Alaska 01: Solitude

Click, Like, Tweet, #Hashtag, Post, Follow, Stream, Comment, Meme, Selfie, Selfie, Selfie, Hustle, Hustle, HUSTLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Whoa there, Slow Down. STOP. Breathe. Relax.

Imagine a place where there is no Social Media, no Influencers, no mobs of people taking Selfies, no Internet, no 4G. In fact, your phone just won’t work outside of airplane mode. Sounds like a fantasy world, right?

I assure you this place is very real. It DOES exist. This is Alaska. It is a land so big, so vast, so wild, so remote, that most of it is undeveloped wilderness. We live in an age of constant chatter and noise. Our smartphones are always on, the internet is consuming much of our daily lives and we’re seeing more and more of the world through a digital lens in a maddening hustle to maintain our online presence.

One of my favorite things about Alaska is that I have the opportunity to disconnect from my phone. My digital self if forced to take a break when I am exploring the mountains and glaciers in America’s Last Frontier. Don’t worry, there is internet and you can use your phone in Alaska! Nearly all of the most popular tourist destinations have a cellular signal of some sort that allows you to navigate, search for lodging or restaurants and, yes, even post your latest and greatest masterpiece on social media. However, many of the most sought after recreational areas have limited or no online access. You can hike on a glacier, backpack through the mountains, float a river or take a scenic flight through scenes that look otherworldly. In fact, you have probably only seen places like this in movies, while flipping through the pages of National Geographic or while surfing through your favorite social media platform. But here’s the catch. You may not be able to take a photo and post it to social media immediately. Sorry Influencers!!! You may even have to wait several days depending on where you are or what you are doing. But that’s ok. I’ll bet you won’t even care. You will be so thrilled to simply be there and enjoy this impressive landscape that you will actually be relieved to have no pressure to do anything but smile.

Alaska is one of the few truly wild places left on this Earth. As the world population continues to climb and urban sprawl extends further and further, we are losing more and more of our wilderness areas every year. Fortunately, we still do have places of natural beauty that force us to disconnect from the digital world and reconnect with the earthly one. We are animals, not digital avatars. We need to step on a 2000 foot deep block of ice, hop across giant car-sized boulders, walk barefoot on the sandy shores of a river or hike miles through a kaleidoscope of brilliantly colored wildflowers. And we need to watch a thousand pound grizzly bear chomping on wild berries (from a distance!), walk among a herd of dall sheep grazing high in the mountains or witness the magical grace of a herd of caribou prancing through the tundra.

Solitude is becoming a rare thing in the ever increasing hustle and bustle of our everyday lives. Sure, we are social animals and need to connect with other members of our tribe. But we need to step off the grid once in awhile to reconnect with our planet. Reconnect with ourselves. We’re spending more time looking down at our phones than looking out at the real world around us. We’re investing more time in our digital lives than actually exploring the riches of our natural world around us. And simply put, this is stressing us out and making us less happy humans.

Go to Alaska just once in your lifetime. I promise it will change your outlook on life. It will change your life!

Where Do You Want to Go?

Backpackers on a glacier in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, Alaska (Summer 2019).

Where do you want to go? Where have you always dreamed of traveling? What are those things and places that you have seen in books, photos, movies, etc. and always wanted to see?

I know that you all have an answer to those questions. We all have that dream vacation that we’ve been wanting to take. Well, we are at the very beginning of a whole new decade: 2020. I hope to encourage you to travel this year and start the new 20’s off with a bang. Make it epic. Make it that once-in-a-lifetime trip. Make it that trip that makes you want to quit your job!

I’m going to do my part in helping you to make that dream trip come true. I have been fortunate to have traveled to a lot of other-worldly places that most people have probably only seen in the pages of National Geographic. I quit my job a long time ago so that I could see all of the epic places on my list and I have even been a mountain guide in Alaska for ten years. So I am going to use my travel knowledge to help you plan your adventures by writing weekly blog posts about various topics.

I will start things off by highlighting my favorite place on this planet: Alaska. Join me for the next several weeks as I guide you on a tour of America’s Last Frontier!

