The Alaska Book

In the summer of 2001, I quit my job and went north to ride my bicycle across Alaska.  What does that have to do with Taiwan, you ask?  When I got home, after riding over 1,200 miles and seeing the Arctic Ocean, I thought the adventure would end.  But it didn’t.  The adventure continues even today. 

Alaska, in a way, brought me to Taiwan.  I set out to write a book about my adventure north, and in the process, became an English teacher in Asia.  While the book was never published, I did manage to put out a children’s book for my Taiwanese students to read, so in some small way I feel like I have become that writer I always dreamed of.

Here are some selected passages from, The Alaska Book, the high points that I remember the most, the times when I wrote what I felt and was not afraid to share it with the world.  I hope by reading this you too will find your passion and follow your dream.  You have to believe there is something out there, or you will never go looking for it.

The Alaska Book – Selected Passages

By Daniel White

I looked out across the landscape for a place to sleep for the night.  Between the mountaintops was a high plain called Glacial Flats.  It was barren of features and the wind moved across it in gusts.  When the wind stopped, there was no sound at all.

…

I found a real curious place. 

Down the road was the faint trace of a turnoff.  Dirt tracks had been half-hidden by the low-lying vegetation that covered the plain.  The tracks led to a homestead of sorts.  Here was a cabin, a cooking area, and a pile of firewood.  Behind it was an outhouse with a half moon cut in the door and another structure that had not been finished.  Time and a lack of use hung on every corner.

…

There was frost on the ground in the morning.  I went out into the woods and found a single ray of sunlight coming down through the trees and stood there a long time, basking in the warmth and beauty of it.  Sometimes I could hear the raven calling, sometimes the eagle.  I couldn’t remember which day of the week it was.  I tried to think back to the last known day, counting forward from there.  This could have been Friday or Saturday, but I wasn’t certain.  I looked inside my journal for answers, but found none.

…

Clouds filled in the sky above, as if they were moving floods of water, drowning every open ounce of space.  A little rain fell down where the clouds overlapped.  Along the mountain rim they collided and splashed.  A storm has come upon me.  Soon I sank into its depths.  A gasp of air here and there as I was buoyed in and out of it.  Rain down my soul and thunder in my nightmare.  Morning brings safety.  Until then, I bare the shrieking winds alone.

…

I have this deep, unexplainable urge to leave everything behind.  I want to go to some place magical, where nothing I have ever known of exists.  It’s something I’ve felt inside me for as long as I can remember.  When I look closely at the land I see kinds of plants I’ve never seen before.  I begin taking pictures, proof that this place exists.  On the western horizon I see a string of calling mountains.  They are calling me to stop the car and head out over the vast landscape. 

…

Here the river flows north past ice-covered lakes.  I want to dive into such a lake, to be surrounded by it, filled up by it, completely becoming the lake.  I want the land to form me – not me always trying to form the land.  I want to give up control with my mind and run freely, no longer determining where I need to be.  I could get lost out here.  I am in another world.  The part of me that makes sense is no longer in control. 

…

I came down from the mountain.  An ethereal world faded out behind me.  I was on my way home again.  As I crossed the mountain pass and began to make my descent, a lightening storm flickered in my rearview mirror.  On the northern side of Antigun Pass I had seen caribou and musk oxen living in the wild.  Across the arctic plains – the expanse between the Brooks Range and the Arctic Ocean – were species of plants that did not exist anywhere else in the world.  That world was now being left behind me on the other side of the continental divide.

…

Some nights I sat wrapped in the mystery of what brought me here.  Was it the smell of the air, the cold, the warmth, the flight of a bird, or friendly play with a dog?  Each still memory is like a moment of silence.  Fading sounds, like the falling of the rain.  The miles, the many miles of searching down the road for a meal, a conversation, or a place to stay.  People living, all old or getting old, much like the land.  To me, a river is a drink of water.  Time is the mountains.  Sleep, exhaustion.  Nothing more.