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queenluait'll take a while for me to write a proper post about my Great Alaskan Adventure these past two weeks. if i ever manage it. with travel-ish posts i've written in the past, there's some overwhelming mood or feeling or startling observation that i'm just dying to get down on paper. i'd like to get Alaska down on paper, but, it's almost like the place is too vast for that. like the space between the mountains is so yawning that even my most spirited words wouldn't even begin to fill it properly.
it's beautiful. i loved it. i just don't know how to describe it, yet.
so in the meantime, here are some random tidbits:
* i do not think i realized exactly how backcountry this trip was going to be. like, sure, i packed all the gear on the packing list (even when it seemed kind of excessive / extra), and i knew on an abstract level that our only means of communication with the outside world would be an emergency-only satellite phone. but, well, consider that my family's standard national park trip is something like "drive through the park, get out and do a couple short day hikes, stay in a nice warm cozy cabin near the visitor center each night." apparently, my boyfriend's family's standard trip is more like "take two separate bush plane flights, 2 hrs each, to the literal middle of nowhere, get dropped off in a field while being stared at by a bunch of caribou, and then see zero other humans, or signs of humans, for the next 10 days." i did plenty of backpacky junk with the scouts when i was younger, but i don't think i ever experienced anything quite like that.
* it was a multi-day rafting trip for the most part. i had expected our rafting strategy to be "drysuit the fuck up", but in reality, it was just "hey, try really hard not to fall in b/c then we'll have to build a fire & strip all your clothes & try to make sure you don't get hypothermia & it'll be really annoying!!!" which uh. is a strategy. sure is a GOOD MOTIVATION TO STAY IN THE RAFT (no one fell in, it was fine, etc)
* ffxv's fuckin moronic product placement shit has, in fact, infiltrated my brain; the camping stove we were using was Coleman-brand and i saw that damn logo and my brain lit up like "OMFG, JUST LIKE IGNIS'S COOKING" like the irredeemable weeb i am. and then ofc i started headcanoning relentlessly about the chocobros in the Alaskan wilderness, and look i need something to think about while i'm rafting, and yeah it was bad
* my sleeping bag was so warm and so cozy and i love it forever, it is rated zero degrees and came with a sleeping bag liner for extra warmth and it is perfect. its name is Pumpkin
* wildlife: i saw a grizzly bear eating a caribou, saw a wolf & watched it howl, and saw dozens and dozens of caribou in general
* birds: i FINALLY got a golden eagle (naturally, after having it as my nemesis in the lower 48 for years, i see like twelve once i go all the way to the damn arctic circle). other lifers include gyrfalcon, boreal chickadee, arctic warbler
* every car in every parking lot in Fairbanks had a block heater on the front, a thing i did not previously know existed. basically, it can get so goshdanged cold outside that your car just won't start, so everyone has a power plug to heat that shit up on cold days.
brutal. you could not pay me to live in alaska, man
* hiking through the tundra is a fuckin brutal, those willows & tussocks really kick your ass
* our two river guides were super cool. i mean, they usually are. both were super experienced; each of them had over ten-twenty years' of experience in the arctic alone.
it got me thinking about the disservice we do to kiddos, in high school. it's rarely said so obliquely, but there's all this implicit pressure—you need A Job (TM), and A Job (TM) is something where you are employed by an Employer, and if you're white-collar-class you're in a Building from Nine To Five with Five Vacation Days Per Year, and if you're blue-collar-class you work a Shift in a Building or whatever.
but there's a hundred thousand other ways to be in the world, if you want it. one of our guides, she stumbled into river guiding at the suggestion of a friend, almost by accident, sometime after college. she spent that first summer in West Virginia, and that was her introduction to this whole world, this whole network of seasonal workers, and they'd chat with each other about going to guide rivers in South America in winter, or guiding in the southwest, or in Alaska, and so on, and she realized she could just do this all the time, living out of her van, and she was hooked.
and sure, most guides do this for a few years in their 20s and then get A Job (TM). but she hasn't. she's still doing it almost 20 years later, and she lives in Denali in a community with lots of other pseudo-migrant / seasonal workers who just love being outside above all else, and yeah i'm sure it has a lot of challenges, but what life doesn't, and she really loves her setup.
you can make the life you want, or something.
