Denali
Kissing a moose
Sky spectacle
(Editor's Note: Chattanoogan Claire Henley started an adventure of a lifetime on the remote Pacific Crest Trail in April. Along the way, she had many adventures and found herself a husband named Big Spoon).
“The ground is always there witnessing/ how you walk.”
-Luci Shaw, “The Grit on the Track”
What began in April as a hike from Mexico to Canada ended in August as a quest to Alaska. I didn’t expect Alaska to be my destination when I left my home in Tennessee four months earlier as spring was growing into summer. Sometimes, what we set out to do leads to far more than we could dream.
At least, that was the case with Alaska.
The day was Friday, August 14. Big Spoon and I boarded a plane in Seattle in the rainy afternoon. Three hours later–after a crick-necked nap, plastic glass of tomato juice, and miniature packet of pretzels–we were in Anchorage. The portion of the flight I was awake for was tremendously scenic. Thirty minutes before landing, the Chugach Mountains appeared beyond our small rectangular window, rising in rolling layers above the Gulf of Alaska. The pure white peaks took the place of the rainclouds. The snow on the mountains was so brilliantly white it glowed into the air. I couldn’t stare too long at the pure snow peaks otherwise my eyes would start to burn. The air looked purer, too. It looked a way I had never seen–clearer, almost. Perhaps it was better to breathe.
The Alaskan day was lasting upwards of eighteen hours at the time of our visit. Darkness fell at 11 p.m. Six hours later the sun would break through the horizon like a growing plant breaks through soil. The month before, more than twenty hours of light consumed the Alaskan day. I wondered if the people of Alaska slept less during the summer months. I wondered if the enduring light enabled them to get more out of their passing days.
We retrieved our backpacks from baggage claim then rented a car from the airport Enterprise. Then Big Spoon and I drove an hour north of Anchorage to Wasilla. It was early evening but looked like noon. Selena and Richard opened their front door when we pulled into their home. The museum curator and her husband, who worked as a science lab manager at the local college, were connections we made through Jenny and Ana, the couple we stayed with in Oakland over July 4th. Ana and Selena were high school pals who had kept in touch even after Selena moved to Alaska. Over breakfast one morning in Oakland, Big Spoon mentioned his hope of one day traveling to Alaska when the conversation turned to the familiar topic of what we would do after the trail. This excited Ana who said she had friends living in Wasilla. Now, forty days after that conversation, these friends of Ana were welcoming Big Spoon and me into their home. Yet another example of how our path to our ultimate destination had been paved long before we knew we’d be heading that way.
Selina and Richard lived on Settlers Bay. A flock of sandhill cranes flew up off the bay and cawed overhead as Big Spoon and I got out of the car. Just as I had thought on the plane, the Alaskan air was purer to breathe. It was as good as a cool drink of water when your throat was very dry. Snowy mountains bordered the bay. The temperature was comfortable, inviting. As was Selina and Richard’s home. The cream carpet in the living room soothed the hardened soles of our feet after we removed our tattered hiking shoes. From thousands of miles of travel our shoes were weathered and worn, causing our feet to morph in this way too. The touch of the carpet nourished our calluses all the way to the back bedroom where Big Spoon and I would sleep for our overnight stay.
The four of us spent the pink and yellow night conversing at the dining room table. The neckline of Selena’s summer dress accentuated the ivory pendant hanging around her neck. Sky blue forget-me-nots were painted on the ivory. “They’re Alaska’s state flower. And the ivory was carved from walrus tusk by a native,” Selena said after I voiced my admiration of her necklace. I turned my attention to the black and white photo of an inuit woman hanging from the wall in front of me. In the photo the woman carried her sleeping babe in the hood of her fur coat. The woman’s eyes were compassionate and her body was strong. The sleeping child lay against his mother’s back in peace. When I pointed the picture out, Selena said the woman was a symbol of survival in the harsh arctic conditions, the dark subzero days. A symbol, Richard added, of unyielding life.
Selena and Richard continued to impart their knowledge on Alaska, and, as a result, Big Spoon and I left Wasilla the next morning with an exciting plan of travel. It was a misty day, silver and damp. We drove north to Hatcher Pass, a scenic road and recreational area carved within the Talkeetna Mountains. Many trucks and other four-wheel-drive vehicles were parked at the various gravel pull-offs. People were out in their rain jackets and rubber boots bent over in the fields, holding buckets at their hips.
“What are they doing?” I asked Big Spoon.
“Picking berries, I think.”
