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| Icebergs, Portage Lake |
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| Temperate rainforest |
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| Waterfalls streaming off of Maynard Mountain |
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| Barrow's Goldeneyes |
It’s too easy.
As I write, it’s 11 p.m. at 60 degrees north latitude, late
May. The sky glows with the diffuse
light of rainy dusk. A carpet of moss and lichen erupts in wildflowers. Small
shrubs shiver in the wind. Out one window, a ribbon of water shimmers down a
dark ravine; out another, snow-covered mountainsides blend into stormclouds. Through
that same window this morning, I watched a big fluffy black bear amble by, pausing
to gauge his surroundings, nose twitching with curiosity. I didn’t even have to
stand up; the wild beauty came to me.
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| Morning visitor, as seen through the kitchen window |
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| Sunrise, Portage Lake (first clear morning) |
It’s too easy.
Within a five-minute walk, I can be on the shore of a deep,
glacially-carved and -fed lake. The water is surely grey and choppy right now, with
little icebergs and bergy bits bobbing up and down. After the storm passes (and
if there’s a rare window of calm before the next rolls in), those chunks of ex-glacier
will linger by the shoreline, suspended in the reflection of the surrounding
mountains, serenely glowing their impossibly blue blue. Mist will hover over
the peaks and ride katabatic winds down the valleys, making it impossible tell
what’s rock and what’s air. Gulls will soar overhead, their screams ringing
into the silence. Beautiful.
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| Mist over Portage Lake, weaving past the remnants of an iceberg |
It’s too easy.
When I think of the most awe-inspiring landscapes I’ve seen—the
colorful clay hills of Arizona’s Painted Desert; the snow-swept ridges of southwestern
Wyoming; the remoted ravines in Colorado’s Black Canyon; the sheer expanse and even
more expansive, unreadable sky of Alaska’s North Slope—I think of them not as vistas
or scenery, but as experiences. I had to earn them. Years prowling the Painted
Desert. Frost-nippingly cold moon-lit mornings in Wyoming. Long, arduous treks scaling
fossiliferous outcrops. Nearly two weeks of whirling down little-travelled rivers
in a tiny red raft, ignorant and open to any and all topographical,
hydrological, and meteorological challenges (and hyper-aware of the possibility
of polar bears). The arduousness and uncertainty heightened my senses, and thus
left me even more attuned to beauty. Richer, deeper, hard-won beauty.
(A counter-point to ponder: the view from the Arctic Divide
at the heart of the Brooks Range was awe-inspiring and life-changing, but I was
too terrified and exhausted to appreciate it. It was too hard.)
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| Portage Glacier |
Here, in this place, where beauty is so easy, does it count to
just look up? To stop by in a car or bus en route to or from Anchorage or
Whittier? To hop out at the lake to snap a photo or spend an hour strolling one
of the trails? To ride out to the foot of the glacier—to face the wall of blue
ice, to float with the bergs, to hear waterfall after waterfall splashing off
of the cliffsides, all from the comfort and safety of a large tourboat piloted
by someone else?
Hundreds or thousands of people come to witness this scenery each day. Surely, it makes us momentarily happy. It enriches our lives to see it, to know it’s there. But if all we have to do is look, do we bother to feel more deeply? Do we care to learn the underlying processes and meanings?
What’s hidden out there, bigger, wilder, beyond beauty?
Hundreds or thousands of people come to witness this scenery each day. Surely, it makes us momentarily happy. It enriches our lives to see it, to know it’s there. But if all we have to do is look, do we bother to feel more deeply? Do we care to learn the underlying processes and meanings?
What’s hidden out there, bigger, wilder, beyond beauty?
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