Looking back on our trip, I have to ask myself, what is it that makes Alaska so remarkable? I’ve given it a lot of thought, and I think it comes down to scale and impenetrability.
No wonder boats and planes are the best way to get around. There are two roads out of the coast town of Sitka, the old Russian capital. One goes seven miles up the coast and the other seven miles down the coast, and that’s IT…end of road. The impenetrable forests of spruce and hemlock take over.
I’ve been lucky enough to spend time in the Tetons, the Rockies and the Wasatch Mountains, and they are humbling in their size and beauty. I’ve seen the lonely plains of Mongolia and the vast reaches of the Gobi Desert. But nothing had prepared me for the scale of Alaska. Beside it, a human being feels the size of a flea.
Once you get accustomed to it, this is actually a comforting sensation. If you are concerned about the degradation of the environment that humans are causing globally, you are reassured when your eye can take in massive peaks and valleys where no human has ever set foot, and somewhere they probably never will.
It is easy to get used to no signs of civilization – no roads, no settlements, no electric lines. It seems a good thing that it is so hard for humans to impose their will on the wilderness that is most of Alaska.
Even the cities of Sitka and Juneau cling to the small amount of land between the mountains and the ocean, as if they were hanging on for dear life.
We would love to go back to Alaska one summer in order to visit the Kenai Peninsula and Denali. Meanwhile I’m enjoying the tired old rounded humps of the Blue Ridge Mountains and all the trails that allow us to penetrate their beauty!
