A University of Washington Travel Magazine
V OYA G E
Issue No. 3 • Spring 2017
VOYAG E S P R I NG 2 0 1 7
CONTENTS
01 EDITOR’S NOTE Jayna Milan 02 ALL THE LITTLE COFFEE SHOPS Mac Hubbard 04 A COLD WIND BLOWS Paula Gluss 06 T E A L E AV E S Raphael Gaultier 14 M O U N TAI N S I N C O L O R David Bonan 16 BREAD CRUMBS the Editors 20 PHOTO COMPETITION Va r i o u s C o n t r i b u t o r s 22 FINAL FRONTIER Ann Evans 28 N AT I O N A L T R E A S U R E S Va r i o u s C o n t r i b u t o r s
Ian Dryg
EDITOR’S NOTE
T H E VOYAG E T E AM
Scrambling over undergrowth, we plopped down just as the sun rose above Mt. Baker’s peak and swept across the misty water, painting the San Juan Islands in gold. Across the bay, twinkling lights emerged—Bellingham was waking up. In quiet contemplation, I realized that in a mere week, I would be trading a lifestyle of airport transitions, island waitressing jobs, and spontaneous plans, with a freshman schedule. Sitting in the morning sunshine, I recalled memories from the past year and daydreamed of future adventures waiting across the water. Why do we retain the memories we do? Out of all the moments from my gap year, this one—my last sunrise on Orcas Island—is the one I recall most vividly. My best guess is that for a moment, I was granted perspective on where I had been and was headed. I could sit in clarity amidst the uncertainty. In our latest issue, we reflect. rom the far south where frigid winds blow off the Perito Moreno glacier to the north in the wild Alaskan outback, our stories contemplate the unintentional, internal voyage made during our travels. While Hollywood-esque “ah-ha!” moments are few and far between, we believe that with genuine contemplation and patience, travel has the power to change. We ask you to consider: How do your travels shape you after you’ve returned home? Once you’ve parted ways with fellow travelers and forgotten the names of similar-looking European churches, is that it? Do you return shaken or changed in some immeasurable way, or did you simply return with a new cocktail conversation starter? How have your past journeys granted you perspective?
JAY NA M I L AN
DAN I E L G R E E N
SAR AH JOH N S ON
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
SR. COPY EDITOR
COPY EDITOR
SH AN NON GU
KE V I N T E E T E R
DAN I E L K I M
COPY EDITOR
COPY EDITOR
SR. PHOTO EDITOR
V I V I AN C HOU
ST E V E N LE ON T I
ALYSSA CHOW
PHOTO EDITOR
PHOTO EDITOR
S R . L AYO U T E D I T O R
OST I N KU R N I AWAN LI LI ANA R A SM U SSE N
KY L E R M ART I N
L AYO U T E D I T O R
SR. ARTIST
ARTIST
V I NC E N T V/D M E U LE N
H AN NA DU DSIC
JO S E P H I N E L E
WEB DEVELOPER
MARKETING COORD.
EVENTS COORD.
Leaving these questions unanswered, we hope that our stories will fill the gaps, and that ultimately, your own adventures will provide the answers.
Bon Voyage,
Jayna Milan Editor-in-Chief
– 1 –
A SH LE Y LI M
JAC K RU S S I L L O
FINANCE COORD.
BLOGMASTER
– VOYAG E –
ALL THE LITTLE COFFEE SHOPS Mac Hubbard By the time the August mug had come down on the city that—whether I like it or not—is my home, I’d settled into a routine of running, like clockwork, around 3 or 4 o’clock along the beach. The movement from one place to another, then back to the original place, seemed to be helping with a peculiar kind of mental strain I was going through at the time. I’d recently gotten back from a trip of ceaseless motion. Now, I felt stuck in the mud. Everything had stopped. I needed to feel like I was going. Telling myself I’m where I’m supposed to be mattered less and less as I began to crave the high of leaving. On my runs, as I rode the ebb and flow between deep thoughtfulness and completely blank thoughtlessness, it struck me that I’d been doing the same thing to deal with a similar feeling on a different continent, months before. It would first enter my mind somewhere around this time that trips never have bookends. I wasn’t really running from
A to B to A everyday. That was the chunk I was looking at, when really the run extended much farther back, and I’d been running for well over a year. After class, I’d walk home through Wenceslas Square instead of taking the tram, then I’d put on my running shoes. The route was often left to the impulses of my feet; the movement itself was the catharsis, not the scenery. Once I had gotten to this city I’d fixed my trajectory to months before, sitting still there made it feel like my blood was curdling. Later, I accepted that running in the forgotten crevices of the place helped because the movement kept me off balance. I was able to stay lost. The first week home I didn’t look back for one second on the three months in my apartment back in Prague, or anything else I’d left behind when I took that flight back to America. It is done, I thought to myself. What else is there to say? A lot, as it would turn out. I wasn’t hanging on to it; everything stuck to me
– 2 –
