Last month, I travelled to Austin, Texas for an old friend’s wedding.  I love being in airports and being on planes and having the feeling of coming and going.  Part of my ritual at airports is to get a cup of really awful airport coffee, something iced, usually, to help it go down easier (and black, no cream or sugar), and buy a pile of travel magazines. Normally, I just look at the photos, making mental notes of where I could possibly travel.  My eyes normally gloss over photos of grand cities full of art and culture, and immediately stop at pages of gorgeous multi-hued water or green, verdant hills or endless swathes of brightly colored deserts or streaks of dancing vibrant green lights across the sky.  This time, while flipping through National Geographic Travel, I stopped on an article by Edward Readicker-Henderson, titled “Cheating Death: How Travel Keeps Me Alive.”  It’s in the May issue, and if you can get your hands on it, it will take a little bit of your time to read something sublimely beautiful.

At the end of the opening section, he writes, “The story about how every place I travel to comes down to how I’m going to live.”

I’ve known for years that Fairbanks, Alaska would be the place we would go to should the time come for us to seek out the northern lights.  There are a variety of places you can stay within Fairbanks should you wish to stay in town, but you’d still have to drive out away from the city lights in order to get a good chance of viewing them. We spend quite a bit of our time traveling to and from, rushing from one place to another, and I knew for this short trip, we just wanted a place to stay put.  Chena Hot Springs was right at the top for all that they provided–food, wake-up calls for the lights, a snow coach that will take you up the mountain, a flight that takes you to the Arctic Circle, and a supposedly healing hot springs that smell strongly of sulfur and taints the tap water (really, when you shower, the mineral heavy water smells of vaguely of rotten eggs).  The room interiors are nothing to write home about, and for the room we had, it was probably less comfortable than a motel.  The winter season is high season here, so most rooms are booked, and we counted ourselves lucky that we got what probably was the last room on the last weekend of the aurora high season.

I can’t tell you what it was like, when on arrival, the skies were covered with clouds, and on the first night, the night we had scheduled the snow coach tour up to the mountains to sit in a heated yurt for an unspoiled view of the lights, snow began to fall.  Disappointment doesn’t cut it.  After dinner, we went back to the small, dingy room that smelled of minerals and what I can only describe as age, my stomach turned, and I could hardly get out of bed.  Steve went to the activities center and rescheduled our trip for the following night.  We saw nothing that night, and while Steve went to sleep early, I stayed up watching bad television, hoping for the time to pass and for when I could finally fall asleep.

The next day, on six hours of sleep, but no longer with an upset stomach, I felt fine.  We gathered up our things, and headed out to the air strip to begin our flight to the Arctic Circle.  I was under the impression we were just doing an aerial view, fly to the circle, and then come back.  We were told that we would be landing in the village of Beaver, where we will be guided around.  Neat, I thought, I’ll just go with it.  I hoped it wasn’t going to be a touristy song and dance as I was not interested in any kind of fake cultural immersion.

In the air, you really get a glimpse of just how expansive Alaska is.  I can only imagine what it looks like in the spring and summer when the snow has melted, and instead of seeing sparkling powdery peaks and miniature sized trees, you’d see field after field of greens, and instead of stillness and nothingness, you’d see life and movement.  Flying to the Arctic Circle was bumpy–something I didn’t expect, though come to think of it, of course there would be some turbulence as you leave the sub-arctic air mass and enter the arctic air mass.

We got to Beaver and landed the small plane, and Cliff, our guide was waiting there along with a kid, about 10 years old, with sharp, inquisitive eyes, and a quiet demeanor that immediately defines him as observer rather than participant.  Cliff tells us he is half Indian and half Eskimoo, and the village of Beaver is unofficially the meeting point of the two peoples.  The kid, he explains, is his grandson, living with him to learn their way of life, which relies heavily on subsistence hunting.  I can’t tell how old Cliff is, and in a way, that seems to suit him as the man lives in a cyclical nature, dependent on the seasons, a part of the world he lives in.  ”I get restless,” he tells me.  Even when it’s -50F, he feels most at home outside, in the snow, riding the super highway.

The Super Highway, he explains, is the Yukon River, which spends half its time frozen over.  Beaver, and other villages like it in the Yukon, are cut off from the rest of civilization.  There are no roads leading to these places.  You can only get to them by flying in (and there are flights once a day, ferrying supplies and people), or use the snow mobile on the frozen river to get around.  He tells me the day before, he and his grandson attended a family celebration the next village over, about 70 miles away, using the snow mobile.  He also added that we shouldn’t complain about the cost of gas as they have to pay $8/gallon.

