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Alaskan Dinosaur Expedition
July 15 update: From Dallas to Anchorage |
 Some musings from the flight to Alaska:
After all the excitement and anticipation for this trip, my plane out of Dallas sits at the gate for half an hour after boarding, and I fall asleep. As we fly over Colorado, I look out the window and recognize places I've been for fun or for work. Then I look inside the plane and see people glued to books with titles like "Don't Worry, Make Money'' or People magazine.I think I can see Mount Rainier as we approach Seattle. Getting off the plane, the first thing I smell is coffee, the smell of Seattle. After checking in for the next leg of my flight I look around for Seattle's Best Coffee. I see that the amateurs are all heading to Starbuck's.… To prepare for my trip, I've been reading the writings of a variety of naturalists and explorers from the 19th century and the turn of this century. Their tales have always fascinated me. I've been reading Ernest Thompson Seton and his explorations of the Canadian north, and Elisha Kane and his ill-fated search for Franklin, John Muir, of course. And who hasn't read Henry David Thoreau?
My companion, sleeping next to me, is an infant who is totally unaware of my perspective and my awe. It's pretty humbling to realize there's a little baby, going to same place I am to start my adventure, who is completely asleep. Forty-five minutes before landing, I look out of the window. Somewhere down below me, under all those clouds, is the Alaskan panhandle. I can see Mount St. Elias and Mount Logan poking out from the clouds. If I remember correctly, Vitus Bering saw Mount St. Elias and mistook it for the northernmost point of continuous land. All the other land, he thought, was a series of large islands. That's why the map from 1772 that's on the wall at home shows so much of Alaska as a series of islands. Even with all those clouds, I wonder how Bering came to his conclusion. When I land, the temperature in Anchorage is 59 degrees, compared to 110 in Dallas. |
As I fly to Anchorage, I'm wishing at times that I had been born 100 years earlier, so I could have participated in expeditions where even things like eating couldn't be taken for granted. This trip is my opportunity to experience a bit of the past, where one is the first to partake in an epic adventure....