September 21, 2026

The broad plains of southeastern Idaho are parched brown by drought. The potatoes are not coming in right now, most of the fields are fallow or growing alfalfa, the off-year crop. The horizon resembles a gently rolling desert, extending through the Teton Valley to Wyoming.

This is not picture-postcard Idaho of spectacular mountain views and white-water rivers. The southern one-third of the state is an extension of the Midwest, flat for miles then adding some hills. The Teton Valley reaches from the suburbs of Idaho Falls east to the Wyoming border, where the Tetons rise. Grand Teton, which is on postcards, towers for sixty miles.

The occasion was our youngest daughter Kathleen’s wedding ceremony. She and Steve had eloped a year ago without having one. So we planned a makeup. The site was Ashton, population about 1,000, an hour north of Idaho Falls. It’s an industry town, just south of fast-moving Henry’s Fork, which flows into the Snake River near Rexburg. The prairie is everywhere.

We had passed through Ashton in 2016 en route to Ennis, Montana from Breckenridge, Colorado. Driving up Main Street then, I noticed the high school. There it is now, pretty much unchanged. The football team and the cheerleaders were practicing. The cross country teams were jogging Main Street. We passed the giant grain elevators, the hardware store, the ice cream place where we had stopped in ’16, worn out from the road.

The highway, U.S. 20, continues from Ashton to West Yellowstone. Before that it meets U.S. 87, which turns into 287 north to Ennis. A right turn on 87 brings you to Earthquake Lake, which memorializes 28 victims of a flash flood caused by freak earthquake in 1959.

We stayed at a nice place north of town. Sons-in-law Mike and Steve and I hiked a gravel farm road. It winds past untended fields that may serve as pastures. A couple of horses, grazing, stared at us as we passed. We climbed a short steep hill and looked back.

The prairie extends to the horizon dotted with farmhouses and the roofs of Ashton. The long grass waved in a breeze. No other human, no cattle, no vehicle disturbed the quiet.

The emptiness is pricey. Real estate in Teton County, Wyoming, is the most expensive in the country. Affluent people, entertainers, corporate types, environmental and nature tourists have bought big tracts, preventing development of affordable housing. Some property investors qualify for tax breaks by spending a few days each month in the state. The land inflation has spread into Idaho. New homes are running in the $900,000 range.

For folks who have a stake, it is a special place. Main Street in Ashton becomes a feeder to U.S. 32, which runs south through Farnum, France, Lamont then to 33 into Driggs, a bustling metropolis of about 2,500 that sits nearly squarely on the Idaho-Wyoming border.

Driggs is a working town, supporting, machine shops, equipment repair, trucking, the underpinnings of the farm business. Main Street is busy, lined with shops and restaurants.

Staying south on 33 the mountains rise. The prairie and ranchland drop away, the highway crosses into Wyoming, dipping in nerve-wracking switchbacks into Jackson, the mecca of northern Rockies tourism. Everything is expensive. The highway enters Grand Teton National Park, a sparkling jewel of America’s most spectacular vistas. Yellowstone, just north, and Glacier, in northern Montana, may be close.

Bozeman is just northwest of Yellowstone. In September 1983, after attending some meeting, I drove a rental from Bozeman into the park, the plan being to come out 50 or 60 miles later on I-90 to Billings. It was a chance to see the park.

I spent the night in Cooke City. The morning was overcast, winter clouds hung low over the mountains. I left early and chugged along U.S. 212, a narrow two-lane road, into Gallatin National Forest. I wore a short-sleeve shirt and a light sweater.

The snow drifted down, I plowed on. The road started to accumulate a light coating, I focused on staying in my lane. No other traffic passed me in either direction, as if I were the only driver who didn’t get the weather report.

Turning back never occurred to me. Just a few more miles to the interstate, I thought, glancing at my paper map. I didn’t know exactly where I was. This was a national forest, meaning wilderness, no settlements or any signs of human life.  

The snow fell, now at several inches, I gripped the wheel, squinting through the windshield at the wall of white. Then a tight right turn, I twisted the wheel then jammed the brakes.  The car slid a few feet off the road and came to rest on a slight incline. I tried backing up, the wheels spun on the slickness. I tried going forward, nothing.

I waited ten minutes then tried backing up again. Again the wheels spun. I got out, and sucked in my breath at the cold. The tires were coated with frozen stuff.

Sitting in the car, I turned up the heat. I turned off the ignition, started it, and tried backing up again. The wheels whined and spun. I cut the engine again, waited a few seconds, then tried started again. The engine sputtered, but didn’t start. I sat, numb, with a vague sense of the problem.

