Author: Emma

An Adventure on the Arkansas, in which I tackle my own River of Doubt.

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I like to think of the great explorers of our age whenever I’m out in the wilderness. I’m certainly a weenie compared to Teddy Roosevelt, but his adventures are perhaps the most inspiring to me. After sorely losing the 1912 presidential election, Roosevelt, his son Kermit, a Brazilian Colonel, and a troop of assorted adventurers set out to chart the River of Doubt, a tributary of the Amazon flanked on all sides by dangerous flora and fauna and choked with impassable rapids. Roosevelt nearly lost his life, and the story of his expedition to the River of Doubt is one that will render your most gut-wrenching outing completely moot. You could argue that Roosevelt was the last great all-around adventurer of our time, and you might very well be right. Adventurers today aren’t nearly so versatile.

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Adventures at Altitude: How the Mile High City Took My Breath Away, Literally

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The Centennial State has been good to me so far. In the wake of my grief over losing Lucky, I find myself most at peace when my poor, sea level-spoiled lungs are gasping for thin, Rocky Mountain air. It’s the pounding on my knees, the familiar, repetitive motions, the sun beating down on my already sunburned shoulders. The throbbing and aching and sweating are welcome if fleeting distractions, and the runners’ high after a long jaunt is usually enough to ward off Lucky-related tears for awhile.

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Lucky Dog: An Ode to the World’s Best Labradork

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“Don’t worry about the future; or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubblegum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind; the kind that blindside you at 4 p.m. on some idle Tuesday.”

—Baz Luhrmann

Things took a turn for the worse for me on my last day on the Last Frontier. My beloved black lab, Lucky, was hit by a car and killed instantly just hours before we were supposed to head home, and as you can probably imagine, it hit me pretty hard.

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There’s No Place Like Home: My (Temporary) Retreat from the Land of Odds

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I am the only child of doting parents who reacted with the same enthusiasm to my less-than-stellar high school track performances—“But you didn’t get lapped this time!” they’d exclaim, “You’re much faster than the girl with the knee brace!”—as they might if I became an astrophysicist, and if you asked them, they’d probably tell you I’m smart enough for that, too. It probably doesn’t come as a surprise, then, that I didn’t really experience feelings of doubt about my station in life until the summer before I moved to Alaska.

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To Alder Hell and Back Again: Alderfest 2013

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Summer has (kind of) arrived in Alaska, and not a moment too soon. Temperatures soared above 80 degrees last week, and while that may not exactly sound like a heat wave to people who live in areas with normal weather patterns, I’ll remind you that we experienced forty degrees below zero this winter. My friend Hannah’s doctor fiancé told me yesterday that he diagnosed several cases of heat rash this week, which I’m taking as proof that Alaskans have devolved into cold-bloodedness and are not meant to be warmed above about 60 degrees. Still, my friends are loving it: we are jogging on the formerly-Nordic trails, canoeing around the lake rather than skiing across it, and climbing rock instead of ice.

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