K is for Kodiak: Is the Adventure Worth the Risk?

We need the tonic of wildness...At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable.
We can never have enough of nature.

~ Henry David Thoreau, Walden: Or, Life in the Woods

Back in January, I began the One Page a Day Challenge and immediately threw away my quill.  Now in April, I’m participating in the A to Z Blogging Challenge and prepping for a Wilderness Writers’ Retreat.  I need ink, a stiff drink and therapy.

Y

ou aren’t really surprised by today’s word, are you? 

You know me so well already!

Obviously, I can’t wait to go (4 months, 18 days!), but since I haven’t actually been on the Island yet, I’ll make this a wordless ~ or very nearly ~ post today.

K is for Kodiak, Alaska

My mother is convinced I will go off to the wilderness and return half-digested by a grizzly.  I won’t lie, this is actually in the realm of possibility.  A small one, but still possible.  But I know I cannot NOT go back to Alaska.  It is a Siren of old, calling to me, in turn cajoling, seducing, and begging for me to return.

I feel lost without the shelter of her majestic mountains.  I feel restless without the burn of her crisp, tight air.  But shut my ears to her song, I cannot.  It plays in my brain constantly, morning, noon, and night.

Kodiak Slideshow

John Muir would understand.  As would Everett Ruess, Chris McCandless, and countless others who have sought the peace of the wild.  It’s not so uncharted and untouched as it was in Muir’s day, but it is still pristine.  And I pray we can keep it that way for another few centuries.

I very well may come back broken.  But dying doesn’t bother me ~ been there, done that.  Not having lived….now that is a true tragedy.  I'd rather die having had a grand adventure. Is it worth the risk?  

Heck, yeah.

Oremus pro invicem,

~ Mikaela

Does nature call to you?  Do you listen?