Preface: A Summer in Alaska

I woke in a dim room. The fan turned without changing its note. The heat and damp made it hard to breathe. I thought again of the thin, bone-cold wind on the snow mountains. Outside it was raining. Memory struck the window like rain.

From June 29 to July 8, 2025, I crossed the whole country from New York, eight hours in the air, and chased freedom on Alaska’s roads. Those ten days are enough to remember for a lifetime.

We moved between mountains and rivers into the town of Seward. Eight of us in one Airbnb, sharing a bed with a friend, cooking, washing dishes, playing Avalon. A strange kind of happiness.

We hiked Exit Glacier. The mosquitoes came at us like bombers; we could only keep spraying. The climb itself was not hard. The view was something like Mingyong Glacier in Yunnan.

Then sea fishing. Bald eagles saw us off. The water rose and fell. I caught four rockfish and waited more than half an hour for salmon that never came — so this is what it feels like to go home empty. Back at the Airbnb the floor and the bed still seemed to rock, as if we were still on the boat. Sleep fixed it.

From Talkeetna we took a small plane over Denali, the highest peak in North America. I got the copilot’s seat, a first-person view of flying. The scale of it cannot be put into words.

On Matanuska Glacier I wore crampons for the first time. We saw the ice funnels people call toilets, and black ice like obsidian.

Kayaking among the ice at Valdez was tiring; my arms felt close to breaking. Ramming friends’ boats was fun anyway. In front of a blue berg our four kayaks lined up for a photograph.

We flew to Utqiagvik, the northernmost city in the country, and found a little Syria in North America, ruined as if after the end of the world. A place fit for exile. Past security, the airport was a crude shed packed with people, like a camp. Standing in that camp we played our last round of Avalon.

It was all like a long film. Even if you fall into the part, you have to come back. All of you were too clever; in Avalon you saw through me at a glance. I would rather have been a fool. Then there would not be so much sorrow of standing close and remaining far.

I think again of that dusk, Independence Day fireworks opening between the mountains at Valdez, brilliant and already falling. I looked out the window and went quiet. You asked what was wrong. I said, this feeling might wait to become remembrance — only, even then, it was already a dream.