Ah-Wonk!
A strange sound heard in the harbor raises thoughts of the joys and costs of solitude.
It sounds just once, so quickly I am only half-certain that I really hear it: a distinct sound, a quick blare, like an old-fashioned car horn or a bugle. Just once, but once is all my mind needs to begin a trip down a trail walked long ago and far away from the Apostle Islands, a story of hermits and both the joys and price of a solitary life in the wild. It is a story recounted in my book Treasures of Alaska: Last Great American Wilderness.
I had spent a week alone in a small cabin deep in the heart of the world’s largest wilderness area — Wrangell - St. Elias National Park in Alaska, a kingdom of rock and ice and beauty where four major mountain ranges converge — seeking just a taste of one of Alaska’s greatest natural resources: solitude. As much as gold or oil or herds of caribou or swirls of salmon, the opportunity for a person to be truly and utterly alone is one the the true treasures of the far north.
I had gotten that taste in my week alone but when the bush pilot came back to pick me up, he shook his head about my desire to experience solitude and said, “You’re like that Cliff Wright guy.” My ears perked up. “Who’s Cliff Wright?” I asked. “Oh, he’s this crazy hermit that lives back in these mountains somewhere,” the pilot said dismissively. “Can you find him?” I asked. Suddenly the pilot got flustered. “I … can but I don’t want to. If he’s not in a good mood, he shoots at planes that pass too low overhead.” I knew at that very instant where I needed to go.
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