Alaska

connecting with Alaska...
Everything in Alaska highlights how wild this place is. Even here in Seward, the mountains shrouded in blue midday mist look massive and mighty despite their relatively low height.
I'm so lucky there was no representative of social services in this Alaska state park when my little daughter was crying, exhausted after the long hike, cold and wet in the rainy and windy highland tundra, while her retarded daddy was trying to create a composition for the photo. I'm sure she's still plotting a revenge in her head.
There is something absolutely magical about this place a few miles south of Seward. After winding through the thick forest, the hiking trail descends to a big opening at the shore. A creek flows into the fjord. In September, thousands of salmon live their last hours in the shallow water, and seagulls feast on the easy prey. Despite the somewhat disturbing scenes, the whole place has an absolutely peaceful aura. Allegedly, grizzly bears love the spot for its atmosphere too. I was (un)lucky to encounter none.
There are moments you want to scream about to the entire world, and there are quite the opposite ones. The ones you fear to share because they would inevitably lose something after that. And you do hope nobody will ever find those places—your special places—whether they are physical locations on Earth or hidden deeply inside you.
“Termination dust” seems to be exclusively Alaskan colloquial term and means the first dusting of snow in the mountains at the end of the summer season. Historically, it gave the seasonal workers an indication that snow was imminent and it was time to start preparing their camp and work for winter. For many, it in fact meant “termination” of their employment status. Despite some negative connotation of the term (some Alaskan even asked reporters and the weather people to stop using it) few things in nature can compare to the beauty of glowing aspens highlighted by white snow in the mountains.
I adore the feeling of absolute calmness in nature a few hours before a snowstorm reaches the area. The sounds get quieter, the light gets softer. The anxiety about getting into trouble on untreated roads gets worse.
First, something glimpsed on the live-view screen of my camera. “I need to sleep more during my trips,” was my first thought. Then I saw a crowd of kids running along the shore towards me. Then a big gray body appeared from the water again, this time closer to me. In a minute, the animal showed up again less than a hundred yards from my spot. Alaska is a place where whales literally jump into one's photo.
When I was a kid, Alaska was a quintessence of something remote and wild those days. Glorified and mystified in Jack London’s novels, located far away from everything on a colorful map in my room… Very few places seemed more unreachable. It has changed. The world becomes painfully small with traveling when The Last Frontier is merely a few hours away from home. The world becomes even smaller when one of the best jazz musicians who you listened to while commuting to college back in Ukraine, now shakes your hand in a small local club and humbly thanks for coming to his concert. The world, however, immediately becomes incomprehensibly immense when you think of people you love and have no clue about where they presently are on this tiny planet.
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