The Yukon River, from the air, winds and curls and unwinds and uncurls as it snakes its way through the landscape. Hard to see when you’re staring right at it from high up on the banks, but from the plane, I immediately get a sense of the scope and grandeur not just of the place, but also of the inhabitants.  I don’t delude myself into thinking I understood anything about this way of life, though I tell myself the salmon jerky Cliff made, catching and curing the fish himself some months back, is quite possibly some of the best I’ve ever tasted.

Cliff asks me about the redwoods we have in Northern California.  He is getting restless and longs to hit the road, drive down the coast, through Canada, through Washington, through Oregon, to Northern California.  I tell him, yes, the trees are big, and yes, they are beautiful.  I tell him, “the most amazing thing about them is the sound when they move in the wind.”  I see his eyes light up and he’s just as young as his grandson, maybe ten, astonished and curious and wide-eyed.  I ask him what his favorite time of year is, and he smiles.  He tells me something that I am sure will haunt me for a very long time–well, until I can see it with my own eyes.

His favorite time of the year is pretty precise.  He says it’s September 6-10, when the the birches and other seasonal trees are yellow, when the weather is cooler, but not yet reaching temperatures in the negative, when there is still a few hours of light in the sky and the endless nights have not yet begun, when he is camping out there in the wilderness, often alone, out hunting for moose for enough meat to get him and his through the winter.  In the midst of the autumnal foliage, he is out there in the Alaskan wild, alone, and he sees the night sky lit up by the aurora borealis in colors, all kinds and types of auroral displays.  He says the lights are intense and beautiful and red, purple, green, he sees all these colors and the leaves, and he says it’s breathtaking.  ”You can hear the lights,” he says, “they crackle and rumble, and they can be really loud, and if you don’t know what you’re hearing, it can be scary.”

I tell him the redwoods creak when they move in the wind and he tells me the northern lights crackle.

Back at his cabin he hands me his business card and invites us to come back in the fall and go into the wilderness with him.  He will show us, he says.  I take it and start planning in my head a time for us to come back in September not so much to see this image he painted, but so we can get to know him more, this man, this restless person who is not at peace unless he is a part of the wilderness, of the landscape.

That night, we took the snow coach up the mountain.  I had no hope of seeing the lights as the skies were full of clouds and it was snowing.  Once we got there, we all get out of the snow coach.  I questioned our decision for going forward with the trip as it was to last through 2 am; I was tired, still feeling a little out of it, and could have just done with another night in a warm bed, no matter how uncomfortable it was or how slippery the polyester sheets felt.  It was, however, the last night Chena Hot Springs was running the aurora viewing tour.  Once outside of the coach, I watch the snowflakes glisten in the headlights, bouncing light like multifaceted diamonds.  Even this was beautiful.  We waddle to the yurt–all of us were wearing snow pants, parkas, carrying tripods (the father and daughter duo each had two tripods and multiple cameras)–where our guide turned up the heat and began boiling water.  We set up our photo gear, and then traipse outside to the slopes to inspect the sky and see if the clouds were breaking.  I, true to form, step into a piled up soft snow, and sink into mush hip high.  Steve pulls me out, and we’re both laughing.  Our faces, especially the nose, stings from the cold, and touching the snow with our bare hands was not the best idea.  We move back into the yurt and huddle up next to the heaters for warmth.

We do this, come in and out of the yurt, for several hours.  It didn’t feel like several hours. We listened to the story of one of the men, of how he came from Japan to see the lights, how he summited Mount McKinely, pulling up his supplies on a sled, including his paraglider, which he was going to use to paraglide down, but it had been too windy, and well, safety came first.  Then at some point, someone ran into the yurt and tells us the lights are out.

I described what I saw in the previous posts, so I’m not going to go through that again.  But as I sat there on the slopes, alone, pushing the shutter button, ecstatic that the lights were showing up, and not just a faint display, but a bright, brilliant, dancing display, I could not believe my luck.

I am addicted to traveling, to being on planes, to transiting and arriving, to seeing and experiencing new things, to remind myself that I am part of the world, but at the same time, the world is like the vast wilderness of Alaska, much bigger than me, much grander, and that I’m pretty insignificant in comparison–and being in witness of this awesome wonder, the aurora borealis–I’m the happiest I can be, and the tears that are nearly frozen on my lashes are not for sorrow or want, but from feeling at peace.

So when Readicker-Henderson writes, “In the deep night, I step outside my room on Ofu.  I pick up a seashell, a piece of the world, on the beach lapped by water so clear that the sand beneath glitters moonlight like the inside of a prism.  Above me arc stars in shapes I can’t name, which means I can wish them into any shape I wish them to be” I want to see that.  I want to see this sand. I want to see Alaska in the fall when the leaves are on fire and the sky is also on fire.