* actually, random fact that is not even related to this trip, but which i learned but am sharing anyway: it's common-ish knowledge that the average onset age for schizophrenia (and to some extent, bipolar disorder) is late teens to early 20s, right? that's why so many college students end up in a bad place.
but it turns out that it varies a bit by gender—age of onset for women with schizophrenia averages more in the late 20's, with a pretty huge chunk of diagnoses trailing off into the 30s.
it certainly fits with my observed experience; i just thought i knew an unrepresentative sample size. fun facts or w/e
* OKAY BACK TO ALASKA. so, in-between our two bush flights, we had a couple hours to kill in Coldfoot (population: 10, but includes the extremely hoppin' Ice Road Truckers cafe), we stumbled into a visitor center for the park, where a Very Concerned ranger all-but-strongarmed us into watching a video on bear safety + "hey are you sure you have all the right equipment and supplies or else you will die, last warning" + leave no trace.
during the "leave no trace" segment, when they were talking about how important it is not to leave trash or toilet paper lying around, since it'll be "unsightly" for future visitors, my boyfriend leaned over and said it reminded him of Westworld. i laughed. "but really," he said, "think about it; they're trying to preserve the illusion that this place isn't touched by people, right?"
a cheeky comparison, but i couldn't get it out of my mind the rest of the trip.
* this bit's at the risk of sounding more negative than i intend, but:
perhaps you've read Krakauer's Into Thin Air. it's a firsthand account of the 1996 Mount Everest disaster, which killed eight summiting climbers. but way before you get near the summit, reading the book, you start to wonder, why the fuck does anyone climb Everest? it sounds like suffering and suffering and suffering with no joy or reprieve. at base camp conditions are miserable and your head's full of lice and you can't fuckin breathe from the thin air; while climbing you're miserable and cold and constantly in danger of frostbite and you can't even climb very fast because of gear and safety and shit, and when you get to the summit you get to stare for like two minutes tops before you have to start heading back down. why.
(i first listened to the audiobook in elementary school, on a family trip. after the tape finished, my dad, who is more of a Hardcore Athlete than myself, jokingly said that our next family vacation should be on Everest. except i was seven years old, and did not realize he was joking, so i burst into tears and pleaded with him to please don't make us go there.)
naturally, this book came to mind after a particularly rough day on the river :P it'd been raining all damn day, we'd had to paddle hard against a headwind for most of it, we finally stopped to camp only to discover the campsite was festering with mosquitos, and i just wanted to remember what warmth felt like but we had to put up our damn tent before i could do that... suffering and suffering and suffering.
but an hour later, i was snug in the Actual Warmest Sleeping Bag in the World, and when i stepped out of my tent the sun was still up shining over the mountains all around me, and i could hear a warbler singing, and the smell of whatever camp-meal being cooked was so good, and i forgot all the pains and aches of the days and luxuriated in the place.
madness, of course. maybe that's the same madness the climbers have?
i still don't get it in the Everest case (OVER FIVE PERCENT OF CLIMBERS DIE JFC). but i'm p onboard with it in this context. like i said, the place was vast, and this was really the only way to really be out there.
* the longer post will probably meditate on on the themes in those last two bullet points, or something. (i say, even though this one's already way too long. oh well.)
it's beautiful. i loved it. i just don't know how to describe it, yet.
so in the meantime, here are some random tidbits:
* i do not think i realized exactly how backcountry this trip was going to be. like, sure, i packed all the gear on the packing list (even when it seemed kind of excessive / extra), and i knew on an abstract level that our only means of communication with the outside world would be an emergency-only satellite phone. but, well, consider that my family's standard national park trip is something like "drive through the park, get out and do a couple short day hikes, stay in a nice warm cozy cabin near the visitor center each night." apparently, my boyfriend's family's standard trip is more like "take two separate bush plane flights, 2 hrs each, to the literal middle of nowhere, get dropped off in a field while being stared at by a bunch of caribou, and then see zero other humans, or signs of humans, for the next 10 days." i did plenty of backpacky junk with the scouts when i was younger, but i don't think i ever experienced anything quite like that.
* it was a multi-day rafting trip for the most part. i had expected our rafting strategy to be "drysuit the fuck up", but in reality, it was just "hey, try really hard not to fall in b/c then we'll have to build a fire & strip all your clothes & try to make sure you don't get hypothermia & it'll be really annoying!!!" which uh. is a strategy. sure is a GOOD MOTIVATION TO STAY IN THE RAFT (no one fell in, it was fine, etc)
* ffxv's fuckin moronic product placement shit has, in fact, infiltrated my brain; the camping stove we were using was Coleman-brand and i saw that damn logo and my brain lit up like "OMFG, JUST LIKE IGNIS'S COOKING" like the irredeemable weeb i am. and then ofc i started headcanoning relentlessly about the chocobros in the Alaskan wilderness, and look i need something to think about while i'm rafting, and yeah it was bad
* my sleeping bag was so warm and so cozy and i love it forever, it is rated zero degrees and came with a sleeping bag liner for extra warmth and it is perfect. its name is Pumpkin
* wildlife: i saw a grizzly bear eating a caribou, saw a wolf & watched it howl, and saw dozens and dozens of caribou in general
* birds: i FINALLY got a golden eagle (naturally, after having it as my nemesis in the lower 48 for years, i see like twelve once i go all the way to the damn arctic circle). other lifers include gyrfalcon, boreal chickadee, arctic warbler
* every car in every parking lot in Fairbanks had a block heater on the front, a thing i did not previously know existed. basically, it can get so goshdanged cold outside that your car just won't start, so everyone has a power plug to heat that shit up on cold days.