I pulled my sweater snugly, and tried again. The car started, but wouldn’t move. The snow poured down, this was no light September dusting. I sat staring at the falling snow, the forest on every side, the road covered.

Maybe an hour passed, maybe two. I heard an engine. A park ranger in a heavy jacket rapped on my window. “We’ve closed the road. We’ll get you out.” I got out of the car. A Park Service truck stood on the road. The ranger and a partner fitted a hook to my rear bumper, got in their truck and backed up, hauling my car up on the road and turning it.

“You have to drive back through the park,” he said. “Be careful.” I thanked the rangers and drove slowly back toward Cooke City, then through the park. I picked up I-90 near Bozeman, where I had started. A one-hundred mile detour. Many years passed before I visited Yellowstone again.

This came back to me as we gathered for the wedding, about three hours’ drive from my park experience. The happy couple are expert outdoors people who wouldn’t get caught in a snowstorm. I looked back, but not for long. We exchanged hugs. The next day we headed for the airport.

September 14, 2026

On that awful evening people in New York’s satellite suburbs in Jersey, Connecticut, and on Long Island noticed cars left in commuter rail parking lots. Their owners never came home. Last Friday, for the 25th time, the videos of the Towers’ collapse played, the names of victims were read, bells tolled.

Some feelings just won’t die, the country artist Marty Robbins sang, way back in 1982. And once again, on September 11, 2026, the country and the world venerated that day 25 years ago. The years are gone; the memories, painful for all, excruciating for some, never will die.

Again I recalled walking through the Navy wing of the Pentagon a few days later, inhaling the sheetrock dust. The next week, in New York just off Wall Street, I hiked past the smoldering heaps of broken concrete and twisted steel girders. First responders searched for survivors, but mainly remains.

The event matters, it always will matter, a stark outpost of grief, when time stood still. The agonizing over the causes, the origins of the terror, the political conditions, the security breakdowns and failures, has never stopped and never will.

We recognize that certain experiences, as they recede into the past, have a mystical dimension. We live with the 9/11 legacy but never fully grasp its meaning.

We returned from our Alaska trip and got through the travel hangover and sickness. We brought back our impressions of the standard attractions offered to all the tourists, the iconic mountains, the glaciers, the picturesque native villages. 

But then we encountered, or stumbled on complexity, wonder, mystery. It had to do with Sandy’s sickness. We arrived at the first cruise stop, Skagway. We had to find medical care. We ended up at the Dahl Memorial Clinic, a quiet place just off the nondescript streets, thousands of miles from Ground Zero.

The town has its complicated roots in the years of the Klondike Gold Rush. In the 1870s someone discovered gold in nearby British Columbia. Prospectors rushed in, turning the Skagway settlement into a rowdy boom town, increasing the population to around 10,000 by 1898. A railroad, the White Pass, was built to transport miners to the gold fields. In 1900 the town was the first incorporated in the Alaska Territory.

The miner population melted away as the gold was mined out and the town started living on its history. Tourists arrived by ship during the brief summer, which is the way things are now, and the way we landed there (OTR 8-31-26).  

Three ships tied up at the pier and released their throngs of shoppers. For most the day was about scrounging through souvenir shops for jewelry, Alaska-labeled clothing, local art, plastic and ceramic stuff. We were not shopping. It was our 48th wedding anniversary, but Sandy was sick. As the ship maneuvered to the Skagway pier, we thought “urgent care,” hoping the town had one. We stepped down the gangway onto dry land.

A police officer directed the tourists to the White Pass train for their sightseeing tour. “You want the clinic on 14th,” he said. “Take the shuttle, it stops over there.”

The shuttle drove through the shopping district and dropped us at Broadway and 9th Avenue, the end of the driver’s route. We were away from the billboards, the neon lights, the shopping crowds. We trudged up Broadway through an industrial-residential neighborhood.

We saw no one. The place seemed poor, anonymous, its character obscured in the strange, mysterious history of the place. We passed cramped, weatherbeaten cottages. A few rusted appliances sat on lawns. Here and there the sidewalk was broken and crumbling. Weeds sprouted in driveways.

We found the clinic. The office was quiet, a receptionist sent us to a treatment room. A medical assistant tested Sandy for flu and covid-19. We talked while waiting for the results. He mentioned he’s from Texas, but found the opportunity there. He was getting married at the end of the month and moving to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, for nursing school. We smiled through our nervousness.

