Alaska Travel
When Does a Trip End?
A Yukon River Adventure in Alaska that will stay part of me forever.
I often ask myself, “when does a trip end?”
Is it when you stop hearing the twirling water splash against the fiberglass canoe? Or when you no longer see the eroded river banks where spindly trees lean over the water like limp children’s fishing poles ready to tumble into the rushing currents? Or maybe when you stop feeling the pinch of muscle aches just under your shoulder after hours of paddling down the river? Or is it when the horizon begins to vanish at the end of your perception of a memory of a mighty river so far away you barely believe it was real?
I have not yet let go of my journey down Alaska’s Yukon though it’s been a week since we pulled our candy-colored canoes out of the river at a town called Circle. Circle, Alaska was not much of a place. It was a spot that punctuates the end of the road with a question mark.
I didn’t yet want to break through the membrane which keeps me there. I didn’t want to enter into my default life of built things — airplanes, plastic-wrapped food, and asphalt paths we call freeways that wrap around me like constricting snakes.
