Alaska. The Journey, The Record

I grew up going to a girls’ summer camp where Adventure was what we dreamed of.  It was our currency.  Daily we were braving storms to take our sailboats further, to better our survival skills.. we were singing songs about ramblers and celebrating the hikers among us who’d summited peaks…. — peaks whose names we’d often heard murmured by the locals… We were reading tales written about whaling ships in the high seas of the South Pacific & imagining what we’d do if our ship got stranded in Australia, holding ambergris.  That, all manner of THAT was holy to us.

Naturally, as I grew older and saw what the corporate world offered, I wanted none of it.  I wanted adventure, the true stuff.  I studied abroad in France, I lived in Vermont… I crossed the water of Lake Champlain via ferry as often as possible to see the “real trees” of the Adirondacks (as I thought of them) — and risked whatever I was risking by painting through sunset on a mountaintop with only a headlamp to guide me home.

But I never expected the kind of adventure that Alaska holds.  

I had the opportunity to travel with family this summer and spend a week on a boat from Sitka AK to Juneau with Lindblad Expeditions*.  Needless to say I was beyond words.  I brought my travel watercolor pad & a small tin of paints.  Honestly, for the first time in my life I really was certain that I could not label the experience.  Alaska is wild, but the sort of wilderness that knows its place exactly.  You are never “lost” in Alaska. It is the primordial state of freshness, and ruggedness and purity that we crave deep in our bones.  It is gorgeous, of an unworldly beauty that is hard to believe, even when it’s right in front of you.  That’s how it felt to me.

I painted only a small notebook of works, but I cherished the opportunity. Adventure is painted into each one, if you can see it.. Here are some of my favorites..