Denali is stunning, but you should see the cabbages!

Marilou Spash holds a giant crab in Alaska.

Since 1981, I’ve been putting together tours all over the world, as far afield as China and Russia. After retiring from teaching at the Bromfield School, I expanded my sphere to our own hemisphere, with trips to Machu Picchu and the Galapagos Islands, and a transit of the Panama Canal. So, a year ago, it was quite a change to select an American destination: a two-week combination land/cruise adventure to Alaska on Celebrity’s Millenium.

It was designed to pack absolutely everything in. To top it off, most of my group’s participants were from Harvard—two dozen in all.

Starting in Fairbanks, we entered a new, high-latitude dimension, where the sun both rises and sets in the north—a world almost without darkness from mid-May to the end of July. It was eye-opening to realize that in the northern part of the state there are 80 to 85 days of total darkness in mid-winter. The ski season had ended just a day or two before we got to Fairbanks, so it appeared incongruous at an Athabascan village on the Chena River to see 63-pound cabbages and “dandelions capable of eating small children,” according to a native. With such a reduced growing season, combined with 20 hours of daylight, even a pumpkin can reach 1,000 pounds.

Although we visited Alaska before Gov. Sarah Palin became known nationally, we later remembered that Wasilla, her home town, was the fastest-growing area in the state. Not only does Alaska not have an income tax, but every resident also receives a share of the Permanent Fund. Created in 1980 to distribute oil revenues to citizens, the fund doled out $1,600 per person in 2007.

Perhaps everyone who visits Alaska wants to get a look at Mt. McKinley, or Denali, which means “the great one” in Athabascan. Talkeetna, which is noted for its moose-dropping contest (scat is dropped from a crane onto a bull’s eye in a parking lot), is the take-off point for climbing the 20,320-foot behemoth. Stores sell bumper stickers advertising the place as “a small drinking town with a climbing problem.”

My view of Denali came from a Jeep Wrangler as we rode on Stampede Road deep into the park on a crazy route through deep gullies filled with water, narrow passages, and seemingly “bottomless” lakes. Stampede Road is the route Christopher McCandless took to Denali, as chronicled by Jon Krakauer in Into the Wild. Joyce Garrick and I saw Denali on the way in, and were stunned by its presence. It rises from its base on a 2,500-foot plateau to its highest point. This makes it the highest vertical face in the world, ascending 18,000 feet; it’s quite astounding given that Mt. Everest rises 11,000 feet.

A grizzly bear searches for ground squirrels in Denali National Park. (Photo by Marilou Spash)

Our introduction to the actual park, Denali, came on a bus, which ensures that animals are “habituated” and unaware of visitors. We had an incredible time watching a grizzly come down from the hills and dig for ground squirrels very close to our bus. The guide pointed out that Denali was a “paleo candy store” because, around 70 million BP, troodons were common there.

We savored the wildflowers, mountains, and small mammals in Denali’s subarctic ecosystem. Our trip traversed U-shaped glacial valleys, braided streams with coffee-colored glacial melt, and polychrome mountains, but none of us saw the mountain on this trip. It was sobering to learn that there are two earthquakes a day in Alaska, with 70 percent of them occurring under Denali, for it lies directly on the largest fault line in North America, which extends 1,000 miles.

Our tour included Fairbanks to Seward by land, then we traveled by sea southward to Vancouver; along the way, the adventures were monumental. At the El Dorado Gold Mine, where we panned for gold, we learned that it takes 480 grains to make an ounce of gold. Travelers made various glacial visits throughout the trip. Julie Chadwick had the most grains—about $23 worth. Joyce Garrick and I flew from Juneau to the Norris Glacier to drive dog sleds. The young people working there are mostly veterinarian majors from “the lower 48.” The dogs were so excited to be let loose for a run on the trail that they could hardly be contained. The only drawback for the dogs was the temperature; it was 35 degrees, and they prefer -20 degrees.

Another adventure involved rafting the braided rivers in the Chilkat Eagle Preserve out of Skagway. In October and November, there are thousands of eagles congregating at this spot, where they gorge themselves on dying salmon. In Ketchikan one can experience multi-eagle sightings as well. We did on the Aleutian Ballad, the crab ship featured on the Discovery Channel. It takes tourists out to explore the archipelago areas where crew members haul up an octopus and a Pacific wolf eel from their traps while throwing herring out for the eagles.

Fisherwoman Joyce Garrick with her salmon. (Photo by Marilou Spash)

The Millenium took us close to the Hubbard Glacier, a tidewater glacier, where we watched the calving and crashing of ice from our verandas. The glacier appeared infinite at five miles wide and 40 stories high.

There’s a lot of water in Alaska to investigate, and you can do it in many ways. Some of us chose to go fishing at Icy Point Strait in Hoonah. Our boat was manned by a Tlingit who regaled us with tales of giant rats eating men and duels between killer whales and a giant octopus witnessed by his grandfather. Joyce and I caught salmon, which we shipped home.

On our Knik River jet boat trip taken out of Anchorage, we saw a glacier, at the base of which were magnificent, translucent, and deep blue ice “sculptures.” My favorite looked exactly like a mushroom!

There wasn’t much we weren’t introduced to on this adventure, ranging from Susan Butcher’s Iditarod wins with her dog Granite, to musk oxen with qiviut “fur” softer than cashmere, to how to remember salmon names using your fingers as templates. Joyce summed up the trip when she said, “This trip is like Michener’s Alaska. By the time we get to the end, we won’t remember what happened in the beginning.”

Marilou Spash is a former longtime resident of Harvard and a former teacher at the Bromfield School.

A bald eagle in the Chilkat Eagle Preserve. (Photos by Marilou Spash).	An Alaskan fisherman with a giant octopus.