like my shirt after a stuffy six-hour bus ride. However, there would be almost absolutely nothing to say in the kind of way I thought there would be. No one really wanted to hear about my travels beyond my ability to deliver confirmation that I’d had a great time, and yes, I’d learned so much. There was too much to tell. Plus, probably more importantly, it wasn’t something I really wanted to hand over. I couldn’t even wrap my own mind around it, let alone deliver it to you in a nice, neat little three-act monologue with an intermission and concession stand you could spend your evening at. You are incapable of understanding the human act of traveling until you have been confronted with the fact that no one really cares about where you’ve been or what you did there. This is why I’d started running again. The brain works like tectonic plates. Something in me needed to shift. Yet whatever grinding geological itch made me leave in the first place could not be scratched simply by telling people where I was
– T R AV E L E S SAY –
coming back from. “Wanderlust”—I’ve never been a big fan of that word. I think it’s a little silly when we try to think of our travels as these noble quests for truth and beauty when really we’re usually just following our stomachs and our noses. You’d be surprised at how far they take you though. Once you get far enough away from home, everything, your senses especially, become incredibly sensitive. Goddammit, I found myself thinking sometime in June. All this falling in love on public transportation is exhausting. Every city I’ve left my home to visit has been exactly like one of these gorgeous phantom women who were always leaving me behind on the subway platform. Even while I was standing right there, directly where “X” marked the spot, there was an inescapable, unchanging distance between us. It couldn’t be explained to anyone, this ability to love all the time in such a strange way that had nothing to do with people who I was actually meeting and everything to do with me being alone and disarmed, overflowing with feeling, on the other side of the planet. In Zagreb there is a hostel windowsill overlooking some very pleasant rooftops where I unceremoniously left a book in the summer. It was a volume that I’d bought in the clearance section of a bookstore back in fall of 2015, a compilation of what was deemed the best American travel writing of the previous year. This book went on to sit on my humble little bookshelf in my apartment, collecting dust. Looking back on it now, that book was nearly everywhere I went. There always seemed to be room somewhere in whatever city I went to for that cheap blue paperback I’d learned absolutely
was like all the others: scum. This had no impression on me and I left. There—that’s it. Isn’t it?
nothing from. Eventually, I read the introduction to the collection written by the editor. I’ll spare the details of his story, because after all he’d said, the thing that stuck in my throat was that travel, at its core, is about love and memory. After those three words were safely nestled in their new ink-sketched thought bubble above my head, the book would have nothing more read from it by its hypocritically loyal and neglectful owner. I don’t know what it was about that day—the weather maybe? They say humidity makes you act funny but I could no longer find
any room in my backpack for the book. It’s not you, it’s me, I thought to myself after setting it on yet another windowsill. It didn’t say anything back, only looked at me with a face that told me it knew I – 3 –
All that daydreaming and lusting while looking out windows makes no real impression on you. It’s easy, and tempting, to think of travel in terms of imagery. This is the stuff we lust after. But I think it’s difficult to hide from the fact that once we find that marker we’ve fixed ourselves to the Louvre, ilimanjaro, that beautiful girl with sad eyes who took a different tram route and left you alone at the stop—there’s nothing there for us that we didn’t bring ourselves. I kept my running routine up with monastic fidelity through the end of summer. Then the clouds came and so did the cold, so I spent more time inside, laying on the floor, paying attention to the rain on the windows. Here I was safe and comfortable, unlike when I laid on the floor of the apartment at Charles Square. Something I’d eaten had a death wish for me, and for a week I’d wake up to hug the toilet until it felt like I was hollow. The whole week was a fever dream. As I lay on my back, the ceiling, in spite of its plainness, became the canvas where my mind splattered a feeling of such quiet intensity and sorrow that I began to hear the faint call of orchestras and see the gold cornice of opera houses. The vulnerability of it really was beautiful, now that I look back. I had no choice but to let myself feel that whole week for all its pain and misery. My porcelain prison, after all, was just a place, a place I happened to be. The echo it threw back was what I am unable to forget.
