Travel

What was Alaska really like?

As a longtime winter warrior, I have become used to overwhelming snow and biting cold. I have also experienced spring fever up to about 103 degrees. For Fairbanks people, the feeling of the icebreaking must be even more intense. The fever overwhelms them with joy and energy. They don't stop. They do things at all hours, buoyed by the sun. It's always out. Always. They garden at night but it's so bright, it's okay. They eat late, early, whenever. They know when to leave for the mountain, the streams, the links or the ponds. They're in synch with what Nature says. And they listen to Her.

In the Park, life is tremendously different. It's the Big One. It's a sanctuary. It's sanctimonious. Hell, it's even dangerous when you come right down to it. The only way to know for sure how to get out is to spot the road and hope a bus comes down soon. A fellow traveler told me her "grizzly" story. (Everyone has one who has lived there at least 2 summers.) She was bicycling on the road before it turns into a path at mile 8. As she turned a corner, she coasted down a long, gentle slope. At the bottom,was a grizzly. She stopped her bike about twenty feet away. The grizzly at first didn't notice her but the sound of her brakes engaging alerted the mother to the danger. My friend got off the bike slowly. She stood as still as she could because she knew that the worst thing she could do was run from a grizzly. The bear stood still for a while and then stood on her hind legs and sniffed her prey. My friend said that she could smell the grizzly's breath; many have told me that there is no more horrible a smell in the world. Just at that moment, a park bus came around the corner and down the hill. The bus slowly moved towards my friend and teh park ranger instructed her to get behind the bus and then run on board once she was sure she could make it. She did.

Alaska is a place of magic and wonder, more similar to Kenya than to Oregon. Its state bird is a mosquito and it is dominated by humankind and grizzlies. Home to more bald eagles than any other state, Alaska is America at its most raw and beautiful.