I can't get the ball rolling on this little experiment unless I first take a detour to Alaska, where everything started falling into place.
My husband has been to Alaska many times over the years and, each time he returns home, I know I am going to have to listen to tales of how great Alaska is. Tales of mountains, hot springs, and Northern Lights would be the course of discussion for at least the following week, if not longer. I could almost tell the tales myself considering how many times I've heard them. He'd finish up each time by asking me if I wanted to take some time off of work to join him on his next trip north and, each time I'd decline.
I live in Oregon and we have all of the things here. Oregon has rivers and forests and coastlines and wildlife and mountains. What would be the purpose of travelling to another state to see what I can already see on my morning commute? I have a job of my own to worry about and while Alaska sounded nice, it also sounded cold.
I wasn't wrong...
The day finally came when I figured, "what the hell" and I allowed myself to take time from work, board a plane, and head into the wilderness that is Anchorage, Alaska. As we got closer to our destination, it became abundantly clear that my husband had undersold the product. In Oregon, there are mountains. In Alaska, there are MOUNTAINS.
They're kind of everywhere.
Cold isn't the word I would now choose to describe Alaska. Vast is the word I would now choose to describe Alaska. The distance from one point on the map to the next? Vast. The size of the forests we drove through? Vast. The height of the mountain range in the distance Vast. You get the idea. There are many other words I could choose to describe Alaska, among them would be breathtaking, majestic, expansive, alive.
Just kidding, we went to an animal sanctuary down the road from our hotel. They had bears there. But still...
It looks like this everywhere!
I became sadly aware that I have too many preconceived notions about places I've never been to. This is something I'm still working on and something which came up again when I visited Israel. I genuinely hope to move past that mindset one day and learn to remain open to the idea that I may not always know what I think I know. I always imagined Alaska to be a cold, empty tundra but I was not prepared for how full it actually was.
We went in late April 2017, which feels to me like one of the best times to go because its not yet tourist season. Many roads and trails are still closed due to the remaining snowpack and there are no whale watching tours to speak of but, the places you can reach are all yours. No tourists means no noise pollution and no traffic.
The time we spent on that first trip was pretty frantic, trying to see as much as we could in the time allotted but, there was a moment when we were at Hatcher Pass that I experienced what I believe to be my first moment of true stillness. The snow was still heavy on the mountain and it absorbed every bit of ambient noise around us. There was no wind to speak of and the sun was low on the horizon. There were a few people snowboarding nearby but we had to strain to hear them. All that I could hear was the sound of my own breathing and the muffled crunching of the snow underneath my feet as I walked around the pass. Pure, unbroken stillness. And it was amazing.
We would return in September 2017 and revisit a lot of the places we had seen in April, only this time, the snow would be gone and it would be after tourist season so that was good planning on our part. I'll get some pictures of that trip posted soon.
As for you, If you've never had an opportunity to experience real stillness, if you've never had the chance but you've always had the desire to see what lies over that next mountain or, if you maybe just want to see a bear, I can think of no better place for you to try scratching that itch than Alaska.
I'll just leave this here for you...
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