– VOYAG E –
A COLD WIND BLOWS PA U L A G L U S S It’s cold in El Calafate, where the frigid winds blow off of the Perito Moreno glacier and a light dusting of constant snow makes me shiver. I was born and raised in California and I thrive off sunshine, but the crisp blue skies of Argentina only serve to make me colder. I’m here on a guided riding tour of the farmlands by the glacier, and the tour guide, a young man about my age, speaks only Spanish. “¿Tienes frío?” he asks me. I can only laugh, everyone here is always asking me if I’m cold, and I respond with “siempre”: always. I grew up learning Spanish, but this is my first time stepping away from my mother tongue and into the shoes of my second language. It’s unfamiliar and difficult; my mouth doesn’t want to form the right words or the right sounds. The language comes flowing from a reservoir I’ve been building since I was six, but even still I can only understand about half of the slang words my tour guide throws out. We laugh together, able to understand just enough
– 4 –
to get by. He begins to tell me about the history of the land and the glacier, and I nod along, finally able to comprehend. Last summer, I went on my first trip abroad to Argentina. I started in Buenos Aires, and from there I made my way south to El Calafate, a small town on the tip of Patagonia known for its glaciers and estancias, large open ranches in the foothills of the Andes. During my visit, I convinced the hands at one of the estancias to take me riding, as the horses in Argentina reminded me of the ponies I had ridden as a child. Riding alongside the milky blue water of Lago Argentino with the glacier as my backdrop brought back my love of horses, something I had pushed aside during my busy, stressed-out life in college. After the hustle of life in Seattle, the trail ride was cold and peaceful in a way that I had never known before. The sharp
– T R AV E L E S SAY –
transition between the quiet of the ride and my own stress reminded me of a life I’d always wanted, one where I was excited to start each day and optimistic about my own future. However, this seemed in direct contradiction to the way I had been living. As a graduating senior, things had reached a breaking point. My life had always been defined by expectations, especially the feeling of not living up to them. As the youngest child of four, there had always been the expectation that I would be the one to do college right. It was okay if my siblings didn’t follow in my parents’ footsteps and go to college, study STEM, and achieve a forever brilliant life. But when it came to me, I always felt required to live up to the high bar set by my parents and the reputation of being the smart, ambitious sister, even if I never felt that way. The pressure opened up cracks that depression and anxiety seeped through, worming their way through me and into my daily life. I doubted myself constantly. Everything in college seemed so hard, and I was afraid I had picked the wrong major and the wrong university. Everyone I knew seemed to always be having fun, while for me, there were days when I just wanted to turn everything off. It took its toll; every day felt like the same struggle, and the future felt like just another part of an endless battle I knew I couldn’t win. It wasn’t until I was sitting astride a horse in the frozen foothills of the mountains that I really began to reflect on the progress I had made and step away from my depression. Riding amongst the ice, wind and calafate plants, I have the chance to see the parts of my life separated in stark contrast: on one side, the part of me that desperately wants to make my family proud, and on the other, the part of me that yearns to ride away and leave all the demands behind. With graduation looming, I feel torn between the life everyone wants me to have and my own happiness. These two paths seem irreconcilable, and I am locked in, unable to change course.
I can’t really feel my fingers, my horse is stubbornly trying to pull me back to his barn, and I can only understand about half of what my guide is saying. Among the cold mountains, I realize that I have other options for my future, possibilities I had never considered because I thought they were impossible. Experiencing another way of life so different from my own gives me a lens to imagine a future that before seemed fantastical. I suppose that when you’re travelling in a country where nobody speaks your first language, you really get a chance to rethink your life’s priorities.
My horse jerks me back to the present, eagerly pulling on my reins. He’s ready to push forward through the cold, regardless of my own introspection. We’re closer to the mountains now and the wind has finally lessened. I pause to admire the peaks sticking up into the sky above me. They have no timeline, no pressure to be anything but what they are. The snow falls and melts, the valley I’m riding in floods and retracts, and life goes on. For me, life will go on too. I know that I can’t stay, riding in the foothills, overlooking the glacier and its blue lake forever. My life in Seattle is calling, a future in math that I’ve been working for my entire life. This future is mine and it doesn’t have to fit anyone else’s mold. As we ride back to the barn, I look back over my shoulder at the glittering ice in the distance. Maybe, just maybe, my life isn’t stuck on a single course after all, and I have the power to make my future work for me.
– 5 –
TEA LEAVES R A P H A E L G A U LT I E R A Moroccan breakfast custom out in the desert: mint tea and cigarettes.
– VOYAG E –
top: Sunrise in the Sahara Desert makes the sand glow golden. You can’t help but admire the natural beauty of the desert. right: A bumpy camel ride on the outskirts of the Sahara Desert before the late hours of the day begin to fade to darkness.
