Definition of Adventure

When your sonar says your boat is on land, 
you better be sharp! As chadd said while navigating the boat over shallow water with his head out the window, “Who needs video games when you have this!”

What makes an adventure?  We all enjoy a good adventure movie. A perilous quest. A daring expedition. A life changing venture. This recent goat hunt (attempt) was iconic of adventure, with a little more misery and a little less triumph. But what makes it an adventure verses just a journey?

My husband and I have been in enough true adventures to come up with this definition of the necessary attributes of what makes an adventure:

1. Fear. Danger. 

Crazy man. And you expect me to do that next??

Grizzly tracks.

In Alaska adventure injury and death are not just a possibility, they are at the forefront of every step and decision.  Alaska will kill the unprepared: Fresh Grizzly tracks in berry covered banks of a salmon spawned creek, hypothermia, drowning, falling down a cliff and cracking a skull, breaking a leg and not being able to get back, wolf packs, angry moose, landslides,  flash floods, frostbite, drastic tidal changes… did I miss any?

Obviously none of these dangers should be a result of your own poor judgement  or at least if so, you will learn from it and make a different mistake next time  

2. Travel

You can’t really have an adventure in your back yard  I mean, maybe create one for your 5 yr old  but not a REAL adventure. You have to go somewhere. It may utilize a boat, four wheeler, side by side, dirt bike, 3rd world public transportation, bike, canoe, or your own two legs.   But it definitely includes getting OUT. 

3. Natural Beauty

Your eyes behold grandeur, gorgeous seascapes,  impressive mountain ranges, or water cut gorges. You see herds of giant moose browsing, a wolf stalking, wales blowing, porpoises jumping, eagles diving or salmon jumping up cascading falls. Sometimes it’s in the tiny

Salmon spawning. They swam and jumped around us

each time we crossed the creek.

 details, a drop go dew on a giant leaf, the coolest pattern in a rock, a bright red salmonberry beckoning you to pick it, or a perfect mushroom that makes you wonder if it’s edible or poisonous  

3. Pain and suffering. 

Meet: Devil's Club.
This plant is so aptly named I think Hell must be decorated
with hoards of them. Every inch is covered with 
toxic thorns, included the leaves, berries, even the roots!
You'll only make the mistake of trying to grab
 the branch when slipping once. The thorns don't just stab you,
they leave a rash that stings for the next several hours and or break off 
and remain embedded to fester for days.

Devil's Club poisonous berries. Don't let the beauty fool you.

Trekking through fields of Devil's Club that stab through
any pants, jacket or gloves.

After a night of rain, North Creek became a rushing
river, making staying dry impossible. We waded most of the way back
with XtraTuff boots sloshing and weighing 5 lbs more water logged. 
Keep in mind that water is FRIGID.

Ok this might not be frost bite, but my entire foot
was numb yet had stabbing pains. You know it's pretty bad
when you start to think about what it takes to cause 
permanent tissue damage.

Weather it be a scratch, a bruise, swarms of no-see-ums and mosquitos, icy threatening cold, frozen numb hands and feet, sopping wet clothes and boots filled with freezing cold water, thorns and thistles stabbing you and coming along for the ride in your skin, impossibly steep climbs with a pack on your back slipping 2-4 steps back every other step and your foot or pack get snagged by an evil willow branch just when you almost made it, and exhaustion… Think about Frodo stranded in the middle of flowing Lava, Peter in the epic battle to defeat the evil army, Dori getting stung by a jellyfish. One key when you know that what you are currently living in will be an adventure you tell stories of later is when you really wish you were back on your soft couch with a nice fuzzy blanket watching other people have adventures on a big screen. We call this Type 2 Fun: Not fun in the moment, but epic retelling later. Some adventures include way more of this than others.

4. Strategy

My indomitable man digging out our stuck boat. This time he
really thought we might be stuck for good. But
he never gives up! With strategy, ingenuity, tenacity, and brawn 
we made it out once more.
 I have no idea how his body churns out 
enough heat in ice cold water, while it's raining, 
after trudging through temperate rain forest river water.

This looks so docile in a photo. His pack weighed 60lbs+
and that ledge had about 1/2 inch of grip space. 
But there is something so raw about the sensation of the 
cold rock on your hands, the sound of the rushing waterfall
below you, and the chill of the cold spray threatening
if you should slip. 

The stern of our boat was lodged into the mud. 
Chadd came up with this brilliant idea to shove our 
pack raft under the prop and lower the prop back down. 
This effectively raised the stern just enough that we could
crank and push it a few more inches. Repeat times 50
and we FINALLY got it to deeper water.

This was in 2020 back in the MatSu Valley during
moose hunting. Yes, we got it out (or I should say
Chadd got it out).

In every adventure you face a problem that you don’t know how to solve. You have to use your brain to come up with a solution. Our problems have included: getting heavily ladin ATVs up a muddy Suicide Hill; malfunctioning vehicles; working for an hour to dig, come-along wrenching, pushing and pulling a boat out of shallow water for over an hour; navigating the Stikine River that changes channels every week in a prop boat (bad idea); winching and gunning a side by side out of a thigh deep mud hole; climbing up waterfalls with all gear packs on our backs; and figuring out which would be less miserable: climbing a briar and Devils Club covered 45degree slippery mountain or risking an unknown path. 

5. A Mission

This is what we were going for, Alaskan mountain goat. 
We didn't even get high enough to look for them, 
this time...

You must cast the ring into burning lava, rescue the lost girl, escape from the loosed dinosaurs, defeat the White Witch or shoot the prize mountain goat. Even if you don’t succeed, the mission remains, until next time…

Most of the time we ARE successful.
My Caribou from 2018. 