Chena Hot Springs was wonderful in that it was convenient, and it reminded me of how being centrally located, of the ease of having things right at the fingertips can lead to pleasant surprise, and is often worth the cost.  I dislike the rooms, but who cares when you can float in a hot spring while snow melts into trickling icicles dangling off the rocks bordering the springs.  When the light at 9:00 pm is the bluest you’ve ever seen and everything that can reflect it seems to glow.  You do pay a premium, and I hate the feeling of being nickeled and dimed for everything. Parka, snow boots and snow pants rentals are extra and are charged per day per item, but I got around that picking them up for the first activity and keeping them through our stay.  The food is average, though the greenhouse grown lettuce and tomatoes are delicious, but pricy.  The sled dog tour was a rip-off for $60/person for a five minute ride in a circle (don’t bother with it, it’s not worth it).  Everything else though was a wonderful experience.  From the guides to our pilot, Seth, to our location.  We came to see the lights, but we got so much more.

After the article, I started looking at Samoa and American Samoa.  Then we came across Tonga.  And how the humpback whales migrate to the South Pacific to give birth and use the tropical waters as a nursery for their young.  Of how the males sing, and you can not only hear the songs under water, but if you’re lucky, you might feel the vibration coursing through your body.  I think of that moonlit sand and crystal clear water.  I think about how Readicker-Henderson says to say yes, and not no, and just to follow it and see what happens.  I think about the savannah and grass plains of the Serengeti, of the African sunset with the red disc suspended in the silhouette of the acacia trees and giraffes in the distance.  I think about the sound of ice crunching beneath my snow boats, and close my eyes, and imagine not myself, but the world as it is despite myself.  Of sitting in the Borneo jungle, maybe on Fire Mountain, listening to the sounds of water dripping from broad leaf to broad leaf, eyes feasting on the site of thousands of blooming orchids, or maybe I’m in the Mongolian plains, watching the riders hunt with their birds, or maybe I’m trekking across the glaciers in Patagonia or perhaps I’m listening to the sound of a zephyr stirring the desert sands.

I don’t travel to escape or play make-believe.  This how travel keeps me alive–by letting me feel alive.  I know it’s trite to say, but the world is a beautiful place, and to have only one lifetime to explore doesn’t seem enough, but it will have to do.

The first night there, the clouds covered the sky, and I got a little sick, so we rescheduled our trip up the mountain via the snow cat for the second night. I was less than optimistic when it had been snowing all day, and continued to snow well through the night. At midnight, the clouds broke, and the moon came out. You could see Venus at one end, and Mars at the other. Then, the lights came out, slow, and shyly at first. The lights were greenish gray, like a thin cloud to the naked eye, streaking across the sky. After an hour, they started to dance, rippling vertical green bands tinged with purple, and this is the truly amazing part. Watching them dance, interchanging colors, moving from one part of the sky to the other. At 2am, they stopped. These are just the first part from the first night. We were luck enough to see them again the following night, although they were much fainter, not as vibrant, and didn’t dance with the same purple tinge. After having been convinced I wasn’t going to see them at all, I may have shed a tear or two at how fortunate we were.

I took these photos on an older lens, an 80-200mm f/2.8L lens.  Well, it was definitely a learning experience.  Great lens for taking photos of birds, people, and objects far away, but not so great for taking photos of flowers.  Next time, I will bring a macro lens.  But hey, sometimes not making the right call leads to a learning experience.

Speaking of which, I am heading up to Alaska at the end of March for a handful of nights to try and photograph (if I’m lucky enough to see them) the aurora borealis.  I checked the weather report yesterday and sent them to Steve, and mentioned to him about the 9 degrees being cold.  He is from Colorado, so he likes to laugh at my Californian self.  ”No, it’s not the 9 degrees you should worry about, its the feels like -31 you should worry about.  Wind chill.”

What the eff is wind chill?  If anything is getting me in the mood to travel to again, especially to a tropical island type of place, it’s thinking about this minus temperature stuff.  Honestly, I don’t think that I’ve ever been anywhere colder than 26 degrees, and even then, it was a run out of the car, take a photo of the lake, run back to the car.

It will definitely be an experience.

This concludes my Bali series.  You can, if you haven’t gotten enough of it here, go through my flickr sets to see the rest.