– 8 –
– P HO T O E S SAY –
T
he sun was slowly slipping under the horizon behind us as our camels casually stepped through the thick sand. The stars began to appear, one by one, in the navy blue sky above us, and the moon was glistening, suspended in mid-air. The entire desert was swept in silence. That night we sat on the soft sand and stared into the blackened sky illuminated by the moon and stars overhead. Wrapped in warm, quilted blankets, we sipped on sugary mint tea and listened to our guide tell stories of his upbringing in Morocco. His vernacular drifted seamlessly between English, French, and Arabic as he recounted tales of the clay red walls of Marrakesh and the impressive landscapes that surround the city. I couldn’t imagine growing up in a place so rich in tradition and culture. Experiencing Morocco for the first time, I began to realize how fortunate I was to be able to experience different cultures through a local lens, through the lens of people like my guide who spoke so candidly about his childhood. He continued to speak, this time of the food his mother used to make him, and I was reminded of how interconnected we all are. It was on that night under the stars in the middle of the Sahara Desert that travel began to take on a new meaning for me, a meaning rooted in empathy for other ways of life. Even though Morocco was such a culture shock for me when I first walked its streets, I began to find a deeper connection to its people and food when I stepped out of my comfort zone and attempted to integrate with local life.
– 9 –
– VOYAG E –
right: The landscape in the surrounding mountains by Marrakesh is forever changing. The varied altitudes allow for vegetation, red clay, dirt, and even snowcaps within several miles of each other.
– 10 –
– P HO T O E S SAY –
top: The tombs of royalty in Marrakech are grand and memorable. The red clay can be seen on the walls surrounding burials. Details from the markings around the burial are intricate and detailed. left: Taxis are constantly on the move around the city, weaving in and out of traffic. Here is a rare moment of relaxation in a taxi driver’s day.
– 11 –
– VOYAG E –
top: Light peers through the covering of an elaborate souk in Marrakesh. Souks are places where locals and tourists can come to barter with salesmen peddling rugs, tea, robes and much more. right: The one shared outhouse for our entire group shines brightly as night falls.
– 12 –
– P HO T O E S SAY –
left: A mother looks on near the entrance to the Bahia Palace, a popular location for locals and tourists alike. The older generation in Morocco tends to dress in more traditional garments while younger people have undertaken the influences of the West. top: On the fringe of the Sahara Desert, closest to Marrakesh. Evidence of manmade infrastructure finds itself in these remote parts of the world.
– 13 –
– VOYAG E –
MOUNTAINS IN COLOR DAV I D B O N A N David Bonan grew up in the climbing hub of Boulder, Colorado where he started out as a gym rat and has since become addicted to all aspects of climbing, from bouldering to long alpine routes. Having grown up in an environmentally conscious family, he understands the beauty and importance of the environment. He is currently pursuing a degree in atmospheric sciences and applied mathematics at the University of Washington, where he hopes to study past climates and help predict future ones. He aspires to live a life filled with intellectual stimulation, illustrations, and countless days out in the mountains, deserts, and wide open spaces.
– 14 –
– ART I S T F E AT U R E –
T HE CER R O T OR R E TOW ER S Patagonia
T HE FL AT IR ONS
HAL F D OME Yosemite
TORRE S DEL PAINE Patagonia – 15 –
Utah
C AS TLETON TOW ER
Colorado
– VOYAG E –
BREAD CRUMBS: Food for Thought from the Editors
When I was younger I took a trip to rural Norway with my family. I met distant family members of mine that lived simple lives in the mountains, away from the modernity of urban life. When I try to figure out how best to describe these people, the word that keeps coming to my mind is un-American. The vagueness of this word and the political connotations it carries make it a problematic description and I don’t mean to make any political statement here but it lingers nonetheless.
I
Kevin Teeter
Sitting in the dining room of some distant cousins I’d never met before, looking out the window onto Voss Lake, I felt an overwhelming sense that the world I found myself in was built around the present. Maybe it was just my cultural ignorance. Maybe I just got caught in the right place at the right time with the right mindset. But as I sit in this library, studying away so that one day I might achieve some hazy American Dream, I can’t help but long for that window, that lake and those mountains, and those beautiful people whose names and relations I’ve long forgotten, who so long ago were so brilliantly now.
– 16 –
– T R AV E L E S SAY –
But then it hit me. One of German boys dropped his beer bottle and it shattered and so did all of the frustration with the word “gringo” I’d had in my mind. Some think of Colombia as a tropical haven for reggaeton and cocaine, perhaps the homeland of Pablo Escobar. They end up in Medellín, hunting down drugs and accosting women in pricey clubs because that’s what they know Colombia for. They move in an opaque bubble of a uence, above the impoverished reality.
