Tag: adventure

One more season: The odyssey continues

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It’s been a big week.

Upon returning from Spring Break, I got word that my research proposal had been approved by the Institutional Review Board at APU, which means I have a green light to start collecting data for my thesis project. From what I’m told, getting one’s ducks in a row for approval is often a superlative pain in the ass, so I’m glad to have this hurdle out of the way.

Perhaps more importantly, at least in a long-term sense, is my next piece of news: I accepted a job. For next season.

In Alaska.

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“The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.” –John Muir

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If you didn’t know any better, the pullout at Seward Highway Mile 48 would look like any other makeshift rest area on Alaska’s most dangerous highway. In fact, if not for the half-dozen bumper-stickered Outbacks and Tacomas with toppers, a couple of dirtbags like us might have driven right past it.

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The secret to success: Just. Show. Up.

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As anyone who’s spent much time with me can attest, I am neither particularly athletic nor someone who could accurately be described as much of a “go-getter.” I’m sort of medium at most things I do. I might refer to my ability level as “serviceable” if I felt extra confident in a given skill, but the label of “expert,” in my case, could really only be applied to activities like napping and selecting pizza toppings.

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Free soloing the First: A story in which I make a few good and a few bad decisions, and ultimately am a little smarter.

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Near the end of my twenty-third summer, I got it in my head that I should try free soloing. It wasn’t in a single moment that the idea came to me, but rather over the course of a disaster-style summer, punctuated by a series of nudges in that direction.

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Alaska, continued! (A story in which, for better or for worse, I find myself back on the Last Frontier)

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The Farm is identified by this often-driven-by sign, cleverly hidden by vegetation on the side of Farm Loop Road.
The Farm is identified by this often-driven-by sign, cleverly hidden by vegetation on the side of Farm Loop Road.

Spring Creek Farm sits on the outskirts of Palmer, Alaska, a small, rural community about forty miles north of Anchorage. In the mid-1930s, some two hundred-odd Midwesterners, mostly in their late twenties and early thirties, picked up their families and moved to the Last Frontier as part of Roosevelt’s New Deal. The Matanuska Colony has existed in various incarnations since then, and today, the sleepy township of Palmer is home to just under six thousand people and, still, plenty of dairy cows.

Continue reading “Alaska, continued! (A story in which, for better or for worse, I find myself back on the Last Frontier)” →