Travelers' Tales Alaska: True Stories

After twenty-nine years in this great land sometimes called the Last Frontier, I can tell you that the essays in Travelers' Tales: Alaska ring true. I, personally, flew with several of the colorful glacier pilots out of Talkeetna to climb in the Alaska Range including Doug Geeting, Cliff and Jay Hudson, and Lowell Thomas, Jr., and I especially enjoyed Jon Krakauer's The Flyboys of Talkeetna. In the Introduction to this collection and in his piece, Shot Tower, Dave Roberts, East Coast writer and mountaineer, reflects on his early years of Alaskan expeditions and he critically examines his relationship to climbing. If you like mountains, you will like these tales. This collection takes you on an Alaskan odyssey. The stories range from sea-kayaking up against monster glaciers in Glacier Bay (Tim Cahill's The Great White Philharmonic) to flying into a remote Forest Service cabin on the Kenai with your 19-day old infant, four-year old son, and grown husband to do a little grayling fishing (Andromeda Romano-Lax's Seeking Paradise) to helping Inupiat hunters haul in a whale killed in traditional fashion and divide the meat among community members (Heather Villars' On the Pack Ice). In Bill Sherwonit's Hairy Man Lives, you are treated to multiple first-hand recollections of encounters with Alaska's Sasquatch. Hairy Man is real in rural Alaska. I lived in Native villages for eight years, and I can vouch for this. In all my years here, I have learned that Alaska is a state like no other for direct experience with the beauty, mystery, and raw power of Nature. After reading this book, you will want to travel here to see for yourself. Or, if you have been here for a while, as I have, you will be reminded of why you came in the first place.