August 31, 2009
I finally broke down and started a personal blog as a way of documenting my just-completed vacation to Alaska. I expect to post photos and descriptions of my trip here, where my friends, colleagues, and family can find them. Perhaps other travels will be documented here as well? We’ll see what happens.
“Alyeska,” they have said (on my trip and the free Internet), is an archaic rendering of “Alaska” as the Aleuts spoke it. It can mean “great land,” “mainland,” or “great country.” It has been roughly translated as “an object towards which the action of the sea is directed,” or “that which the seas break against.”
Alyeska also was the name of a skiing community near Girdwood in the early 1960s — until the storied Alaska Earthquake of 1964 dumped it into Girdwood. As we pushed our way inland through central Alaska, each guide described another transformation wrought by this largest quake in North America, which had a moment magnitude (Mw) of 9.2. The tectonic lifting of the sea floor led to landslides, avalanches and tsunamis. It collapsed place upon place, and land and sea each broke the other.
I visited Alyeska/Girdwood on my trip, and I choose “Alyeska” for the title of this blog because I’m captivated by its vowels, its physicality, its figurative play, its promise of stories between the thickening maps I’ve steadily acquired, as I try to understand where I’ve just gone.
What better ways to describe what I’m looking for when I go traveling?
Yours truly,
The Alyeska Traveler
P.S. – June 19, 2010
Clearly, this blog has expanded far beyond the borders of the largest of the United States. I’m thinking of it now as a journal about the role of travel in my life — recently completed travels get the most attention, but I’m also posting about memories of vacations past, visits from out-of-towners to my home turf, and occasionally, photos and thoughts about home when I approach it with my “traveling” mindset. So the blog is still about exploring “alyeska” with a small “a” (the great land), but we’re no longer cruising near the 60th parallel.
I have no immediate plans to return to Alaska. But I sometimes hear the Prince William Sound calling my name. You never know what might happen in the future . . .
P.P.S – May 1, 2011
You will have noticed by now that, in January, Alyeska Journal morphed into a photography and travel blog, emphasis on the photography. In fact, I’ve taken most of the posted photographs since January within a mile of my apartment. This is great land here, too.
Work demands are keeping me in Hyde Park an awful lot these days, but there should be a little traveling in store when the summer comes.
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Nice cover shot there. Is that on location in Girdwood?
No – I actually took the cover shot from the middle of Icy Strait (about which, more later).
I’m afraid, I took no pictures of Girdwood myself because I was there a very short time, and because most of that time it was dark. But I did have some exceptionally good crab salad in a 4 Diamond Restaurant with a view at the top of a tram. More to come about that, too.
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