Fall in Alaska/My 2027 Brooks Range Trips Are Now Live!

My Alaska Brooks Range 2027 trips are now live! Trips for women, trans and non-binary people, and trips that are open to everyone. Two trips in the western Brooks range, three trips in Gates of the Arctic (central Brooks range). These trips sell out, so apply soon if you want to join!

My trips are education-based and in the style of long-distance hiking (modern, lightweight gear and footwear, modern navigation techniques) so you’ll leave with skills you can use on other trails and cross-country routes. You’ll also leave with the confidence to safely plan your own cross-country route in the Brooks range!

Gates of the Arctic trips are here, Western Brooks range trips are here.

Fall has come to the Alaskan interior. No more warm, muggy days; the nights have cooled and rain is here. The mosquitoes have gone, the red squirrels frantically stash mushrooms in the branches of the spruce trees. Darkness returns from a season away, dropping her bindle stick on the floor and pulling a chair up to the hearth. It’s strange to have her back, to be honest I’d forgotten about her entirely. When the light dims at ten p.m. I feel disoriented- why can’t I see anything? Are my eyes broken? We’re entering the brief stretch of time in Alaska where the balance between night and day is “normal”- we’ll rest here for a month, gathering strength, and then the night will unhinge its jaw and swallow the day whole.

Did I have a summer? It was over so fast. I’m filled with regret and a sort of retrospective FOMO. I spent an entire month guiding in the Brooks Range, that’s so much outside time! And yet I am greedy for more, greedy to stack half a dozen Alaska summers on top of each other and experience them all simultaneously, like a huge sandwich I cannot fit in my mouth. I didn’t go to any outdoor live music. I didn’t do any boat things. I rode my bike essentially zero. I didn’t pick berries. I only swam once, a week ago, on one of the last warm days, in a gravel pit in town. I didn’t garden (I never garden, I’m always gone too much, but still!). I didn’t visit any friends on their land projects. I didn’t backpack in the Chugach mountains or the Alaska range or the Wrangells. I didn’t drive to Mccarthy, or Chicken, or Valdez.

I’ve written about this before, but Alaska summer is like a music festival where all the bands are playing simultaneously, so whichever one you go to you’ll miss all the rest.

“I miss winter,” a friend said the other day, as she gazed out at the way the evening light cast the spruce forest in gold. I understood what she meant- not that summer wasn’t wonderful, but that it was too wonderful; that excitement and fear can be one and the same and that a person gets tired. Summer here rushes in and out like a manic, charming houseguest, wooing everyone and then ghosting right when you start to get comfortable. Winter is secure attachment; winter settles in and stays until you’ve forgotten that any other season will ever, or has ever existed. Time becomes elastic, the days somehow double in length. There are three, maybe four nights in each 24-hour period. There’s still so much outdoor stuff to do but suddenly, there’s more than enough time to do it all, plus more cozy indoor time than you can imagine.

I know a lot of people visit Alaska in summer but to really know it, you should visit in winter. Alaska is a winter place.

I’ve been working on a fun new project lately, that I’m sure I’ll talk more about here eventually- I’ve been learning to build! I’ve wanted to learn to build for a long time, but haven’t had the right opportunity. So far I love it. It’s just like sewing, except you’re an ant.

That’s all for now,

Carrot