“Well, it’s warmer there,” I said. “Yeah,” he answered. “My fiancée can’t wait to get out of here.” 

Sandy tested positive for flu. All those oldsters aboard the ship, coughing and wheezing. The assistant introduced Shauna, the nurse practitioner.

She sat without fear with us and looked at the test results, then talked about the flu, the progression of the disease, the common sources, the risks of bronchitis and pneumonia. She asked about allergies to medications and proposed alternative treatments, the need for rest, fluids, isolation. She leaned forward and touched Sandy’s shoulder.

She and Sandy talked about health care. She mentioned she had grown up in Alaska. She earned her medical degrees then worked as a volunteer with the Skagway Fire Department. She ordered prescriptions. The pharmacy was on-site. We stood to leave and mentioned the anniversary. “How many years?” she asked. “I have to ask,” she said, smiling.

The clinic called a shuttle to drive Sandy back to the ship. I jumped off into the shopping crowds and browsed in a few places, looking without interest at the stacks of teeshirts and embroidered jackets, the plastic whale and grizzly bear models, the prints of mountain vistas and historic buildings.

From our ship stateroom we looked out on the town, the grid of small one-story buildings hemmed in between the narrow channel and dark mountains, the peaks lost in mist.        

We read the clinic’s mission statement, a warning: “Severe geographic isolation restricts access to alternative care. Winter weather often limits travel outside the community. The only land-based option is driving 100 miles to Whitehorse, Yukon Territories, Canada by a two-lane road. This road has extreme winter weather conditions at least six months of the year, to include white-out snowstorms, black ice, and/or avalanches.”

Shauna, the nurse practitioner, worked with compassion and gentleness in her professional calling, patient care, wellness, recovery. In that small, rough, isolated place she dedicated herself heroically to others, living with and overcoming the obscurity, the mystery, the hardship of the place. Unlikely we will ever see her again. But we look back now, in admiration and good spirits, encouraged and heartened.

September 7, 2026

Lilting strains of opera accompany the coffee in Mario’s on Howe Street in downtown Vancouver. Opera and coffee, a new experience. Vancouver was a new experience.

At dawn last Sunday our ship, Westerdam, was making nine knots, then four. The harbor was filled with tug and freighter traffic. After a week of watching wilderness along the vast Inland Passage that separates British Columbia from the Pacific, we were entering a city. It discharged us with the other 2,000 passengers at the cruise terminal. We found our hotel in the middle of downtown.

The next morning we walked a bit, enjoying the cool northern Pacific air. Mario’s was cramped, a half-dozen two-person tables. An elderly man in a baseball cap brewed the coffee, two young women smiled as they made sandwiches. We listened to the lovely sounds.  The old guy closed his eyes and waved his hand rhythmically with the music.

The city is named for George Vancouver, a British naval officer who explored the Pacific Northwest coast in 1792. He sailed through the region, creating charts in collaboration with Spanish explorers who mapped California. Today Vancouver is the land-sea anchor of “Beautiful British Columbia,” the legend on the province’s license plates.

Vancouver ranks behind Toronto, Montreal, and a few other Canadian cities in urban population, but close to the top among the country’s larger metropolitan areas. The city occupies a wide peninsula across the Strait of Georgia from giant Vancouver Island. The northern boundary is the Burrard Inlet, through which our ship sailed; to the south is the Fraser River, winding 850 miles deep north into the province, then south to the Alberta border.

Downtown is business; banks, brokerages, law firms, international trade, collapse in a couple of dozen square blocks. We were in the middle of all that. I thought of New York with way less traffic.  

We passed the blocks of skyscrapers on our way to Gastown, the eclectic neighborhood named after a talkative bartender, also famous for a steam-powered clock. Like the rest of the tourist crowd, we moved in for a photo and applauded when the clock struck noon. We passed the Catholic cathedral, the stone weathered and dark.

We were relieved by then to be finished with the ship. In the last three days at sea Sandy recovered, slowly, from the flu that called for an urgent detour to the Dahl Memorial Clinic in Skagway. The clinic visit, on our 48th wedding anniversary, was a bit of a downer. But the nurse practitioner, Shauna, was savvy and smart, she diagnosed Sandy’s symptoms and prescribed medication, which we picked up on-site.

We stood to leave, but chatted a bit. Shauna mentioned she grew up in Alaska, and that her medical assistant was heading to South Carolina for nursing school. I mentioned the anniversary. She sympathized. We appreciated that.