Full of gods, heroes, and monsters, the temples here are wonderfully photogenic, often with a patina of moss.  After the rain, the vibrant colors electrify against the the gray skies.  Even the deserted hawkers’ stands on the labyrinthine voyage out pulls off a kind of almost Edward Hopper effect–the space devoid of humans, but still full of their presence.  All banyan trees are considered sacred, so the trees are cloaked in checkered cloth–the black and white representing harmony.  There is no fight to be purely good, but to strike a harmonious balance in life.  I think that is what appealed to me so much about Balinese culture: there is no struggle to becoming a superlative, but to accept all the intricacies of being–from the good to the bad–and reaching a point where everything is in accordance.  How freeing it is to not be exemplary, but to just be–you, yourself, in your place, in your part of the world.

Amankila, the fortress by the sea.  As beautiful as this place was–and as perfect as the service was–I couldn’t help but feel a little out of place.  A sort of pretender to the throne.  It was a perfect place ran by  perfect people and whose clientele were seemingly just as perfect.  So what was I, in all my awkwardness, crooked teeth, ratty F21 panda shirt, doing here?

There is a private black sand beach below with bales tucked into the foliage and people on stand by, waiting to bring you sun block in various spas, ice cold water, and whatever else you could possible want.  If you didn’t want to swim at the beach or lounge in the bales, you could use the swimming pool at the beach club, a long lap pool situated amidst an impeccably manicured lawn with coconut trees growing in just the right angles.  If THAT didn’t do it for you, you could choose to use one of the three-tiered infinity pool that is the Amankila signature pool, each pool flowing into the next–a design that is supposed to be reminiscent of rice paddies.

I found Amankila most beautiful at night, you know that moment when the sky is that surreal blue color, and the light is just right to make water look solid.  The stones of the hotel glow this warm earthy peachy pink, and the raised walkways look like something out of Lothlorien.  It’s all be to expected given that its designer is Ed Tuttle.

Despite all that, I grew restless here.  I like beautiful things and beautiful places just as much as the next person, and I do believe in quality over quantity, this place was at times a bit too much for me.  If I could do it again, I would switch it around so that I was doing maybe 5-6 nights at Amandari and 3-4 nights here.  Quite a few of the reviews and discussions of Aman I’ve ran into listed Amankila at the top.  For me, I prefer the subtle buzzing and languid music rising from the jungles of Amandari, whose spirit is tangible and atmosphere could be sliced up and eaten like cake.

That aside, I would like to add that we originally reserved an ocean view room.  If you decide that a view is the best for you, request one at the end of the walkway if you want privacy.  If you want to be left along and not have to deal with seeing anyone at all, get a pool suite.  We switched to pool suite after one night and felt the extra expense (really nothing compared to the total cost of everything) was absolutely worth it.  Plus, at night, the staff lights these beautiful candles around your pool.  You can float to the gentle flickering of candlelight while gazing at the starry night sky above.  Sometimes a could breeze will float by, invigorating the warm air with a fresh ocean scent.  And if you’re really lucky, a light rain will fall–enough to make it even more atmospheric, but not enough to make you go running for refuge.

Already at 8:00 am, the sun is as as strong as it is in San Francisco at noon, if not even stronger.  The angle of might casts harsh shadows and creates strong contrasts.  Jungle treks are best done early morning or late afternoon.  The light only gets harsher, the heat more unbearable, and the humidity thicker.  Just give yourself a day or two to acclimate if you’re coming from more temperate climes before attempting to hike.  A guide is highly recommended if you want to go off the marked paths.  Some of the foot trails are hard to see, and often meanders along the edge of a hill where a tumble would yield in broken bones.  It’s also really neat to get local stories and have names to the various things all around you.

Whenever I think of activities on vacations, I always think about that one parent who has a list of all the things to do, and every day is broken down into hour long increments, with each increment being color coded, and pretty much all the time taken up.  Well, I’ve learned that sometimes being a tourist isn’t a bad idea, and doing an activity can be a lot of fun.  Like a cooking class, for example.  It was such a great experience!  We got a guide who took us to the morning market to buy our ingredients (let’s face it, neither of us would have been able to communicate with the locals and having a guide was wonderful).  Then bringing the ingredients back to a traditional Balinese compound, and making our meal in an old wood burning stove (coffee wood!), and just spending the hot morning assembling the ingredients. So while it may seem touristy, it did feel quite amazing to sit in the courtyard watching the flowering orchids sway to and fro in the occasional breeze, listening to the chirping of birds as they hop from branch to branch, and just letting the day to day ritual of Balinese life take you over as the kitchen heats up, the offerings to the gods are made, and you’re completely taken over.  Touristy or not, it was a great experience, and by far the best meal we had.

Oh, and that durian was absolutely the best!  It took us a long time to find one that was just the right size, not too big, not too small.