My Carry On
Obsession, Wild Pursuits, and the Haunting Pull of Alaska
* Reader Warning: A black & white picture of a deer head is at the end of this post.
Wilderness without Instructions
Between 2018 and 2024, Kodiak’s ornery weather patterns and abundance seduced me. An ever-restless seeker of the new, I couldn’t get this place out of my head. The courtship began long before my first trip to Alaska. We flirted; I read books about it, talked about going, and leered at plane ticket prices. I habitually searched for “BTV - ANC” round-trip flights on Google Flights, then imagined the feeling of pressing “purchase” in the Delta shopping cart. I ghosted Alaska multiple times, closing the Chrome tab with a full Delta Airlines “cart.”
My children were eight and ten on our first trip. A thirty-minute floatplane ride from Kodiak City, I didn’t hesitate, even though this was before the ubiquity of Garmin’s InReach.
I’ve had the good fortune of catching a different salmon species on each trip to Kodiak. On the banks of this remote river are the ingredients for a peak parenting experience. Without a guide, we could fill in the blanks of this wilderness tapestry with the colors we chose. An outboard motor and the tide recedes, stranding us for the next 3.5 hours. Could a parent feel more liberated than: fishing rods, a cooler, a shotgun, and snacks?
The former site of Afognak Village, a significant historical landmark, is not far from our cabin. Both the Alutiiq and Russians inhabited this settlement. People have lived, hunted, and fished in this archipelago for over 7,000 years, long before the Russians arrived in the 1760s. The 1964 Great Alaska Earthquake and tsunami destroyed Afognak Village, which was resettled on Kodiak Island, abandoning the old village site.
Wild Impulse
We’re lucky if we encounter hard decisions that turn out to be easy because our gut tells us so. An activity that would otherwise require self-sabotaging calculative logic to engage in, is instead executed because we must. Because we feel it compels us.
Our first dog, Jed, could not stop killing chickens, no matter what; she didn’t respond to our attempts to train this instinct out of her. Our current dog, Maya, is a highly trainable mutt who’s more inclined to be overprotective of livestock. Each dog followed its evolutionary roadmap, and while trainable to sit or shake hands, there was no way certain aspects of their behavior could change.
To be fortunate enough to follow this passion, in the sense that we don’t talk ourselves out of it, is a remarkable gift, requiring a combination of luck, perseverance, and willingness to listen to that inner voice that possesses us.
Family trips, my first two Kodiak visits followed a gentle, but adventurous cadence: Anchorage, Kodiak, then a week in the interior. My mistake was to discover Kodiak so soon. If Alaska is a cake, Kodiak is the frosting.
A Haunting Pull
Alaska ruined everywhere else for me. Unless I’m in the Caribbean or Europe, my inner monologue reliably responds to non-Alaska places with, “Well, that’s nice, but in Alaska, it’s better.” The emerald isle melts away behind Aleutian clouds, an opacity added to by my breath on the airplane window. Gasping for wind after a gut punch, minus the inability to breathe, is an appropriate analog to watching the island disappear.
Or it is simply the paroxysm of heartbreak.
Alaska is the rural to the lower 49 states’ urban.
Hunting High Ground
My favorite way to procrastinate is to stare out the window and envision deer moving along the 2’000’ ridge above my house. From this vantage, I like to think the deer take in views of Lake Champlain and the Adirondacks to the west and Jay Peak to the north. On the clearest of days, this viewshed covers about 3,000 square miles. Vermont is 9,616 square miles in total. In a jigsaw puzzle of states, we could fit seventy Vermonts into one Alaska.
My latest measure of the remoteness of a place is auditory. I know of one quiet place left in my home state. Lawnmowers, leaf blowers, chainsaws, and road noise provide unending comfort for those needing reassurance that another human is within earshot. In a state this small, few tracts are isolated enough to be routinely buffered. Alaska has no shortage of combustion-related noises, but most of its small-engine-wielding residents are concentrated in the Vermont-sized area of greater Anchorage.
On another 2,000 ridge, roughly 3,356 miles northwest of the one above my house, I shot a fork-horned Sitka black-tailed deer overlooking the Gulf of Alaska. With three days to hunt, I shot this deer on day two after navigating the hellish Devil’s Club, alders, and brambles. With Septemer bucks up high, my bushwacking penance was rewarded with alpine hunting terrain. Tucked behind a spruce, I knew he wasn’t a spike and squeezed the trigger.
A cooler swollen with venison and silver salmon, my carry-on luggage had extra space. Swaddled by game, contractor, and dry bags, the frozen deer head went into my carry-on. Kodiak TSA never flinched, but the next day in Anchorage, TSA called me over: “Do you mind if I take a look inside your bag?”
Doesn’t this leave me with an itch that needs to be scratched. I appreciate your sentiments. Epic.
"We’re lucky if we encounter hard decisions that turn out to be easy because our gut tells us so."
I have to agree with you, Alaska rather ruins other places once you step into her bosom. She fears not the human.