brutal. you could not pay me to live in alaska, man
* hiking through the tundra is a fuckin brutal, those willows & tussocks really kick your ass
* our two river guides were super cool. i mean, they usually are. both were super experienced; each of them had over ten-twenty years' of experience in the arctic alone.
it got me thinking about the disservice we do to kiddos, in high school. it's rarely said so obliquely, but there's all this implicit pressure—you need A Job (TM), and A Job (TM) is something where you are employed by an Employer, and if you're white-collar-class you're in a Building from Nine To Five with Five Vacation Days Per Year, and if you're blue-collar-class you work a Shift in a Building or whatever.
but there's a hundred thousand other ways to be in the world, if you want it. one of our guides, she stumbled into river guiding at the suggestion of a friend, almost by accident, sometime after college. she spent that first summer in West Virginia, and that was her introduction to this whole world, this whole network of seasonal workers, and they'd chat with each other about going to guide rivers in South America in winter, or guiding in the southwest, or in Alaska, and so on, and she realized she could just do this all the time, living out of her van, and she was hooked.
and sure, most guides do this for a few years in their 20s and then get A Job (TM). but she hasn't. she's still doing it almost 20 years later, and she lives in Denali in a community with lots of other pseudo-migrant / seasonal workers who just love being outside above all else, and yeah i'm sure it has a lot of challenges, but what life doesn't, and she really loves her setup.
you can make the life you want, or something.
* actually, random fact that is not even related to this trip, but which i learned but am sharing anyway: it's common-ish knowledge that the average onset age for schizophrenia (and to some extent, bipolar disorder) is late teens to early 20s, right? that's why so many college students end up in a bad place.
but it turns out that it varies a bit by gender—age of onset for women with schizophrenia averages more in the late 20's, with a pretty huge chunk of diagnoses trailing off into the 30s.
it certainly fits with my observed experience; i just thought i knew an unrepresentative sample size. fun facts or w/e
* OKAY BACK TO ALASKA. so, in-between our two bush flights, we had a couple hours to kill in Coldfoot (population: 10, but includes the extremely hoppin' Ice Road Truckers cafe), we stumbled into a visitor center for the park, where a Very Concerned ranger all-but-strongarmed us into watching a video on bear safety + "hey are you sure you have all the right equipment and supplies or else you will die, last warning" + leave no trace.
during the "leave no trace" segment, when they were talking about how important it is not to leave trash or toilet paper lying around, since it'll be "unsightly" for future visitors, my boyfriend leaned over and said it reminded him of Westworld. i laughed. "but really," he said, "think about it; they're trying to preserve the illusion that this place isn't touched by people, right?"
a cheeky comparison, but i couldn't get it out of my mind the rest of the trip.
* this bit's at the risk of sounding more negative than i intend, but:
perhaps you've read Krakauer's Into Thin Air. it's a firsthand account of the 1996 Mount Everest disaster, which killed eight summiting climbers. but way before you get near the summit, reading the book, you start to wonder, why the fuck does anyone climb Everest? it sounds like suffering and suffering and suffering with no joy or reprieve. at base camp conditions are miserable and your head's full of lice and you can't fuckin breathe from the thin air; while climbing you're miserable and cold and constantly in danger of frostbite and you can't even climb very fast because of gear and safety and shit, and when you get to the summit you get to stare for like two minutes tops before you have to start heading back down. why.
(i first listened to the audiobook in elementary school, on a family trip. after the tape finished, my dad, who is more of a Hardcore Athlete than myself, jokingly said that our next family vacation should be on Everest. except i was seven years old, and did not realize he was joking, so i burst into tears and pleaded with him to please don't make us go there.)
naturally, this book came to mind after a particularly rough day on the river :P it'd been raining all damn day, we'd had to paddle hard against a headwind for most of it, we finally stopped to camp only to discover the campsite was festering with mosquitos, and i just wanted to remember what warmth felt like but we had to put up our damn tent before i could do that... suffering and suffering and suffering.
but an hour later, i was snug in the Actual Warmest Sleeping Bag in the World, and when i stepped out of my tent the sun was still up shining over the mountains all around me, and i could hear a warbler singing, and the smell of whatever camp-meal being cooked was so good, and i forgot all the pains and aches of the days and luxuriated in the place.
madness, of course. maybe that's the same madness the climbers have?
i still don't get it in the Everest case (OVER FIVE PERCENT OF CLIMBERS DIE JFC). but i'm p onboard with it in this context. like i said, the place was vast, and this was really the only way to really be out there.
* the longer post will probably meditate on on the themes in those last two bullet points, or something. (i say, even though this one's already way too long. oh well.)
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