II
Daniel Green
That man wasn’t calling us “gringos” because we were white. He said “gringos” because he saw us as more of them. The sex tourists. The flippant party-goers. The entitled English-speakers who had the means to travel to a poor country without giving a dime to those in need.
iggles and nervous shouts came from within the hostel bathroom. I’d been waiting for fifteen minutes, after the ermans had told me they needed to hit the loo. It was a characteristically hot December night in Medellín, and my patience was drowning in a flood of sweat. I propped the door open and shouted, “Let’s go!” The jittery laughing wouldn’t cease. After a couple of weeks in Colombia, I had made an exception to my “don’t hang out with other tourists” rule and agreed to grab drinks with a few erman travelers. I didn’t realize they’d intended on veering much further from sobriety than “drinks” had implied. The bathroom door burst open and the trio stumbled out, wideeyed. It was like the movies visible patches of white powder clinging to facial hair and the bottoms of their noses. The next moment we were on the street, as if the four of us were suddenly swept outside by a wave of heat. They didn’t have to tell me where we were headed. It would be one of those humid, cacophonous tourist clubs, where Caucasian boys sought out nonCaucasian girls. About halfway to the bar a Colombian man standing alongside the road yelled, “Gringos!” He had his eyes on us, and boy, I hated that word. I’d never refer to Colombians by the color of their skin, I thought. – 17 –
I cursed under my breath at the Germans, turned around, and walked home. As long as I associated with that kind of traveler, I deserved the title “gringo.” That’s all the poorer Colombians could do to us. If we were ever dissatisfied, we could hop on a plane and fly home. Thousands of rich foreigners stumbled through their city every month, snorting drugs, pissing in their streets. And yet they couldn’t simply decide to fly away, away from the callousness of tourists. Their only retaliation was that one piece of defamatory speech. “Gringo.”
– VOYAG E –
III
Shannon Gu
The other tourists didn’t drop their stares as she babbled on. It must’ve been strange to them, hearing Chinese in a small, isolated region of Germany. Aside from the woman and her friends, my parents and I were the only Chinese tourists in the group, but that fact didn’t stick out to us until the woman opened her mouth to complain. My parents shook their heads with disapproval and turned away from the woman, while I stood frozen, hoping I would sink into the ground. The rumbling of a bus down the road shut the woman up, and drew away the attention of the other tourists. I let out a sigh of relief as the line started moving towards the edge of the road, but it was only seconds later when I was shoved to the side. The woman pushed her way to the front of the line. I stared in disbelief, then made eye contact with a Caucasian tourist in front of me. His anger was undeniable, but it wasn’t only directed at the woman; keeping his gaze locked on me, he cocked his head towards her as if trying to say, “Are you going to shove me aside like her?” I stared back, running through the retorts in my mind. I’ve travelled before. I know to be respectful. I’m an observer to this, just like you. I’m an American, unlike her.
“Why isn’t the bus here yet?” Her shrill voice tore through the silence. Having dozed off while waiting for the bus, I jolted awake at the sound of Chinese, thinking that my mom had asked me a question. I looked up at her only to find that she, as well as the rest of the tourists in line, was staring at someone else: a Chinese woman in her 60s, wearing an overly large sunhat. The hat’s strap hung loosely beneath her chin like a wobbly smile, the antithesis of the expression on her face. Ignoring the stares, she turned toward her two friends and continued complaining loudly about how she hated waiting.
– 18 –
The last response was on the tip of my tongue, but I couldn’t bring myself to say it, even though I desperately wanted to. I wanted no association between my family and the other Chinese tourists and being “American” was the clearest distinction I could make. There was no use, however, in establishing moral superiority for myself at the expense of others. “Sorry about that,” I said instead. The man nodded, accepting the apology, and stepped onto the bus.
– T R AV E L E S SAY –
In the village, our kurtas and pajamas were necessary dress, respecting the conservative culture of our temporary home. However, in the city where traditional attire was less common, our well-worn and ill-fitting Indian clothing made us stick out more than usual. Three months of living, studying, and interning in a rural village in the foothills of the Indian Himalayas had made my classmates and I intimately aware of the limitations of being an outsider. In a village where foreigners were uncommon, we were stared and pointed at on a regular basis.
IV
Sarah Johnson
n our final day, we decided to leave our research papers for good to visit the Taj Mahal, the icon that brought many of us to India. We were ready to be tourists and observe from a more removed standpoint. We sat down for a few minutes to bathe in the beauty of the mausoleum and let the memories of the last three months wash over us. In less than a minute we were surrounded by camera-wielding locals taking pictures of us. As our annoyed faces were candidly immortalized and we mentally calculated the shortest way back to the bus, it crossed my mind that the Taj Mahal wasn’t the only wonder there. Maybe the bedraggled group of Americans who had
voluntarily replaced their porcelain thrones with holes in outhouses to study a foreign society were the true spectacle. We packed up and left the next day, backpacks filled with our field notes and photographs. At the time, I couldn’t think beyond getting my first hot shower in months. Looking back though, maybe it was only fitting that some part of us stayed behind in India, known only to our onlookers as the photographers who tried desperately to avoid being photographed, watchers averse to being watched.