Chadd's Black Bear earlier this year.

6. Friends

What is an adventure if you’re all alone? It may include the above 5, but who would you share it with when you’re telling the stories for years later. True adventure is experienced with friends or family. 

And there you have it. If you want an adventure, make sure to include all of these features. Or just come visit us in Alaska and come on a goat hunt. We could use the help packing down the meat  ;)

South East Alaska Montage

 

Zarembo Sparkling Spring

 

This weekend we kicked another goal on our Southeast Alaska bucket list: Drink naturally sparkling water from the Zarembo spring.

 

We took our boat about an hour over intensely choppy sea to reach Zarembo Island.  Zarembo is an island in Southeast Alaska that is 183 square miles (by comparison Wrangell Island where we live is 210 mi.²). It is a popular location for deer hunting, trapping, fishing, as well as poaching, spotlighting, and other nefarious activities. It also hosted former logging, which left around 100 miles of gravel logging roads

 

 

We docked our boat at St John's Harbor and walked down the gravel roads. We forged a creek and squished across  a large mud flat. The mud flats are areas that are traversable with some sturdy Xtra Tuff boots at low tide, but completely covered with water at high tide.

 

We had to wander around looking for a while, but finally we found it! It looks just like a small pile of rocks, but there really is carbonated water bubbling right out of the ground. It's ice cold and tastes a bit like iron due to it's high content. It can actually be called an 'iron spring' which is evident by the rust colored mud surrounding it.

Zarembo mineral water was actually bottled and sold by a company in Seattle from the late 1890s to the 
early 1910s. The advertisement read:

"The water from under the sea." The natural, sparkling Alaska mineral water. Unexcelled for table use. Puts vim in "high balls." Delivered at your door.

It was introduced to American consumers in blue colored bottles at Portland's Lewis and Clark Exposition of 1905. We think when we find the rare blue beach glass it may be from an old Zarembo mineral water bottle.

 Watch our YouTube Video here

Sources:

https://dggs.alaska.gov/webpubs/usgs/wsp/text/wsp-0418.pdf

https://digitalcollections.lib.washington.edu/digital/collection/advert/id/88/

 

Why Alaska

 I hate to admit it, but I’ve been going through some sunny vacation withdrawal. However, it has caused me to take a deeper dive into why I choose to live in Alaska, why I love and am proud to be an Alaskan.

In Alaska you have to fight and work for what you have. Nothing is fed to you on a silver platter. Alaska makes strong kids, and stronger parents. 

You have to scrape ice off your windshield, shovel feet of snow, warm your car up 15 minutes ahead of time, and blow on little ones hands or freeze your own armpits to warm them. To reap the gem of various meat harvest bounty you have to brave impossible terrain, know how to field dress, pack heavy quarters over mountains and ravines, then wash, clean, cut, grind, and package. The bounty of the rivers, lakes and seas require knowing what, how, when, and where, working a net or hook for long hours, and equally as much time cleaning, hauling, processing, smoking and cooking.  To forage you must research and experiment in gathering mushroom, berry, chaga, birch sap, fireweed, fiddlehead ferns, sea lettuce and much more. If you’re brave you can harvest roe, clam, oyster, and scallops. You can learn to trap and tan otter, mink, martin, fisher, beaver, wolf, wolverine, coyote, lynx, arctic fox and rabbit. 

If you want to stay fit you will either spend countless hours in a gym or brave ice, snow, wind, sleet, rain, and darkness to run, hike, ski, snow shoe, fat bike, snowboard, snow machine, ice skate and sled! 

As a mother of young children you will be challenged with long dark winters of kids pent up inside- pushing you to creative outlets such as headlamp tag, blanket forts, rearranging furniture, play dates, dance parties, swimming, any and all community activities available…( I shouldn’t even try to begin this list) all while harnessing and bolstering your own seasonal discouragement. Oh and you better get good at planning ahead, depending on where you live, if the barge breaks down the grocery store will be out, and your Amazon order is running 6 weeks late…

You may have to brave the dangers of frostbite, wolves, bears, devil’s club, 12 ft seas, hypothermic waters, thin ice, avalanches, landfalls, ATV-swallowing mud holes, high winds, 20 to 50 below 0 temperatures, erratic weather, deadly crevasses, icy roadways and extreme tidal changes. If you want danger- Alaska is the place to be. 

In Alaska I’ve found you have to be intentional with friendship. With the tendency to hibernate within your own four walls, if you don’t initiate and seek out social engagement the seclusion can be soul crushing. 

I’ve experienced the challenges of life in remote or urban third world countries of Haiti, Costa Rica, Honduras, and the Philippines. But Alaska is just a whole other level.

But– with these challenges, you also get the freedom to walk wherever the dang you want on open mountains, likely without another soul in sight, and (hopefully) put a trophy on your wall. You get to see open roads instead of rows of traffic jams (mostly, except for Parks hwy and the commute to Anchorage…). You get to enjoy all four seasons in beautiful exchanges- actually five including “dark winter” and “light winter” :) You get to relish in the most gorgeous blue sky days with crisp, clean air, aroma’s of the season and calendar-worthy landscapes. You get to live in a tourist destination and show off the impressiveness of your state to enthusiastic visitors.  And in Alaska you can develop real friends who will drop what they're doing to help you, because they’ve been through the same challenges as you and they get it. 

Yes, I choose to live here. Alaska has made me stronger, wiser, and more resilient.  Besides, if not here, where else would I be?

 (But I’ll still look forward to my next hot climate winter vacation ;)