North to Alaska
I try not to daydream too much. For the most part I left that behind when I finally realized that I wasn’t going to be a professional athlete. But every so often I find myself drifting. Drifting back to the trip my wife & I took to Juneau, Alaska 5 years ago. We didn’t have a honeymoon to speak of when we were married, so I convinced my wife we needed to do something together before the kids got big enough to want to come along. She wasn’t hip on heading to the tropics, so I arranged for a week in Juneau.
There are sights that you see that you simply cannot forget. The entire week in Juneau was a never ending parade of unforgettable images, events, & experiences. We explored glaciers, climbed through ice caves, got up close to feeding whales, flew in sea planes, boated down the Inside Passage, and had our senses assailed by the most majestic, amazing, beautiful land I’d ever seen. I guess it can’t be called a ‘life-changing’ trip since my course hasn’t been altered by it to this point. But it certainly changed me. Part of me was left in Alaska. Whether it was taken from me or I left it willingly doesn’t matter. It’s there. And although I’m not a globe trotter, I’m a fairly well-traveled man. Never before had I ever felt the urge to stay in a place I was visiting. Even with my children and home at the end of my journey, it was with great reluctance that I boarded our plane. For as long as we could, my wife and I stared out the window until all that we had seen faded from sight.
Now that urge to stay continues on as an equally strong urge to return. Always present, it lurks and seizes my daydreams in an attempt to gain control of my heart. Someday it might. For now, it succeeds only in keeping bright and vibrant in my mind the images and memories of a land that is still a true wilderness. Then I long for a glacier breeze in my face and an ice-capped mountain in my sight. Alaska.
