I cannot imagine better motivation for a travel writer than time aboard a small boat exploring the previously unexplored. In a most intimate way, our family was blessed to have this opportunity - we'd been to southeast Alaska, of course, but had never seen Alaska from this perspective.
Our wide-eyed 7 year-old witnessed Alaska's raw wildness. Orcas thrashing a sea lion around, humpback whales cooperatively feeding, a young and slightly scrawny brown bear obviously new at the game of fishing. My husband entered a kayak for the first time since a bike accident nearly took his life a year ago. And me? For seven days I hiked through rainforests with no trails other than those I created with my XtraTufs, paddled around coves shared only by my cohorts and a raft or two of sea otters, and woke up every single morning to sit on the top deck of the boat, lifting a coffee cup of salute to the day. It was good. Really, really good.
Some days, I write out of sheer willpower. I know I have to do it; it's on my schedule, and to finish on time (hell, to simply go to bed without a guilty feeling in my gut) I must write, at least at little. Every once in a while, though, mother nature tickles my muse, and things are so incredibly right that I cannot imagine this book not being successful. Or, at least, completed.
Of course it helped to meet with the potential (probable?) publisher the night before I left to share a beer and talk about Alaska, kids, and the way this whole dance of bookdom will progress over the next year. I boarded the Wilderness Discoverer with a desire to relax and rejuvinate, and disembarked last Saturday with a clearer head and a sense of Alaska's undeniable ability to amaze me.
Remarkable.
