It was Mount Denali day! We rose early in order to have our bags out by 7am, per instructions. Headed to the lodge for breakfast. Then to the tour bus.
Eventually we climb to 2,400 feet along Denali park highway, the highest point on it.
We can't see the peak whatsoever despite driving towards it for a couple hours. Apparently the great height is both blessing and curse, the latter in that clouds more easily obscure it. It has its own weather system. Sometimes the bigger the object, the more you can't see it but let the theologians ponder that.
Eventually we reach "the point", a commanding view indeed, where an elderly Native American woman gave us a talk on her culture and led us in an Indian dance.
Meanwhile I was wondering how you hide a 20,000 ft mountain, the highest in North America? Apparently clouds can. I asked the guide if we could see any part of the base so that later I can circle that part of the photo and say, "Trust me bro, Denali is here". But alas she said no. Superior they say never gives up her dead nor does Mount McKinley show herself. As a famous sportswriter wrote of Ted Williams not acknowledging the crowd after his final home run: "the gods do not answer letters".
The long build-up was akin to The Wizard of Oz where we traveled down the long yellow brick road and at the end meet a guy behind a curtain of clouds.
Our tour guide tried to make the best of it primarily by not mentioning it. Denial at Denali is a powerful drug. We made our way semi-ignorantly thinking we'd see the majestic mountain. The stops were "make work" types of things, like stopping by a restored cabin used by park rangers.
Our guide saw caribou on two occasions and we stopped the bus and we all furiously glassed the but no dice. Of the bus of about 30, maybe 2-5 people saw it, despite sitting there maybe ten minutes each time. It's amazing how difficult it is for us "civilians" to find animals out in their natural habitat.
I thought, "I'm going to have a T-shirt made with a cloud with caption 'Mount McKinley'. Or maybe "Mount Disappointment". Our waitress says her parents coming to town next week and she's crossing her fingers they'll get to see the hidden one. She says it feels like all summer it's been missing in action. Said maybe a normal summer you see it 30% of the time but this time like 7%. Who knew? I would've had I read the guidebook I bought.
A nice surprise was the Denali Park Village lodge. Our stay here is brief but memorable: a charming little "village". Because this campus is wooded, has no cars, and where buildings are made of wood logs, it felt sort of "Williamsburg-y". Indeed the dinner theatre had maids serving in bustiers from the gold rush era. But, as James Kunstler has said, any place without cars is intrinsically appealing.
We had dinner at the lodge and the prices were spruce-tip high. I squandered $30 on a burger, albeit a mix of elk, wild boar, bison and Wagyu beef. Surprising (or not) it tasted like a hamburger.
Afterward we had that quintessential Alaska experience: simply a walk outside. The good-sized Nenana river was practically in our backyard and behind it forest-covered mountains. It was like walking into a postcard or oil painting. The trail was gravel and led to a beach with soft gray sand and a few scattered rocks as if for effect. The water color was not like I've seen in Ohio - a light slate-ish color, presumably from pulverized rock, but a much finer coloring than the clay or topsoil of Ohio streams.
Ironically, it was a much more beautiful and inspiring hike than that in Denali around the visitor center earlier today. There it was fine by many standards, if not Alaska's. Lots of trees damaged by beetles. We saw animal scat that looked unfamiliar (later looked it up and it was moose poop). We went off path to what looked like nothing much more than a game trail. It was mostly uphill but was interesting for the views down and the spruce with their straight and tall profiles grow on you.
Earlier we'd watched an 18-minute film in the theatre at the Denali park visitor center and they said the highlight of Denali is Mount Denali. Obviously. Ouch!
I already miss the mountains, specifically walking early morning out of our Denali park village room and immediately seeing over the 3-story buildings a spruce-laden mountain. I think they serve to remind us that there’s something larger than ourselves. The sky alone should do that but the sky feels invisible to us most of the time. It’s like air. But mountains are harder to ignore. Maybe that’s why there’s such “stickiness” in terms of attachment people feel to mountains. Appalachians are famously reluctantly to leave their homes despite poverty and a lack of work opportunities. North Carolina is one of the fastest growing states and Alaskans and Alaska transients tend to stay there. John Denver lived in flat places all his childhood but later wrote a song about West Virginia and lived permanently in the mountains of Colorado. A guy we met on the plane who was dressed in buckskin and looked like an early 20th century trapper was born in Kansas and spent his childhood wanting to live in Alaska. He did so right after he served in the military and has been there 50 years. His name is Howard. Lives in a tiny town just outside of Nome and was traveling to the Mayo Clinic.