A Photo Journal: Falling in Love with Alaska - Part II

The Denali Highway

Kali Ma, The Great Protector, joined me again on this summer's ride.
She sat perched atop my handlebars and reminded me to regularly
give out a great, big, hearty lion's breath.

A Photo Journal: Falling in Love With Alaska - Part I

It has taken me my whole life to get to Alaska. It has taken me my whole life to truly fall in love.

I felt very much in my element in Alaska,
which made me incredibly happy through-and-through.

Just a few minutes before my plane landed in Alaska, I looked outside my window and saw this: 

Triple hubba deliciousness!

It was at this moment that I fell in love.

Seeking Ornamental Hermit Position

I am seeking a position as an Ornamental Hermit. Please spread the word.

As a self-proclaimed loner, Anneli Rufus's Party of One: The Loners' Manifesto had me hootin', hollerin' and hallelujahin'. With every turn of the page, a smile spread across my face, punctuated by frequent belly chuckles and empathetic nods.

An entertaining, feel-good read
for anyone who considers themselves
to be a loner.

Society often views loners as losers. Psychopaths. It is true, loners prefer to be on their own. Small talk bores them. Social gatherings drain their batteries. But that does not mean that loners are pity cases or unabombers. What it means is that solitude is where loners are least alone.

Backpacking the Beartooths: A Photo Journal

For four days and three nights, my friend (Greg) and I backpacked through the Beartooth Mountains. What's not to love about backpacking in a place where the sunsets look like this?

The sun sets in the Beartooth Mountains.

Located just to the northeast of Yellowstone National Park, the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness straddles the border of south central Montana and northwest Wyoming. The Beartooth Plateau is the largest high elevation plateau in the United States. Exceeding 10,000 feet in elevation, the plateau has more than 300 lakes and more than 25 peaks greater than 12,000 feet in elevation. Can you say "hubba hubba"?

Cycling the Great Parks North & Great Divide Loop

Sandwiched between staffing two Montana-based Adventure Cycling trips, I spent ten days cycling a loop through British Columbia and Alberta. I departed from Eureka, MT (just south of the Canadian border) and travelled north to Banff, AB along the paved Great Parks North route. I then looped back to Eureka via the unpaved Great Divide route. All in all, the trip was just over 500 miles in length.

My loop.
(Red = the Great Parks North route and
Blue = the Great Divide route)

I really enjoyed the route. It provided a great mix of pavement and off-road riding as well as a great mix of nature and rural and urban settings. I had plenty of opportunities to bathe in the forest and to relish in the beauty of snow-capped peaks, pristine lakes, and colorful wildflowers. Below is a photo journal of my trip. For those interested in the details on my ride, my trip takeaways, route beta, and itinerary are provided at the bottom of this post.

Bathing in the Forest

How is your Japanese? Mine is pretty lousy. I only know two terms:

yama gāru (山ガール)

shinrin-yoku (森林浴)

The first term translates to "mountain girl." It refers to a trend in Japan in which it is fashionable for young women to dress in functional and colorful outdoorsy clothing. I was told I looked like a yama gāru when I traveled to Japan for work a few years back. I was sporting my I-work-for-a-Seattle-tech-company "uniform" -- jeans, trail shoes, a merino wool sweater, and my bright red Gore-Tex jacket. I was flattered; for the first time in my life, I was fashionable.

The second term describes something I love to do: "take a forest bath." This isn't the strip-down-to-your-bare-skin-and-bathe-in-a-forest-stream kind of bath. No siree. This term refers to the medicinal qualities of being amongst trees.

I love bathing in forests.
(Photo: Ferit Fındık)

As an avid reader, I'm often surprised how certain books seem to magically appear in my life at just the right times. For the last little while, I had been grappling with the take-aways from my Baja trip: I didn't enjoy being in the desert landscape, and I didn't enjoy mountain biking. But I like nature, and I like biking. So what gives?