Calling an Audible

2019 has been a very big year for me. Although it feels like the year has flown by at lightning-like speed I am actually really amazed (and impressed!) with how much I have accomplished. When I think about the reason why I have been even more productive than normal, I am reminded by this photo that I took in Alaska back in July. I was guiding a backpacking trip and had an ironclad plan that was sure to blow my clients’ minds. Then, the night before our trip, a once in a year event, called a jokulhlaup, happened that caused a beautiful display of nature’s power. A large lake on the side of a glacier drained leaving skyscraper-sized icebergs beached next it (as seen in the photo). So I made the decision to change our plans so my clients could witness this relatively rare event. Needless to say they were not disappointed! So the one difference that I noticed this past year is that I learned the value in calling an audible every now and then.

I have always been a very motivated person, a really hard worker who is always trying to learn new things. As an independent freelance Illustrator I hustle a lot. In fact, I am always doing something. If I am not working on art, I am trying to find new clients or working on any number of the things that are necessary to run a small business. I never really relax in the traditional sense because I tend to get bored very quickly and feel an overwhelming urge to move. In fact, I struggle to even sit through an entire movie that I am “watching” on Netflix as I am working on photo editing, illustration projects or other business things. So I seem to be ideally suited for the stress and strain of the freelance lifestyle. However, despite my penchant for thriving in an ever changing environment, I came to the realization a year ago that I am not immune to the soul draining effects of every freelancer’s nemesis: BURNOUT.

Honestly, I had never truly experienced burnout before so I didn’t even know what was happening at first. I just knew that I had lost my passion for art. I had been a working Illustrator for a few years and always had a burning to desire create art, create more art and then still create more art over and over every single day. I love drawing and painting and always have as far as I can remember. But then one day in October 2018 that fire in my belly suddenly just fizzled out. It happened so suddenly that I was taken aback. What the hell just happened?!? Why do I not want to make art anymore? Why do I dread the mere thought of picking up a pencil, pen or brush? And more importantly, how do I get my passion back? Oh crap, what do I do now?

As one might expect I just tried to power through and write off my feelings (or lack thereof) in hopes that somehow things would change back to normal. But surprise, surprise things only got worse! And besides, Albert Einstein said it best, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.”. So it was at that pivotal moment that I realized that I needed a change.

Early in November 2019 I bought my first “real” camera. I had been thinking about learning photography for years but was never quite ready to commit to it. After all, committing my life to one artistic medium was surely enough. Or so I thought. I then realized I had (over)worked myself to the point of being wholly dissatisfied with any drawing, painting or illustration that I created. Everything I made sucked (at least it did to me) and I felt like my energy had been sucked dry. I clearly needed to step away from illustration and take a break. But I also needed to do art. I NEEDED to make something damn it!!! Creating art is like breathing air for me. I can’t just stop. I can’t survive without it because it’s woven into my DNA.

So I had an epiphany just as immediately as I was smacked down with burnout. I had a grand plan for continuing with my illustration career. I was fully committed and following the playbook, steadily advancing down the field. But then I suddenly realized that the game simply wasn’t working for me anymore. My perfect playbook just wasn’t doing what I wanted it to do anymore. So I finally said screw it, I’m calling an audible.

That day in November just one year ago represents a sort of rebirth for me as an artist. I now have two artistic mediums, illustration and photography, that feed off of and inform one another. And following a three month break from illustration to focus on photography I was inspired to not only start drawing and painting again, but I had discovered a passion for making illustrated maps. My burnout had been my subconscious brain telling me that I was on the wrong path. So in taking a break from illustration and picking up a camera I was able to still create art but look at the world through a different lens (pun completely intended!). Learning to create art through photography helped me to advance and grow as an illustrator. And I suspect that the reverse will also be true in the coming years.

So I will say it again, this past year has been a big one. I started to learn photography and I have already started to make some money with it. This second creative medium reignited my passion for illustration and allowed me to evolve as an artist. My entire vision for my professional career has been forever altered by this experience. I am so excited for 2020 to see what I accomplish in the next year. But whatever the future has in store for me, I know that from now on, when I feel stuck, frustrated, bored or burned out, I am definitely going to call an audible!