I am a surprisingly uptight person. I say surprising because most people comment on how laid back I am. In reality I overthink things and am not adventurous.
That is why it was confronting when my husband excitedly presenting the idea that we spend our honeymoon on a 2 month camping trip across the US and Canada, . this included 2 weeks in freezing cold Alaska….in a tent.
My only previous experience with camping was possibly a night in the backyard as a kid, when I probably chickened out halfway through the night and went back into the house.
However, we wanted to have a big break from work and see as much as possible so camping was going to be the only way we could afford it. I would love to say that I instantly fell in love with setting up tents and sitting around campfires but I didn’t. Sleeping on the ground was uncomfortable and everything smelled like smoke. We were travelling with a group of about 12 people. I thought I was putting on a good act of enjoying camping until I heard one of them say when we were cycling around Chicago “look, even Pen is enjoying this”.
I realised then that i may need to try harder to embrace the camp experience. We soon moved on from that group and flew to Alaska to continue the adventure. Then something happened in Wrangell-St Elias National Park. The sky opened up with a blanket of stars that I had never seen before in my life. Always surrounded by light pollution, I never realised just how bright the night sky could be. We laid back on the grass and just stared up at the sky, amazed at what we were seeing.
We were camped at the bottom of a glacier, the freezing water flowing past the front of our tent. A fellow camper had caught a salmon straight out of the river tossed it onto the bbq. I had never enjoyed fish and avoided seafood of all varieties. But I had never enjoyed camping either and was starting to open my eyes to experiences that I was missing out on due to my own apprehensions towards everything.
The salmon tasted amazing.
We continued our trip into Denali National Park where the stunning, vast openness and amazing wildlife was overwhelming. We encountered caribou, moose and bears as we travelled throughout the park. This is a National Park without walking trails. A huge park with one road in and out, serviced only by an old school bus. When you hike in Denali you are dropped off by the school bus on the side of the road and just wander into the wilderness and make your own path. To return to civilisation you simply need to find the road and flag down another bus.
Denali remains our favourite destination and we have been lucky enough to travel back there since and be amazed all over again. Flying over the top of Mount Denali in a tiny plane, seeing the National Park sprawl out beneath us was an experience of a lifetime.
Alaska is a special place that I am sure we will return to again. Hopefully even to live there for a while. But for now I have to settle with the reminder of the stars, the bears and the people through this tattoo. It is the Big Dipper and North Star. A symbol of Alaska that appears on their state flag and represents the shape of the bears they are so famous for.
