Dana Stabenow - Alaska Traveler: Dispatches from Americas Last Frontier

IM OLDER THAN MOST of the buildings in Anchorage.

Hell, Im older than the state of Alaska.

I say things like this when Im on tour Outside in my author persona and people sort of giggle nervously, not believing me, really, and not really understanding what I mean, either.

But its true.

I was born in Anchorage in 1952, in what was then the territory of Alaska. I was raised in Cordova and Seldovia, more or less. More because we were more ashore than we were at sea, and less because for five years we lived on the Celtic, a 75-five foot fish tender on which my mother was deckhand.

Seldovia was where we were living when the 1964 Earthquake hit, right in the middle of my twelfth birthday party. I had a great time, including being evacuated to the high school gymnasium along with the rest of the town and standing outside, holding my moms friend Makas hand as we listened to the tidal wave come in. What wasnt so great was when the Army Corps of Engineers came in, declared that there was no saving a town that had sunk five and a half feet, and did their dike-and-fill routine, which entailed literally ripping the Seldovia boardwalk up by its pilings and leveling the surrounding hills to create a flat gravel expanse that was as ordinary and ugly as the previous town had been unique and beautiful.

The boardwalk was over two miles long and had served as our Main Street. It meant a lot to the kids of Seldovia; we rode our bikes on it, we fished for flounders and yellow bellies and bullheads from it, we played kick-the-can under it. Watching its destruction from the sidelines was an early and object lesson in the transience of manmade things, at least in Alaska.

I knew this was not the case everywhere in the world, because by then I had made the acquaintance of one Richard Halliburton, a young man who traveled and wrote about it from the time he graduated from Princeton in 1922 until he vanished sailing a Chinese junk from Hong Kong to San Francisco in 1939. He climbed the Matterhorn, ran from Marathon to Athens, swam the Panama Canal and the Hellespont, visited Machu Picchu, hiked up Kheops, faced down a cobra in India and was boarded by pirates in the South China Sea. Among other adventures.

Three things about Mr. Halliburton I found intensely interesting: One, he wrote for a living. People paid him money to put words down on paper. Two, he got to travel. Three, when he traveled, he saw towns and cities where there were buildings older than me, older than my state, older than my entire nation, where fire, famine, flood, war, disease and earthquakes were not automatic cause for a wholesale leveling of everything in sight and the erection of newer and not necessarily better replacements.

I found this comforting. I decided I would travel when I grew up. I had traveled involuntarily as a child, I went where my mother went (Anchorage, Cordova, Ketchican, Seldovia) and for five years wherever the Celtic went (Kachemak Bay, Knight and Montague Islands, Port Nellie Juan, Port Dick, Aialik Cape, the Barren Islands, Kamishak Bay, Tuxedni Bay, Kalgin Island). This would be different. This would be my idea.

The September after I graduated from college, I took off on a backpacking trip across Europe. My college roommate, Rhonda Sleighter and I landed in London and tore a strip off the Continent that included England, Scotland, Germany, France, Switzerland, Austria, (then) Yugoslavia and Greece. We walked to Stonehenge across the Salisbury Plain, we saw Alan Bates play Petruchio in Stratford-upon-Avon, we sat in the Roman governors seat in the amphitheater in Trier and turned our thumbs down to the losing gladiators, we sang Drink, Drink, Drink along the banks of the Neckar in Heidelburg, we visited the U-boat in the basement of the Deutches Museum in Munich, we took the stairs to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris (our only defense is that we were much younger then), and we accidentally stayed overnight in a whorehouse in Athens (its a long story). We had a good time, and we learned a lot.

It wasnt all joy, the learning. I went through three IRA bomb scares in London Underground stations (only one bomb actually exploded, I explained to my mother, which for some reason did not reassure her). The Arab oil embargo hit just about the same time I bought a used VW bug to beetle around in, and we learned how to avoid the Sunday driving ban. Papadoupolous was overthrown in Greece exactly one week after we arrived, and we learned that we could pretend not to notice the tanks rolling past our B&B. I learned to survive bedbugs (eeyeeww!) and French fanny-pinchers (nothing I hadnt already endured at Chilkoot Charlies).

I also learned to like German beer, British pubs and Irish men, but this is a wholesome family publication so we wont go there. Afterward, I understood the reason the rich used to send their children abroad on The Grand Tour; travel is educational.

Its addictive, though; once you start you cant stop. Ive been back to Europe, Outside and to Hawaii more times than I can count. Ive been to New Zealand. Ive driven the Alcan and Ive biked in Baja. Im happy to report that there are lots of things in all those places older than me.

But Dorothy was right. There is no place like home. Im always glad when the plane descends and the Chugach Mountains appear beneath the wing. I know Im back where I belong.

Which was why when Alaska Magazine called and said, oh so demurely, would I like to write a travel column for them, I replied, Are you sure youve reached the right person? This is Dana Stabenow? You want to pay me to see Alaska?

It took a while, but they finally convinced me that they did. What did they want in the way of subject matter? I asked. Get out of town, they said. Okay, I said.

So I shall sally forth, up and down the coast, in and out of the Bush, around and about the Arctic Circle, armed with my trusty Mead Wide-Ruled 1 Subject Notebook and my Quicker Clicker pencil. Im flying down to Katmai to get up close and personal with the grizzlies, Im going flight-seeing on Denali, Im taking a tour to Prudhoe Bay. Im going to the Camai Dance Festival in Bethel, up to the Independence Mine in Hatcher Pass, to the Cordova Iceworm Festival. If Alaska Magazine doesnt come to its senses, Ill be around for a while, telling you all the best places in Alaska to go, how to get there, where to eat and stay and what to see.

Watch this spot.

"OKAY, FOLKS, YOU WANT to be real quiet now, Gary Porter said in a low voice.

Since a grizzly sow and two one-year old cubs were at that moment ten feet away, I wasnt about to argue.

The sow was in the lead, rolling up the narrow path, dragging the backs of her paws along the ground, long, sharp claws hitting first when she put them down again. Her dark brown fur was thick and wet. Her head, lowered beneath powerful shoulders, was constantly in motion, swiveling between the fish in the creek and the fourteen of us reclining in camp chairs on the bank. Her eyes were little and mean. She didnt look the least bit cuddly.

Bringing up the rear, looking wet, cold and hungry, the cubs were major whiners. It was one long continuous moan, Mom, Im hungry, Mom, feed me, Mom, Im starving, Mom, do I have to stay starved, Mo-oom!

Mom glanced our way. I felt like Id wandered into the middle of Jurassic Park, and tried not to look like protein.

Gary Porter is the owner and operator of Bald Mountain Air in Homer, Alaska, and was our pilot that day, of a DeHaviland Single Otter, which, Gary said with a grin, used to belong to the Nicaraguan Army. With that grin, you never know if hes telling the truth or trying you on, but its a good story and if youre like me, thats partly why you fly with him. Its guys like Gary who make books like