You wouldn't be riding a motorcycle if you weren't an optimist.
—Matthew Crawford, Shop Class as Soulcraft
As I've been contemplating the end of our motorcycle expedition, and the onset of a new, very different mode of travel, I'm filled with a great sense of abundance for the adventures this world offers. As I put it to Kelly during his visit with us, it's a mistake to think that we've "done Alaska," or the Pacific Coast, or any spot along this adventure. Instead of coloring the map in with bold, primary colors from edge to edge as we move across a border, a more realistic picture of our experience would be to trace a thin, meandering pencil line, narrowly winding across an immense swath of North America.
Adding the dimension of time only makes the slenderness of this journey clearer. As our hosts in Anchorage emphasized, to know Alaska requires knowing it in its many weathers, and especially, to see it in winter. Indeed, Alaska is rich with lessons in scale: the peaks that seem just out of reach are, in fact, days of determined hiking way; the water is bigger, colder and deeper than it seems; and the glaciers fool you into making comparisons with ice cubes.
The comparative scale of this journey -- not so much a 12-state and -province tour as a 8,500-mile, faint scratch in graphite, drawn at a particular moment in time -- is a source of great excitement, not disappointment. Lucky us, that we (can) never step in the same river twice. And that the water keeps coming.
As the journey changes and evolves with our first flight (overnight, doubling our mileage traveled), I am relieved at the successful, rich, unforgettable completion of our motorcycle travels.
R2 is off to have new adventures of its own, with its new owner Craig, after having spent 13 months and 13,000 miles with me. And I'm left with the thought from one of Alaska's most influential travelers through its enormous northern wilderness.
Adventure is wonderful, but there is no doubt that one of its joys is its end.
—Robert Marshall, Alaska Wilderness: Exploring the Central Brooks Range
Farewell, motorcycle journey. To the next adventure!
You and Julie will have to come back in the winter and camp in a snowcave under the lights in the Chugach.
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