Say yes to adventure: Alaska

Words: Elisa Scalambra

Photos: Andrea Schiliro’

Alaska, that country of the far north, seen and heard in videos and movies, the common imaginary makes us think of a land only made of cold, frost, ice and hostility, but in reality Alaska is much more than that and what we can say from our experience is that Alaska is a country, which may seem lost and isolated, but in reality has a lot to teach you.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how to describe this country in one word, it wasn’t easy, but I think what impressed me the most is that Alaska is huge, powerful, a new definition of space. Space not meant only as a dimension, even if it’s unlimited (just think that it has an extension of more than 1.7 million square kilometres and it could contain Italy 6 times). Alaska is power, it’s strength and immensity thanks to its rough, harsh, simple but sincere nature. Alaska is strong in its colours, its borders, its heights and its lengths, its limits, its raw materials, its animals, its shapes and dimensions.

Our gaze got lost in the landscapes without borders, in the uncontaminated nature that surrounded us on 360°, its mountain ranges and huge glaciers are the lines that define the horizon. And it is right there, in the middle of nowhere, that you realise how much that nothingness can fill the whole, the conscience of all this was born from the motion, from unplanned movements between desolate and dirt roads, from free camping to backpacking in parks, from listening to the stories of the families who live in the middle of stretches of woods and mines without ever having seen a country other than that, but with a story to tell that is passed on through generations, from listening to  rangers explaining, with amused enthusiasm, that if you’ll ever meet a bear you must not run away.

“If you really want to live the Alaskan life you can not plan your travel from your couch back home, you have to take your time and join a different dimension from your daily life, abandon your certainties and live the experience in its particularity.”

We’ve left the “amenities” of the city of Anchorage and we have began the inner part of our journey along the 134 miles of the old highway that leads to Denali, to try to reach the impressive McKinley, the highest peak in North America with its 6,190 meters high, and when someone tells you that you can only visit it for 5 days a year, it is at that moment that you understand how little you are in front of the greatness of nature. The smartest yet more superficial can not win here, the attention to the nature is fundamental, not to win but to survive, here you can not afford to underestimate the clouds, the changes of the wind and temperature, the rising or setting of the sun. We’ve just accepted this higher rule, respecting bears, moose and wolves and their spaces, which are very different from ours, we’ve payed attention to one of the strongest values ​​of this country, the wilderness. Here you shouldn’t walk in a group because you can not create common paths, you can not go around with food or products that have a smell (not even a lip balm) because it could attract bears, which have an olfactory equivalent to 6 times the one of a dog and can smell something at 2 miles distance. If you want to drink water and your bottle is empty, you have to get it from a river and boil it first because of the the heavy minerals present in the ground.

Our trip to Alaska wasn’t about cruises, flights and lodges, but it was along the Denali highway, the dreaded McCarthy Road or the desolate Nabesna Road at sunset, which makes you discover a different point of view of the majesty of the United States’ largest national park, Wrangell St. Elias National Park, 170 miles, over 53,400 sq. km of mountains, 9 of the 16 highest peaks in the United States and over one hundred glaciers. We’ve got lost in the tales of the few remote inhabitants of Chicken, where in the past people worked in mines and still there is someone nowadays who tries to find gold. We’ve explored McCharty with its artists and mountain guides, and Kennicott with its mines of copper. We’ve traced our route along the way, looking for campsites from time to time just to take a hot shower, listening to the suggestions of locals who were very willing to share experiences and ideas We have always been ready to make new experiences: a summer country festival in a night of travel. If you really want to live the Alaskan life you can not plan your travel from your couch back home, you have to take your time and join a different dimension from your daily life, abandon your certainties and live the experience in its particularity.

All of that said above could “scare” you and become a limit, but the truth is that walking on a glacier, till the summit of a volcano, along riversides wide as highways, staying in the middle of icebergs between seals, puffins and sea otters, choosing a safe place to set up the tent but having the following day a breathtaking dawn, lighting up the fire with the wood you find just to warm you up before sleeping, joining this ecosystem with its few but fundamental rules, all of that made us experience a sense of indescribable freedom that is still with us and left an indelible mark on us, so much that it will forever change our life, his name will be Achille, our little boy designed in Alaska and made in Italy.