The clinic reminded visitors of where they are: “the Canadian border is 10 miles to the north by the only road in or out of Skagway. … For critical or in-patient care, residents must travel 100 miles to Juneau by small airplane or ferry, both of which can be delayed due to high winds or snowstorms.”

Still, a couple of days afterward we sat in easy chairs on the stern, enjoying the sun and watching without luck for the telltale spouts of whales.

The ship pressed on through the Inland Passage, following another sleek liner and leading a third, as if in a cruise-ship convoy. That evening we sat for twenty minutes to listen to the final entertainment, an unfunny comedian. We left after the second joke attempt.

For our first Vancouver evening we hiked Granville Street, looking for dinner. A dozen or more blocks had been closed to create a pedestrian mall. The promenade was filled with younger folks, guys and gals enjoying Sunday evening brews and live music in the late Canadian summer. Not a senior citizen in sight, no political talk, no worries. We recalled it was another country, really another world. We found an unlikely table along the sidewalk and took in the scene.

We found Mario’s. The music echoed on the sidewalk and swept us inside. The fellow in the cap, we learned, is the original Mario’s son, who inherited the business. He asked how we liked our coffee.

We rode the subway out to the airport to get boarding passes. The transit system resembled the D.C. Metro without the business-suit clientele you get in Washington. The train, like the city streets, was full of young people of many nationalities. About 50 percent of Vancouverans speak a language other than English or French.

Back in town, traffic sped through intersections, autos competing with electric bikes and scooters. The city had warmed up, but without our choking South Carolina humidity. From the hotel we could see the cruise ship terminal, the ships that arrived yesterday already gone, retracing the course we had taken with a new company of vacationers.

Many of them would arrive in Whittier and Anchorage unaware of the intensity of Alaska’s emptiness, through the wilderness and across fast-moving rivers of the Great Interior, the rugged peaks, and dense dark fir forests that stretch for hundreds of miles in every direction. 

A light breeze cooled our last evening in Vancouver. We passed the giant Pacific Centre, the iconic Canadian institution Tim Horton’s, a row of Asian places. The city was relaxed, unstressed, Canadians enjoying the crisp self-assurance of their town, the jewel of their vast Pacific-Rocky Mountain refuge.

We felt the sense of the place, the city and the country, new, strong, bold, the heart of the Maple Leaf nation standing apart from and above the political grubbiness that awaited us at home. As we walked we recognized in the air a chord of courage, character, integrity, compassion, that prospers in the town, then soars above it.      

August 31, 2026

Fog rolled in on the second full day at sea, then lifted. We could see the ghostly summits of peaks and rises of land formations off the ship’s starboard, but didn’t know where we were. At 7:00 AM we were making 12 knots. The plan was Glacier Bay National Park in a couple of hours.

We boarded Holland America’s Westerdam at Whittier, Alaska, after a two-hour train ride from Anchorage. Whittier looks like a port town and only a port town. The industrial activity we could see all had to do with supporting visiting ships. They arrived, loaded and offloaded passengers and cargo, then departed.

The salt-water cruise was a first for us; the Vietnam-Cambodia junket up the Mekong in January was in a different dimension, a tranquil passage up a placid, glass-flat river as wide as the Mississippi in places, but a river. Now we were on the ocean.

Getting settled aboard is a chore, the train, the winding line while hefting your backpack or suitcase, the security check, the hunt for the stateroom through a maze of corridors. Eventually we found the room after an elevator ride to the 10th deck. It seemed okay, and included a floor-to-ceiling glass door to a narrow balcony.  We stepped out for a spectacular, dizzying view of the harbor.

The ship got underway slightly behind schedule. It didn’t matter, we were there to sit, to look out at the view. We declined the barrage of sales pitches for excursions at the three scheduled stops: whale watching, gold panning, tram rides to mountaintops, helicopter rides for glacier closeups. The plane, bus, and train rides to Whittier took a toll.

We know people who love cruising and recommend it, we never before bit on the idea. But Alaska was Sandy’s dream, and it’s getting to be hurry-up time for dreams. The cruise typically goes with the Alaska visit. Some folks do the cruise then continue with an inland segment, battling the trains, buses, and hotels after the easy part. We listened to good advice: do the reverse.

For cruise people, Westerdam is considered a small ship, 82,000 tons, 900 feet long, accommodating about 2,000 tourists. Some of these behemoths take on 7,000 leisure seekers. Even so, our ship resembles an apartment building laid horizontally on a hull: 10 levels of cabins linked by 14 elevators, feeding the sailing public at five restaurants, a burger and hot-dog place up to an exquisite white tablecloth setting where jackets and dresses are expected.

