Wild Northern Prospects
- nwriversphotograph
- 6 days ago
- 4 min read
Winter has been my favorite season of the year for a long while. Skiing, snowshoeing, the crisp, clear, and freezing air that invigorates your body and increases sharpness and contrast in the land where you wander. Born from off-track skiing in West Virginia’s Monongahela Forest, icy paddling in Washington’s North Cascades, and watching bears and eagles on Alaska’s Chilkat River, those deep breaths and vivid imagery remain in my mind long after I am home, hot coffee in hand.
But this year winter has yet to come to the Pacific Northwest. While much of the country is engulfed in an acute polar vortex, with snow, ice, freezing temperatures and power outages (sorry for all my friends who are not fans of that), here in Bellingham the forecast is for rain and temperatures in the upper 50’s for the upcoming week.
To get past our lack of winter (so far), I start dreaming of future and returning trips north – to the Alaskan wilderness.
That started over the holidays when my niece and nephew visited. They have not been to Alaska and have always wanted to go. So we started planning for a trip in 2026 – not during the harsh winters, nor in the limited summer months with its green landscapes, wildlife, and nearly endless days of light – but during our favorite off-season travel times in September. We are banking on good weather as by mid-September you can count on building snow and ice and less wildlife. If you are lucky to have nicer weather, you can just gaze upward to higher elevations to see winter creeping down the mountain sides.
While the off-season is riskier, the pay off is on those remaining soft, wonderful days with low-angled light, vibrant, golden, and crimson colors, and the start of the season for potential northern light sightings. The off season also offers a more relaxed, less hectic local scene when you can actually talk and visit with the people who call Alaska home.
But really, for me, dreaming of wild places and Alaska started many years ago, even before I was aware of the exact location of our 49th state (state hood on January 3, 1959 when I was just about five years old), before I learned about the beauty of the Pacific Northwest, and so much earlier than my first opportunities to ever visit or live in the northwest and far north.
As a pre-teen growing up in Pittsburgh, I was a voracious reader. It was a different time, and I knew the librarians and they knew me and my mother. If she needed to run errands, she could drop me off knowing I was easy to monitor. I would pick my book for the day, find a quiet corner or chair, and become quickly immersed in fantasy, history, and adventure, and remain happily in that world for hours.
Even then, I was drawn to stories of wild places, Alaska, and the North.
“He could not immediately forego his wild heritage and his memories of the Wild. There were days when he crept to the edge of the forest and stood and listened to something calling him far and away.”
Jack London, White Fang
One afternoon, I found “The Call of the Wild” and “White Fang” by Jack London, and I quickly went down those two wonderful, swirling rabbit holes of adventure with John Thornton and his dog Buck, and Weedon Scott and his wild wolf-dog. Mental images of the winter wilderness of the Yukon (I am sure at that point that I had no idea how/where the Yukon actually related to Alaska), sled dogs, and travel through romantic (for a young kid from western Pennsylvania) places including California, City of Seattle, the northwest Klondike, and Alaska. And then, hidden on the lower shelves, I found the poems of Robert Service, the ‘Bard of the North’… “the race of men who can’t stay still… who roam the world at will… who are cursed with gypsy blood” (from The Men Who Don’t Fit In) and I was forever lost to the dark, snow and ethereal light of the far North.
“Snow-crystals, the flowers of the mountain clouds, are frail, beautiful things, but terrible when flying on storm-winds in darkening, benumbing swarms or when welded together into glaciers full of deadly crevasses. ”
John Muir, Stickeen (1897)
From there, sitting on the library floor, I joined Balto and Togo on their 674-mile Great Race from Nenana (just south of Fairbanks) to Nome Alaska, and fell in love with John Muir’s glacial journey with the wonderful and courageous dog Stickeen. Later on in my life, having now left the Brookline library far behind, I continued my love with the North by reading James Michener and Jon Krakauer and by transporting myself to these places of imagination, weather, and wildlife as often as possible.
Having now put all of this down in words, I cannot wait for next September, for returning once again to the northern wild, to all the adventures and experiences that travel brings, and to that lifelong quest to become one with places wild, mysterious, and breathtakingly beautiful.
Endnotes:
All photos in this posting are from my past trips to these wonderful northern destinations. Enjoy!
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