One Summer I Spent in a Tent, Heaven, ALASKA: 1986

ALASKA Summer, 1986. One tent. One glacier. One life, wide open.A young man trades the lower 48 for eight weeks in the Wrangell Mountains of Alaska, where bears wander the roads, mail day is the social event of the week, and peaks stand so tall they haven't even been named.He sleeps on ice, bushwhacks through alder, studies rock glaciers no one has touched, and watches icebergs shatter in real time. He learns at the side of a world-renowned glaciologist, fishes for Dolly Varden in beaver ponds, and stands in cirques so immense the word "beautiful" breaks under the weight.This is his journal. Raw, profane, and full of wonder. Every mosquito bite, every poncho ride down a snow chute at thirty miles an hour, every fireweed blossom pressed into an envelope and carried home.He arrived humming "Sultans of Swing" on a bush plane with Marlboro Reds in his pocket. He left with something no song could capture, but he's been trying ever since."God created some beautiful places and then he created Alaska."