– 19 –
– VOYAG E –
SPRING
PHOTO COMPETITION
PEOPLE
“Some trips just feel like a dream, and some places don’t hit you until you’re gone. Havasupai was one of these and definitely an incredible experience and I can’t wait to go back. Gotta get the shot for the boys.” - Andrew Hoang
– 20 –
– PHOTO COMPETITION –
NAT U R E
“I took this shot last summer in Kamchatka, a peninsula known for its beautiful nature and geysers. It was a very short trip but I got a chance to see some very beautiful sceneries. This is a shot of an active geyser. I took it in the morning, so you can see some strong light coming from an early morning sun. I would definitely urge everyone to visit this place. You will be blown away by its beauty.” - Alexander Zhuk
T R AV E L / U R BAN
“Halstatt had everything I was looking for in Austria: ancient towns, beautiful lakes, and of course, big mountains.” - Ben Brinkman
– 21 –
– VOYAG E –
Final Frontier ANN EVANS
I sat awake on my hotel bed. I forgot to pack pajamas so the only clothes I had were the ones I’d worn on the plane to Alaska: a pair of jeans, sneakers, and a UW sweatshirt. It was 10:30 p.m., but I couldn’t sleep. Part of it was nerves, but most of it was because the sun doesn’t set there until 11:30 in July. My hotel was quintessentially “Anchorage”—lonely, run-down, and lacking blackout curtains.
month. My opinion of Alaska’s sole city wouldn’t really matter. Alaska is all about spectacle. Flying into Anchorage, it’s easy to stare in awe at how many huge mountain ranges there are. Brochures in the airport assure you that the fish you’re going to catch and the bears you’re going to see on your expedition will be gigantic. It is the final frontier, after all.
The only reason Anchorage is called a city is because it’s the closest thing Alaska has to one. The entire place was leveled by an earthquake in the ‘60s, so all that remains are hastily built cheap restaurants, cheap hotels, and cheap tourist shops for the thousands of people who come to fish there in the summer. It’s merely a transition state for people who want to get off of the plane and into the wild, or some artificially constructed idea of it. I would be living in the wilderness for the next
I flipped on the local news, thinking about how I would be cut off from the rest of the world for the next 30 days. World War Three could start and I probably wouldn’t know. The anchors were talking about some new reality show being filmed there. I changed the channel. Fittingly, a marathon of “Alaskan Bush People” was on.
– 22 –
Looking at my body in the bathroom mirror, I realized that I might not be physically prepared for
– T R AV E L E S SAY –
a month-long backpacking and kayaking trip. I should have been doing a mental self-examination, because what my 30 days as a student of the National Outdoor Leadership School in Alaska really did to me was make me question the scale of my very existence on multiple occasions. Melodramatic, I know. My first day started early at the Anchorage Train Station where a green school bus picked us up and drove us to the school’s headquarters in Palmer. It didn’t take me long to realize that most of my cohort consisted of East Coast prep schoolers, not the granola, carabiner-toting college students I was expecting. Discussions were less about the mountains and coastal rainforests we would be seeing, and more about who was friends with who at St. Paul’s and Deerfield, or which country club they took swimming lessons at 10 years ago.
SNEAK
We arrived at The Farm, the NOLS Alaska headquarters, which sat in the shadows of the massive Alaska Range. After eating lunch, we were quickly divided into our two groups. I was one of only three college students in the group; the rest were high schoolers. I had overheard some of the boys on the bus talking about their favorite ski resorts in Jackson Hole and steakhouses in Manhattan. Vineyard Vines and Chubbies seemed to be the outfit du jour.
SAILOR KNOT
After packing our rations for the next four weeks, checking out gear, and learning bear spray protocol, I sat in the grass under the 9 o’clock sun making final calls to my family and friends before I locked my phone away. In the past, whenever I made a lifestyle change or experienced something new and challenging, I had a support system. In Alaska, I would have to figure out everything on my own. My first day in the field started at a.m. I squeezed my whole wool-and-nylon life into a 90-liter backpack and got on the bus to the drop-off point, a five-hour drive down the Richardson Highway. Our bus driver Shelly was a lively older woman who used “ ffta ” in lieu of profanity. Shelly had been driving people in and out of nothingness for the last 20 years. The sun stayed high as we learned
KIRBY
– 23 –
– VOYAG E –
how to pitch tents, tie knots, and purify water next to an ATV trail at the base of the Tonsina Mountains.
Our only job was to enjoy the wild; there was nothing to worry about but ourselves and where we were going.
The second day was our first real hiking day. We had to hike 2,000 vertical feet so that we would be above the tree line. In the forest there aren’t enough large, open spaces to set up camp, so we would be spending the backpacking portion of the course in the tundra. Blisters and exhaustion set in after only a few hours. Little did we know, this was just a preview of what would become our daily routine: packing up, eating, hiking, unpacking, eating, sleeping, repeating. The only breaks in the day came from waiting 15 minutes for our water purification drops to work.
