“-est”… That’s how I’d describe Alaska. It’s the United States’ furthest northwest state, with the Aleutian Islands reaching further west than Hawaii. It has North America’s highest mountain – Mount McKinley - the largest national park, the largest national forest, the globe’s third longest river system, and the world’s largest sub-polar ice field. The state is larger than most nations: divided in half, each half would still make the largest state in the Union. Lake Hood, four miles outside Anchorage, is the largest float-plane base in the world. Alaska boasts the northernmost railroad, in Fairbanks, the continent’s northernmost town, Barrow, and the southernmost tidewater glacier, Le Conte. It’s the lightest, darkest and perhaps boldest, harshest, prettiest place on the planet.

I heard the groans and felt the snap of calving glaciers.

My first trip to Alaska revealed characteristics of the Divine I’d never before imagined. Laden with supplies, I hiked across spongy tundra trying to imagine empty-handed Alaska Natives dwelling for more than 3,000 years in what appeared to be useless, barren land. I witnessed a bold land of non-stop daylight, heliotrope flowers, soaring eagles, black bears, blond grizzlies, moose, foxes, Dall sheep, caribou, snow hare, jumping salmon, humpback whales, puffins, and more. I heard the groans and felt the snap of calving glaciers. I watched forty-foot tides sweep over the deadly mud flats surrounding Cook Inlet and viewed lingering evidence of the 1964 earthquake - the most powerful quake in North American history.

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“We swear you’ll thank us for this,” is what Lonely Planet said. The travel book described it, quite simply, as one of Bali’s most sacred Hindu temples, and it turned out to be, quite simply, the opposite. Pura Lempuyang sits high on a mountain overlooking the Bali Sea and the active volcano Mount Agung. The challenge is climbing 1700 slippery, stone steps to reach the “don’t miss” temple “where gods and humans meet.” Azar, my travel partner, and I were up for the challenge. If Lonely Planet “swears,” then we’re committed.

The challenge is climbing 1700 slippery, stone steps to reach the “don’t miss” temple “where gods and humans meet.”

At the base, we paid a fee and were instructed to wear a sarong throughout the journey. A guide, who wouldn’t be going with us, estimated it would take two hours to reach the temple and warned us that there would be occasional aggressive monkeys looking for food.

“How aggressive are these monkeys?” I asked.

“Oh you’ll be fine, of course. Just don’t feed them,” he replied.

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“You hear that?” I asked. “Stop and listen.” Diane and I stood quiet, catching our breath, heart rates slowing.

“No, all I hear is Esther coming, crunching the snow.” We were walking single file on one of our frozen tire tracks. Esther was about half a minute back. We turned and watched her catch up with her ghostly moon shadow hooked to her feet, spreading across the narrow, snow-covered road.

“Esther, stop and listen. I think I hear something.”

A slow steady thud of a diesel generator greeted our ears, but where? (photo ©Stephan Pietzko|Dreamstime.com)

She stopped her march and stood. I looked at her and wondered what had brought her here to Alaska. She must have a curious life story to weave her fate with ours, near-strangers. How did a one-hundred-pound, sixty-year-old city-woman end up here with us trying to walk out of an Alaskan winter night? Whatever her story, she was game and her survival instinct strong.

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John, our new neighbor, was lost, and we had lost him in an Alaskan winter. The kind of far north winter that had grainy snow that crunched when you walked on it. Snow so white, so bright, shadows disappeared, and you’d walk out into thin air not knowing, falling so soft, not caring, just a whoop, then laughter. The air so clear, so calm, so cold. Water vapor turned into tiny ice crystals that hung in the air. It was our beautiful Alaska, but now John was lost and it could become his deadly Alaska.

It was our beautiful Alaska, but now John was lost and it could become his deadly Alaska. (photo ©Michele Cornelius|Dreamstime.com)

Two weeks earlier, his wife Esther, my wife Diane, and I had driven John up the Steese Highway so he could look for gold in the frozen creeks while they were low. John was a dreamer, but then so were we. It was 1971, an era of back-to-the-land movements, when I was 23 and Diane was 24. We’d only known John for ten days, but we drove him up that highway so he could have his dream.

