Escape from Anchorage

July 30

It was Friday, I had made up my mind to leave the airport the next day wether it rained or not.  After listening to two kids jam, and watching natives dance, I turned on my iPod and started listening to the new Trevor hall album, which has, over the course of the last week become a pinnacle album for me.  I noticed a girl my age, with a backpackers backpack, and curly blonde hair. I had seen her pass through before and now she stood reading Alaskan destination magazines.  I picked up a magazine next to her, I don't know why I did, because I wasn't interested in the magazine.  I asked her if she had been to Alaska before, she said this was her first time.  We started talking, I told her about all the adventures I had up here last summer, and she told me about Minnesota where she went to college. She said she rented a car, but it wouldn't be ready for a few hours, so we sat down and kept talking.  She was scouting Alaska because she wanted something different, because a new place always opens your eyes, and she thought maybe she wanted to move here.  Her name was Abby, I found out an hour into the conversation. She was short, wore no make-up and smiled frequently. About that time she told me her friend wasn't coming to join her for a few days and she has this car, she asked me if I wanted to adventure with her for a few days.  That was the start of it.  The end of it was getting a massive fever in the talkeetna mountains a few days later and getting dropped off at FredMeyer to start my hitch north, but that was more of a transcendental experience than it sounds, and I'm getting ahead of myself.

The first night we stayed in town to explore a bit, and we were let down.  The first thing you need to do when you get to alaska is get out of Anchorage. The best part of the night was climbing to the top of a school gym to watch the sunset.  Every direction we turned seemed like a different world. Toward the mountains, great remnant thunderclouds loomed, but the sun striped them of their normal gloom and instead clothed them with a marvelous salmon pink, contrasted sharply by the dark clouds behind who managed escape the public wardrobe change.  The other side of the sky was open except for thin strips of clouds, the sun caught them in a way you would think they had a light shining from within them. But they faded, and we moved on. The whole time talking about life (which is an easy way to say we discovered where our souls aligned.)  The next day we high tailed it out of town after a quick REI stop-the one redeeming factor of anchorage.  We drove southeast along the ocean, with the steady steam of tourists. We kept having to resist the urge to stop because we knew soon we would move out of the land of tourists. We went to Whittier which claims to have the longest tunnel in the country, and you feel like you're in a mine because it's one lane wide, surrounded closely by jagged rock.  Whittier was confusing, with a cruise ship three times the size of the whole town.  But the view was awesome.  The bay looked like an alpine lake with steep pined slopes rising on each side, we were shocked to remember this was the ocean.  Walking through the docks I loved seeing how the sailboats are built differently up here for the northern seas.  I was admiring one and a guy jumped in to tell me about it, he'd been here for 15 years and never seen the owner. He was a crab fisher, and showed us the inside of his boat, he was eager to be heard and dove right into the whole thing.  I'm sure he's seen some burgeoning storms.

We continued to drive south, stopping once, to hike up a valley; we were lured by a glacier. I sat for a while watching a marmot while Abby kept on to get the perfect photo.  Everything about the place makes you feel small because the mountains shoot up right above you.  I found a picture in a magazine Abby brought of a lake we were at. It was taken 100 years ago. Almost the entire lake was covered with a towering glacier that blocked even the view of the mountains. Today, the only remains can be seen high in the mountains.  I made a comment to some one about the glaciers, and they replied, "ya, gotta enjoy them while they're here."  Woah.

We drove through the rain, listening to music, looking out the window, and beaming from ear to ear.  We couldn't help it.  Further south we stopped at a small lodge at the edge of an expansive emerald blue lake. We ordered a plate of hummus, pita, olives, peppers, cauliflower and other veggies.  Abby asked if we could be seated outside in the rain, and we were.  If you ever get a chance to eat hummus in the rain by a lake, do it!  I saw a cabin across the lake with a sailboat tied to a small dock.  I wonder if that guy knows how lucky he is.  We played a quick game of ping-pong and kept driving.

Way down a dirt road we stopped and hiked for a few hours.  Abby told me about a trip she took to Africa.  While she was there she saw an exorcism, she was in the room, shaking walls, flying objects and all.  After that conversation I said, "ok, I'm intrigued with life once again."  What mysteries life is full of!  That, in particular is one most prefer to avoid thinking about.  We made it to a lookout with the most stunning 360 degree view.  A lake the size of south america from space wrapped around us, we could see up to the inner ice field.  To the north, the ocean glistened and beyond that Mt. McKinley.

The next day we met up with some friends of her friends who live in anchorage. Two brothers, who apparently have an Instagram page about Alaskan adventures that went viral. Our goal for the day was to find the crash site of a World War Two bomber.  Their dad had been there and said we'd never make it.  We hiked up Hatchers Pass, to the Reed lakes, which is where REI has shot a lot of their adds (I found out the next day because I hitch hiked with the wife of the guy who flies the planes for those shoots.This woman had also seen me on Facebook before in a picture from when I. Flew into Denali on a helicopter. With PBS because her friend was the helicopter pilot.))  Needless to say it was gorgeous, Abby said that this blew Banff, Canada out of the water.  We stood at the edge of a big waterfall and looked down on lower Reed lake.  The fingers of snow stood out against the dark rock and reflected like ribs in the crystal blue water.  When the trail stopped, we kept hiking.  It started to rain, and the boulders we were climbing on became slippery.  It got steeper and steeper until we finally got to the pass and looked over the other side. We could see deep into the Talkeetna range. And the whole thing was snow, including the rest of the hike.  We finally made it to the plane and a plaque read that three men died upon impact and the captain, despite his own injuries, drug the other three men through the snow to a shelter, and wrapped them in parachutes and sleeping bags until rescue came.  The plane is now a huge pile of metal, you can make out the wings, but not the cabin.  When we got back on the other side of the ridge, we were completely socked in by fog.  That's when the fever started.  When I laid down to rest and closed my eyes, I saw the flowers from the trail, spinning, and changing colors.  Then my focus would zoom out to see a certain scene and back to the flower, but each time it went back out, the scene would be something completely different.  I tried to describe the good sides of having a fever to the group, but I don't think they got it.  Everything slowed way down for me and I started talking about Plato and Jesus, and what it would be like to be a fly, or a person with a seven-second memory.  I wonder if a fever is natures way of giving you a natural high, plus a few side effects, but I know most don't share my point of view.

Abby dropped me off at fredmeyer, we hugged and i went inside. I asked Starbucks for a cup of hot water, and sunk into a $999 couch on sale for $599 and stared wide-eyed at a painting of an orange tree for who knows how long, jerking up in amazement when a woman's voice echoed from the ceiling in all directions, "make sure you pick up grapes on the way out." What a strange environment superstores are, especially with a fever.  Imagine what a baby's experience of the store would be like.

So I slept, I laid in my sleeping bag and slept forever. And the next day I would catch rides with fascinating people and walk up a hill to the blessed expanse of land in which I now dwell.