The feelings of bliss were very short-lived and hard to come by after that. We woke up to howling wind and rain pushing and pulling at our nylon tents the next morning. We tried to take down the tents as quickly as possible before darting under our tarps. When it rains, you have to do damage control; make sure your sleeping bag and night socks are dry, make sure your food and lighter are dry, make sure you still have a way to stay warm when you’re wet. As it turns out, Gore-Tex only keeps you dry up to a certain point. After it’s soaked through, it’s just another wet layer that clings to you and won’t dry out. The best way to stay warm is to keep moving, so that’s what we did. Every day after God’s Camp, it rained.
After a couple of days we approached a camp perched above three crystal-clear ponds. Mountains and hills loomed in the distance. In the July sun, the water sparkled. My group nicknamed it “God’s Camp.” After setting up camp, some of the girls and I sunbathed on the edge of a pond. We washed off the five-day-old sweat and sunscreen from our skin. For a couple of hours, everything felt right.
– 24 –
After a week in the wild, it was time to have our next rations flown in from a prop plane, but the constant rain and fog made it too unsafe to fly. We had to stay at the campsite for three full days. Gas
– T R AV E L E S SAY –
and food ran low, and people butted heads. We huddled in our sleeping bags to save energy. I read a whole book, cover to cover. There was a lot of time to think about where I really was. In the city, everything is designed for people’s convenience. The buildings are tall so that they can fit more people inside of them. Cars exist so that it doesn’t take you 14 days to travel 40 miles. In the wild, people are unnecessary and disruptive. The mountains are tall because of hundreds of thousands of years of geologic building and scraping. The weather is difficult to predict and impossible to control. Why should it be? If your trip is not in Mother Nature’s cards, it’s not happening. During a break in the clouds, we got our reration and kept hiking for another week. Days blurred, but they all began the same, with the Indiglo of my velcro-banded watch screeching at me to get out of my warm sleeping bag and into the cold, windy world. Then there was scarfing down oatmeal or Minute Rice, followed by getting gear ready and taping up feet. Instead of the classic “phone, keys, wallet” checklist, my new routine called for “sunscreen, snacks, map.”
We could see the highway where the bus would pick us up in the distance. The end seemed so close. Brush, lakes, bears, and a seemingly infinite block of unknown lay to the East and a straight, gray line sliced through it all to the West. After bushwhacking, sliding, and stumbling our way down to the parking lot by the road, the sun had already set. We had hiked for over eleven hours, but we built a big fire and ate all of our extra food. Seeing the stars for the first time in weeks and letting my tired muscles rest gave me a feeling that wrapped me like a blanket and soothed me. We took the bus to Valdez, where we would exchange gear and start kayaking for the next two weeks. I took a shower, did my laundry, and ate half of an entire pizza by myself as I sat on a picnic table in the middle of the RV park overrun with summer tourists and fishing boat crews. Valdez, a city known for being the home port of the infamous Exxon supertanker, wasn’t much to look at, but at that point, everything felt luxurious. My group had some spending money, so we went to Safeway to stock up on all of the junk food we had been missing. Some people used the store’s phone to call home, but I didn’t want to break the bubble
The last day of hiking, my group stopped for a break at a viewpoint on the top of a ledge. The sun broke through the clouds. Blinded for a second, all I saw was color instead of the usual damp gray. The turquoise lake below us, the lush foothills below that. Pink cheeks burned by glare. Orange rock and gravel that we slid down, down, down. Laughter replaced bear calls as we scrambled down those massive hills that few people would ever see.