He parked at the next pull-off and we got out. Sure enough, beside us in the mountain meadow were blueberry bushes growing close to the ground. Big Spoon stooped over, picked a berry from a bush, and popped it in his mouth. The next one he plucked he gave to me. The sweetness of the little berry brought to life my every taste bud. The good and simple purity of life bled from that little berry just waiting to be picked.
We drove north. Two hours later we entered Talkeetna, a one-road town where foot traffic prevailed over that of car. Here, people floated in and out of the log cabin shops where souvenirs unique of Alaska–ivory carvings of whales and moose, antler sheds, and jade–could be found. Big Spoon and I spent the afternoon searching the shops. We couldn’t afford the mementos for sale; $100 for an ivory bear the size of my thumb was out of our budget. But we could look at them for free. And we could remember them for a long time to come.
Later that night, the fly fishermen and women tromped through the Montana Creek Campground in their waders to access Montana Creek, because, as the sign outside the campground on George Parks Highway read, “the Silvers are in!” Big Spoon and I had the only tent set up (the fishers slept in RVs), and we were the only campers there not fishing. The campground was just beyond Talkeetna: a place to stay the night for us, a place to fish for everyone else. And the silvers were in. During the lasting light of the night Big Spoon and I watched from our tent door the people in their wet, heavy-duty clothing walk back to their RVs from the creek, fly rods over one shoulder, long silver salmon dangling from stringers over the other. When I fell asleep the salmon swam through my dreams. They swam from the river where they were born out into the big mysterious sea. I swam with them and watched them grow to their full size in the beautiful sea before they had to return to the river to spawn.
***
“You have to get out on the tundra,” said the general store clerk the next day as Big Spoon and I bought a coke and candy bar before driving into Denali National Park. “If you don’t get out on the tundra, then you’ve wasted your time in Denali,” he said.
We drove right to the Rangers Station upon our arrival at the park to attain backcountry permits and get on the tundra. I read the park brochure while we waited in line at the station. Denali, I read, was a Native Alaskan word meaning “The High One.” With an elevation of 20,310 feet above sea level, Denali, also known as Mount Mckinley, made for the tallest mountain in North America. Ironically, for being the biggest mountain around, tourists, and even locals, rarely saw the peak because of the ever-present clouds. The clouds blocked the view of The High One while we were there, too.
“The grizzlies are eating up to 40,000 calories a day on berries before winter hits, so watch your surroundings on the tundra and avoid hiking in places of dense hedgerow,” said the ranger to Big Spoon and me when we reached the front of the line. Her mandatory safety talk listed the various aspects of the backcountry–grizzlies, storms, aggressive moose–Big Spoon and I would have to be cautious of once we got out there. My heart pounded as I signed the paper that said the park was not at fault if something happened to me. Big Spoon and I obtained our permits for an overnight backpacking trip on Primrose Ridge. The permits were free but the catch was this: in order to preserve Denali’s wilderness, no trails were constructed in the backcountry. You had to make your own. Many backpackers were drawn to this. But this scared me. In the most remote places of the PCT at least I had a path to follow. But in the enormous Alaskan wild, I had to make my own? How would I know the way? Then I remembered my dream of the salmon. It was true, I read in the brochure, that when salmon reached a certain age they journeyed from the river where they were born to the sea–the immeasurable sea–where they had never been. This made me think. If a salmon could make its way beyond its comfortable river realms to reach a bigger, more fantastic domain, then I could, too. There was something in me, too–an instinct of sorts–that guided me to go beyond my constructed realms to reach that bigger land.
The ranger handed us two bottles of bear spray–an extremely powerful mace used to thwart charging bears–as we left the station. Big Spoon and I readied our packs in the visitor parking lot then caught the Savage River Shuttle to Primrose Ridge. The ridge existed 1,500 feet above the Park Road along the Savage River. We passed the sled dog kennels on our way. The shuttle dropped us off at the junction where cars were no longer allowed to drive. We heard the sled dogs howling from where we stood on the empty road. Or were those wolves? I couldn’t worry now. I stood before the tundra at the base of the ridge. It was early evening; several hours of daylight remained. The shuttle zoomed off and Big Spoon and I were alone. Miles of mountain and flatland encompassed us. I was about to get in over my head.
* * *
Claire's first book on her adventures while living in Colorado can be ordered here:
http://www.amazon.com/51-Weeks-The-Unfinished-Journey-ebook/dp/B00IWYDLBQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1394801373&sr=8-1&keywords=51+Weeks