A single day aboard reveals the allure of cruising. The cruise company offers pampering—everything (nearly everything) human beings desire: endless food, abundant alcohol, some at extra cost; entertainment (music, cinema, theater, gambling, nightclub acts, bingo, board games); healthcare (fitness classes, massages, hair styling, skin treatments, yoga, sauna, swimming, hot tub, first aid classes, lectures). There’s a pickleball and a basketball court, a library and a high-end jewelry store. The ship scheduled AA meetings, church services, singles and LGBTQ meetups.

When we arrived at Glacier a team of park rangers motored to the ship in a small boat and offered lectures on the park’s history and wildlife.

The décor is contemporary Las Vegas: garish wall coverings and tapestries; facsimiles of classic sculptures (e.g., David, Venus de Milo); wall-high reprints of colonial art; ship models ranging from 17th century four-masters to those of Holland America’s current fleet. The casino, with poker and blackjack tables and rows of slot machines, is a seagoing Vegas. The elevator doors are covered with ornate gold veneer.   

We took photos of the Grand Pacific and Margerie glaciers at the northern end of Glacier Bay. The ship then turned south into Lynn Canal. Westerdam arrived early next morning at Skagway, nestled between towering peaks along a narrow inlet. Three other cruise ships tied up nearby. We deboarded with the crowd and browsed the souvenir shops, jewelry stores, and teeshirt markets, the economic lifeblood of the place.

Souvenir-hungry tourists jostled along State Street and Broadway. I recalled the wisecrack by Eric, our Denali driver: “We don’t mine for gold any more, we mine wallets.”

A chilly rain fell, the ship departed about 9:00 PM, backing out of the quay at three knots. In the morning, in a thick fog, we pulled into Juneau, the state capital. Like Skagway, the city is perched at the northern end of a narrow bay. Juneau’s Broadway runs from the harbor through the heart of the shopping district up a steep hill. The state capitol, a nondescript office tower, overlooks the harbor.

Across the street from the capitol is a statue of Secretary of State William Seward, who in 1859 negotiated the purchase of Alaska from Russia for $7 million or about two cents an acre.

That evening we got to Mass. Father Jack read from Matthew’s gospel, the passage about the good and faithful servant. “The servant persevered in his duty, in his life’s mission, even when it was difficult,” he said. “Christ asks us to be like the servant, to be present, to do what he calls us to do.”

We took that note with us to Ketchikan, the salmon capital of the world, they say. It was another night’s sail, zigzagging through a thickly forested, uninhabited archipelago. Around midnight the sky cleared, the moon gleamed across the sea over dark peaks. We tied up about mid-morning. Dozens of fishing boats lay pierside. Homes and businesses stretched along a north-south highway, city streets ran to the harbor.

As at Skagway and Juneau, the marketing was intense, folks waved signs hawking various tours. We leaned over a rail to gawk at packs of salmon swimming in circles in a stream that ran to the harbor.  Some of the fish leaped into the air, as if on cue. Shops offered the usual racks of souvenirs, “Alaska” clothing, jewelry, ceramic and plastic carvings, Christmas-tree ornaments, on and on.  We saw the museum but missed the famous totem poles and lumberjack contests.

We straggled back aboard. In late afternoon the ship departed for the homestretch, a full day and night en route to Vancouver. One day there, then it’s the airport back to hometowns, jobs, chores, doctors’ appointments.

The ship transported us close to 2,000 miles into and out of an unreal world. The crew, mostly young folks from Indonesia, the Philippines, and other Asian places, cheerfully hustled to meet the needs and whims of the passengers, probably 90 percent senior citizens.

We docked in Vancouver. Folks lined up at the gangway, regretting the end of the pampering, the crew’s smiles, the week of dreams. We all said so long and trooped ashore. Within hours Westerdam welcomed another 2,000 aboard, and headed out to sea.

August 24, 2026

When the clouds lift, Mt. Denali gleams. The jagged snow-covered peaks that surround the summit are shining and massive, even at 60 miles. Dozens of other craggy heights of the Alaska Range line up for miles like partners to the summit complex.

Native Athabascan people called the mountain Denali (“the tall one”) for hundreds of years. In 1897 a local man dubbed it Mt. McKinley, after President William McKinley, who never visited Alaska.

Lobbying for creation of a national park began around 1905. In 1917 President Wilson signed a bill establishing Mt McKinley National Park, encompassing more than four million acres. In 1980 President Carter approved an addition of roughly two million more.

