vaster even than man’s ego,
epitome of wilderness,
as teeming with wildlife as it is bereft of trails,
possessed of a beauty as staggering as its immensity:
mountainsides a vertical patchwork quilt celebrating autumn,
vibrant sunsets bloodying clouds
as evening shadows morph into darkness,
innumerable vistas screaming for attention
as Nature’s palette displayed broad stroke
overwhelms mere mortal senses,
a mind quake attempting to seize the unattainable,
yet compelling sight and smell, taste and touch
to gulp and digest for spirit nourishment.
An enigmatic land of immutable contrasts:
exhilarating and exasperating,
enticing and foreboding,
invigorating and enervating,
terrain which can thrill and kill,
cloudless azure skies and smoke choked heights,
shallow silty beaded rivers and hundred fathom translucent fjords,
sea level and continental apex,
glaciers and wetlands,
rock solid mountains and trembling earth,
rainbow tinted daysky and Aurora highlighted nightsky,
towering forests and diminutive lichen,
unyielding boulder fields and mattress soft tundra,
ever-sun and never-sun.
For eons peopled by hearty souls
toughened by climate and topography
like iron made into steel,
the Tlinket and Athabascan,
Haida and Tsimshian,
the Stampeders and mountain men,
miners and trappers,
not broken by this land, but blessed,
relishing, not relinquishing,
thriving, not succumbing,
exemplars embodying values of fierce independence,
self-sustenance, and personal accountability
as each struggled for life and livelihood.
Just as surely as a people form a land,
the land forms its people,
and just as surely
this land and people
transform visitors,
captivating, edifying, mystifying,
and like an alluring, magnetic mistress,
Alaska attracts and compels all to revisit
and once again become intimate with this bewitching lover.
Text and photos copyright 2005 by Chuck Morlock
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