– 25 –
– VOYAG E –
that separated me from my life back home just yet. Sea kayaking was a different routine. Seeing other people was a daily occurrence, whether they were other paddlers or fishermen. At night, the boats’ engines kept us awake, and massive wakes from passenger ferries and oil tankers felt like they were going to tip us over. Society and civilization didn’t feel so far away anymore. The balance of nature and machine felt surreal, especially on one day where mist sat on the ocean’s surface while the sun beamed down from above, blurring the glassy line between sea and sky. Supertankers, birds, and paddlers, all floated on what looked like nothing. Our two weeks of kayaking were much wetter. Without the mountain air, none of my gear would dry. It was always either pouring, drizzling, or misting. The only constants in our days were the rain and the tides. Group morale declined with each passing day of being soaked to the bone and frustrated. At one point, half of the group refused to paddle across a mile-long crossing dotted with icebergs, so we camped downwind of a huge glacier. There, I learned what it was like to be truly freezing and wet. There was one day when the rain suddenly stopped. Everyone laid out their gear and sleeping bags on the beach to dry. I tried to fish for salmon. My wool base layers were suddenly too hot for the first time in weeks, but I had nothing else to wear. So, there I stood, in sunglasses and underwear, fishing for salmon on some island in the middle of the Prince William Sound. I laid out on the sand and drank one of the cans of Vanilla Coke I had saved from our Safeway run in Valdez. A moment of sunny-day content swept over me. When I got back to the NOLS base, I looked at myself for the first time in weeks. My face and hands were darker and pocked with bug bite scars. My legs and shoulders had more defined muscles. I couldn’t feel my right big toe, but I didn’t even care. I was done. Mentally, I was much tougher. There had been days when I wanted nothing more than to give up and go home and get dry. There had been times when I didn’t think I could hike up one more false peak on the way to the top. I learned
– 26 –
– T R AV E L E S SAY –
how to keep it together when everything was going wrong, and my body still managed to carry itself 130 miles. Alaska doesn’t care if you break your finger or burn yourself or get boils on your face from the wind. It will chew you up and spit you out. Its beauty is only reserved for those who really want to risk themselves to see it. Mother Nature’s last protected place of refuge is in the mountains and the sea there, and she will do whatever it takes to ensure that you know your place as an insignificant little dot on her tundra and swells.
The bus ride to the airport was a lot quieter than the one we had taken a month before. People were eager to go home, but we also felt like we were leaving something shared and intangible behind. The East Coast kids caught their red-eye flights and I took a taxi back to my lonely hotel. Before we parted, a few of us decided that the only thing in the world we wanted was Cinnabon. Some of the most memorable experiences we had in Alaska didn’t happen on top of a peak or next to a sea lion bobbing in the ocean, but when someone would tell a joke or a story under a crowded tarp, the air thick with moisture and the familiar scent of mildewyhigh-school-locker-room days of old. So, there we sat, sunburnt, tired, and insane-looking, scarfing down cinnamon rolls in the Anchorage Airport, trying not to cry as we said our goodbyes. That night I fell asleep more easily than I had in years, with the sun still up. When I woke up the next morning to catch my flight, I realized that I had forgotten to close the blinds. I flew south, thinking about how much I would miss the midnight sun.
– 27 –
– VOYAG E –
N AT I O N A L TREASURES
Jack McDermott
year the National Parks Service celebrated its centennial, a L astlandmark achievement for America’s protector of wilderness.
The Parks Service has spent the past century advocating for environmental and cultural preservation and maintaining over 400 parks in the National Parks System, which includes the Olympic, North Cascades, and Mount Rainier National Parks in Washington state alone. Each year, hundreds of millions of people come from around the world to see unparalleled features like Yosemite’s Half Dome or Old Faithful in Yellowstone––and it’s no wonder why. ational Parks offer something for everyone, whether you’re an avid outdoorsman, an adventurous photographer, or just a casual nature-lover. Moreover, our parks serve as a constant reminder of why nature is so important to our collective wellbeing. In an increasingly stressful world, they are pristine escapes and places for rejuvenation, where time slows down and sleep comes easily under the stars. Here’s to another 100 years of protecting our national treasures. – 28 –
– P HO T O E S SAY –
GLACIER NATIONAL PARK
Jack McDermott
OLYMPIC NATIONAL PARK
top: lacier ational Park offers some of the most incredible views in Montana’s Rocky Mountains. right: There are few better places to see a sunset in Washington than Olympic National Park’s Shi Shi Beach, just north of Ozette Coast. The spot also features tide pools and a group of sea stacks called Point of the Arches.
Lucas Boland
– 29 –
– VOYAG E –
YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK
Julien Lamour
left: El Capitan, seen from Tunnel View, looms over the valley below.
YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK
bottom: Mount Rainier National Park’s Tipsoo Lake, just before sundown. With 25 glaciers, hundreds of lakes and rivers, and a plethora of wildlife, the landscape of the park is as diverse as it is breathtaking.
MT. RAINIER NATIONAL PARK
top: Probably the most instantly recognizable slab of granite in the world, Half Dome lies at the heart of Yosemite National Park.
Daniel Kim
Julien Lamour
– 30 –
– P HO T O E S SAY –
YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK
left: A couple soaks in the warmth of a late summer sunset at Yosemite’s Taft Point.
right: The famous Balanced Rock in Utah’s Arches National Park parallels the Milky Way in the late hours of the night.
bottom: Arizona’s Grand Canyon is one of the world’s Seven Natural Wonders, and deservedly so. Its multicolored rock layers stretch over 270 miles long and nearly a mile deep.
ARCHES NATIONAL PARK
Lucas Boland
Daniel Kim
GRAND CANYON NATIONAL PARK
Julien Lamour
– 31 –
Thank you for supporting Voyage.
VOYAGE Seattle, WA Spring 2017 voyageuw.com