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No Camino de Santiago, strolling the porticoes in Bologna or walking the Hampstead heath or trails in England for me this year. Healing from surgery, I’m close to home, putting one foot in front of another, finding adventures in Denver.

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A little knowledge can be dangerous, and when it comes to travel, I’m downright lethal. So I guess the opposite argument can also be made: ignorance is bliss. Why my travel companions don’t take away my navigation tasks is beyond me. Perhaps they don’t realize that I’m also blundering along looking for some recognizable landmark. I think they’re content that I lead.

I didn’t mind running with the locals when trains suddenly changed tracks. But there was one incident that I wasn’t prepared for.

A recent post I read here about how the low points of your travels are where your best stories come from reminded me of a summer I spent in Europe. I wasn’t new to travel, and didn’t mind staring at posted train times or running with the locals when trains suddenly changed tracks. I could figure out which trains would stop at which cities, and which were direct. But there was one incident that I wasn’t prepared for.

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I believe one way to turn travel into a more fulfilling adventure is to embark on a mission. I met Coloradan Lynette Collins at a book event, where she read an inspiring email she’d written about her recent mission to Honduras. She and her dentist husband had joined the East Chapel Hill Rotary Club of North Carolina for a medical/dental mission. Lynette kindly agreed to let me share her email here. The written content is unaltered, with the exception of a few words of clarification:

One way to turn travel into a more fulfilling adventure is to embark on a mission. A medical/dental mission to Honduras is just one of many possibilities.

LYNETTE’S EMAIL

Hi everyone!

I wanted to let you know that we returned early this morning and we are well… no malaria yet like George Clooney contracted in Sudan! Bozo. He should have taken pills and received his shots like we did!

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Remember the time you were stuck at the side of the road all night, trying to hitchhike your way to Andorra? Then there’s the time you spent four hours in a Madrid train station, trying to buy tickets, only to be thrown out by the ticket seller because you were a weeping wreck. Or how about the time you somehow lost your money and tube pass and had to hike four hours across drizzly London, using an A-Z to find your way back to your squat?

(No, not that kind of squat!) This life-sized artwork graced the wall of a cat piss-drenched room in Amsterdam. It was too big to remove & hide.

These lowlights of our trips can be excruciating in the moment, but later prove to be some of the best things that happened to you. Why are lowlights (as opposed to highlights) so great for the adventurous traveler? Here are five reasons the lowlights can be the real reason we leave home.

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My decision to leave and travel around the world with a 13-year-old was not impulsive but directed. At the time, I hardly realized the impact on everyone who was involved with this journey. The gift of telling the story from my current perspective is interesting in that so much more of it is understood.

I truly expected this painting to fall apart by now, but it’s fine.

The date was September 10, 1997, and I will never forget the morning my husband dropped our youngest daughter and myself off at the bus stop on our way to JFK airport and the world. I had never traveled by myself or been out of the country more than stepping over the Canadian border one time. But when you know you have to do something, courage finds a place in your heart. We left with too much stuff and started a process of getting rid of things in Chile that lasted all the way to Thailand. I was traveling with a portable wooden easel and 20 pounds of oil paints. I didn’t realize when I left how hard it would be to find mineral spirits when I didn’t understand the language. It was a constant challenge in each country that we went to, but we were eventually able to find it every time.

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I set off on a five-day trek to see Torres del Paine National Park in Patagonia, in the company of two perfect strangers… and everyone else on the crowded trails. I had heard of the pristine beauty of Torres del Paine, and the amazing view at the end, but the real reason I was on this trek was my determination to make my South American adventure a real adventure, not just about beach hopping and bar hopping.

I threw up in the washroom of the administration office, and began the 32-kilometer stretch to Glacier Grey.

So, after a few hours on an ancient bus, I hopped off at the trailhead, threw up in the washroom of the administration office, and began the 32-kilometer stretch to Glacier Grey with nothing but a backpack full of granola bars, instant coffee, a kettle, and a different flavor of rice for each night. And a camera, of course!

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