In 1980 Alaska’s state government unofficially changed the mountain’s name to Denali. In 2015 President Obama approved the change. Trump changed the mountain’s name back to McKinley in 2023 (the park remains “Denali”). Signage was changed, but locals still call it Denali.

The 20,310-foot peak has a steeper base-to-summit rise than Mt. Everest and most of the world’s mountains, meaning its elevation begins at a lower level. The mountain, which makes its own weather, usually is shrouded in clouds. When it shows itself Denali is a ghostly presence, the centerpiece of a magnificent wilderness.

The southern and northern segments, Denali National Park, are managed like other national parks, allowing some camping, hunting, fishing.

The difference is wilderness: the central one-third of the park, about 1.3 million acres, is the Preserve, untouched wild country. A 93-mile park highway was completed in 1938, but no private vehicles are allowed on the road past the 15-mile point. A park ranger stands guard at a small station, waving car traffic into a parking lot. Tour buses are permitted out to 43 miles.

At the station, a ranger welcomed us. We moved on. Our driver-guide, Eric, tells us he’s a slow driver. We puttered along as the altitude increased. He pointed out the U-shaped valleys of the Savage and Teklanika Rivers, which flow from glaciers. Off to the north we spotted Dall sheep and caribou, tiny dots far up the mountain slopes. We stopped at the Teklanika overlook to snap photos, then pressed on into unmarked country.

Far from Mt. Denali the peaks soar on both sides, an ocean of multiple shades of green, the firs, the grassland, the tundra, the thick underbrush. The aspens, which grow at crazy angles because their roots don’t penetrate the permafrost, already are showing fall colors. Alaska’s winter is eight months, spring, summer, and fall are collapsed into the other four.

Folks who came prepared with binoculars would call out when they spotted the sheep grazing surefooted high in the cliffs. Here and there we saw caribou in twos or threes. Both males and females have antlers, the males’ much larger. We learned that caribou and moose hooves are splayed like snowshoes for firmer footing in the thick snow.

Someone who knows about these things pointed out that the early supporters of the preserve argued against a paved road. The hard surface, they said, would handicap moose and caribou with their hard hooves and give an advantage to pursuing bears and wolves, with their soft padded paws, although bears typically don’t hunt big game.

The caribou and moose consume huge amounts of vegetation, up to 80 pounds per day as they gain weight for winter. Both species remain active through the brutal winters, when temperatures may dip to -50F. Eric pointed out the bare branches of saplings at moose-head height.

We did see one grizzly moving along a ridge, head down, prospecting for roots and berries, fattening for the coming winter. Late August already is autumn in Alaska. Even at a healthy distance the animal was huge, the fur a pale tan to orange, the telltale hump showing the bear’s massive muscular shoulders.

We made our turn at the 43-mile end point with a sharp backup maneuver. We dismounted a couple of times to snap photos. Within 10 miles of the park entrance the terrain shifts gradually from rugged to rolling, wide, deep green hills stretch into plains. We spotted three female moose within a couple of hundred yards of the road. A half-dozen cars and trailers slowed and stopped, typical of crowded lower-48 parks. We got our moose photos.

We stumbled from the bus, worn out by nature, and took a day off. The next morning we got aboard the McKinley Express for the 240-mile rail trip to Anchorage. The train chugged smoothly but slowly, never above 50 mph, mostly 30-40. We crossed the Tanana River and plunged into the southern Denali mountains, thick fir forest, more near-trackless wilderness, rushing white water, an occasional settlement, cabins of solitary off-the-gridders.

One of the forest residents is Shannon Cartwright, author of dozens of well-loved children’s books. Another, nicknamed Repo, formerly worked as a repo man but also served as an Air Force F-16 pilot. Both have modest cabins in the middle of nowhere but near the track. We spotted a bunch of abandoned cabins, a stillborn AirBnb development. Not a soul in sight, though.

The passage showed us more spectacular country. We also were halted to switch tracks while waiting for a speedier freight train. The conductor got off and turned the switch by hand. By mid-afternoon the landscape flattened.

We passed the odd but tourisy village of Talkeetna, where the mayor is a cat. Eventually we saw a chain of pretty lakes, then Anchorage suburbs Willow and Wasilla before pulling through the Chugach Mountains, which ring Anchorage. The city, Alaska’s metropolis, was drizzly and chilly. We deboarded, said thanks to the train crew, and hopped the hotel bus. We took our memories of Alaska: endless green, lonely, mysterious, but magical.