The adventure with the angry bear happened. We should get past that first.
But wildness is not all about dangerous adventures. That is just the spice that flavors one’s enjoyment of the great outdoors. Believe it or not, wildness is best consumed in silence. And I’ll say this: I’ve never encountered more remarkable silence than I found in wild Alaska.
Whether it was solo hiking into the Chugach Mountains, a solitary moment passing a massive glacier on a half-day ferry ride across the vast Prince William Sound, or simply biking by myself through the local Kincaid Park filled with trees and moose and sundry scurriers-at-large, the silence was consuming and overwhelming.
One might even say it was intimidating.
On a more insular level, confined to the more mundane activities of daily distraction, even those opportunities provided by social enclaves devoted to singular engagements were decidedly wild in their manifestations.
Like car races and rallies.
In the summertime, undeterred by winter ice and cold, we would venture out to parking lots, set up cones, and race our speedy little cars on tracks where 35mph seemed like navigating the Grand Prix. My advantage lay in my Honda CRX not needing to gear out of first. Indeed, I could drive an entire highway in first gear if I had to. My disadvantage lay in not recognizing the track made by random cones and almost colliding with the track workers frantically attempting to guide me.
You would think a car rally would be less adventurous. All you have to do is navigate a course at precisely given speeds and arrive at specific destinations at specifically given times. I navigated while my friend (as big as Paul Bunyan) drove. He’d done it so often that he instinctively knew the timing required. I just had to keep us on course.
Where is the wild adventure in that?
Sometimes, we were designated to validate a course rather than run it. At those times, my Paul Bunyan friend liked to exercise his wilder driving skills. For example, one day, he took his Acura up to 120mph on an old Alaskan back road. That was pretty damned exciting, especially when the road unexpectedly gave out and ended.
Still, it was my wildlife encounters that I remember most fondly. Yes, even the startled bear. After all, he let me live. As did the moose who aggressively blocked my bike passage, the big angry bird who entangled herself in my spokes, and even the seagull who tried to pluck every hair from my head.
Those were all just wild beings trying to keep my Alaskan summers wild.
The silence was pretty wild, as well.
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