before sleep.
The next morning I waited to relieve myself, waited to feed myself, waited, waited, waited for the rain to let up. It only increased. Finally, morning tasks could be delayed no longer and I slipped out and into my wet outer layers. Down to the bear can - and what have we here? Fresh, berry-fed bear-droppings all about my tent, all about the can. Fancy that. Breakfast eaten, I took stock of my gear and my desire to continue being pounded by wind and rain for two more days. Unsure of a resolution, I crawled back into the tent for more of don Juan Matus' tutelage of Carlos Castaneda in the ways of the Yaqui. Good fiction even if it is faux anthropology.
After a long morning in the glowing cylinder of my tent, I stepped out into the torrent again and began to disassemble camp. The weather had won out, and I would be retracing my steps to the road in hopes of catching a bus out; the journey further into the wilderness of Denali would cease for the moment.
The ceaseless downpour had swollen the waterways to raging routes of horizontal rainfall. I zigged and zagged, boulder-hopped, jumped and climbed my way north towards the road. My route veered from the riverbed and I reentered the tedious walking among the tussocks. Those moats that were dry the day before now were their own oxbow streambeds. Time pitter-pattered upon my plasticwear until the days clock wound down towards late afternoon and I gained the roadway once again. Luckily I only walked another hour along the gravel before the east-bound bus pulled up and let me aboard. Luckily because snow had now begun to fall.
With great cheer I stowed my bag in the rear of the bus and climbed aboard. Those already traveling on the bus chatted with me, questioning how my rainpants had become shredded and what had become of my good senses to allow me to have wandered into the rain in such a state for so long.
Someone handed me a local paper. In it I learned of a tragic and irresponsible set of circumstances that had played out in the section just adjacent to mine while I was disconnected from anything but the storm. Seems a photographer, spotting a bear, had hidden in the brush to enable them a sneaking advance on the bear. That perfect shot drew this man to his death. The final photos on his camera indicate he popped out of the brush about 50 feet from the bruin, disturbing it, and giving it cause to end his life. Adding further destruction to the tale, Troopers then flew out to the area, found the bear, killed it, and performed a necropsy to confirm it was indeed the beast that had acted so bestially.
Once I exited the park and escaped the cloaking curves of the peaks, the sun was once again visible and I drove up beneath an ever-present rainbow. The watered landscape shone beneath the acquisitive sunshine. My cozy dry cabin welcomed me into its enclosure and I fell asleep - dry and warm.
Having recovered from the beating of the mountains, but still longing for a night in the outdoors, I left the following day for the White Mountains, just north of Fairbanks. The sun shone, birds twittered, parents and children picked low-bush blueberries along the start of the trail into the hills.
Thirty minutes in, the berry pickers left behind and my own belly full from collections I had made along the way, I found myself once again in solitude. Coming to an exposed knob, I pitched the tent, sat out a light drizzle, and then warmed myself beneath the multi-colored display of yet another rainbow.
The sky was glorious and I soon fell asleep. The next day I slowly made my way back to the car, and drove home. On the next Monday, my new job began, and I was thrust into the pell-mell activities of the local Public Defender's office. These opposing outdoor experiences in my early weeks in Alaska served to buoy me up and provide perspective in the ensuing months of work. Though I couldn't know it at the time, I had found home and it encompassed an entire state. Alaska, my home!
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