First, to all the family, friends, acquaintances, and strangers who follow this little ol’ thang: sincere thanks. It’s fulfilling to be a small part of many interesting lives.

Fairly soon, posts will become much less frequent, and what posts there are will be of a different character. Here’s why: in one month, I’ll be moving from Wasilla to Kantishna, an area inside Denali National Park.

It’s hard to grasp the sense of scale up here without having walked/biked/driven the distances, but maybe this will help.

The entrance to Denali is a 200 mile/4-5 hour drive from Wasilla. There are a handful of tiny towns along the way.

Kantishna is 90 miles from the park entrance—somewhat close by highway standards, but this road is not a highway. Rather, it’s a telescoping, very rural, controlled-access path. Near the entrance, it’s two lanes and paved, but, over the course of 90 miles, it trickles down to a one-lane gravel and (mostly) dirt affair. Add in strict access restrictions,¹ road work, passing vehicles, etc., and you have a 5-6 hour trip each way.

Naturally, services are lacking. No powerlines, phonelines, cable, fiber optic, water systems—we’re responsible for our own needs. Electricity is produced by diesel generators.² Water is pumped from a well. Food is bused/flown in. Phone service is provided by an ancient relay rig.³

And, finally, the issue most pertinent to this post: the internet is accessed via a similarly crappy satellite service. It’s slow, expensive, and only there for simple, low-bandwidth things like sending email. So, no watching videos, downloading songs, perusing image archives, uploading videos and pictures, and all those other things that constitute most of my content. The glorious minutiae of life as a hiking guide in the middle of a 6 million acre wilderness will have to fill the void.

As for the amount of updates to expect—I just don’t know. If I have to choose between spending an hour each night reading Elizabeth Bishop in the Kantishna Hills or waiting in line to use the computer… well, that’s not really a choice, now is it?

What I do know is that I’ll take pictures, shoot video, write, create music, draw, hike, think, make friends, laugh. I will have an interesting, unique story to tell. And I’ll tell it as seems best, whether as I go along or once I get back.

In closing, an offer.
If you’d like to receive a genuine letter from the wilderness, send me an email or (preferably) write me a letter.⁴ I’ll write you back (I have pretty handwriting and am an interesting person) and try to include something nice: drawings, videos, pictures, a mix CD, origami, journal entries. All I ask in return is the option to eventually post online whatever I send you (unless, of course, it’s something you’d like to keep private) or have you do it for me.