Tongass---No Rain, No Rainbow Falls
A Watershed Moment
The way I see it, if you want to see Rainbow Falls, you have to put up with the rain.
You Have to Put Up with the Rain
The reward and the weather arrive together.
Salmon, Rain, and Judgment
I think salmon fish in the package is nice, but then I think rain is wet, so who am I to judge?
Tongass National Forest
Many consider the Tongass National Forest the crown jewel of the national forest system. One thing is certain: it was a watershed moment—a point after which nothing would ever be quite the same in my appreciation for precipitation.
Rain was no longer the path of moist resistance. I liked it.
I Finally Got My Bearings
Alaska has a way of correcting scale. Forest, mountain, water, and weather all insist that the traveler become appropriately small.
Heavy Traffic Without the Road Rage
Neil Young once imagined Mother Nature abandoning a pillaged planet in search of a new beginning—a silver seed. Alaska feels like the place the cruise ships went looking for it.
When the Caribbean slips into the off-season, tourists board ships to find a new place to colonize—or at least inhabit for eight hours. The ships arrive like floating neighborhoods, unloading temporary citizens into ports framed by mountains, cold water, and the illusion that wilderness can remain untouched while thousands of us photograph it.
Nature Supplies the Frontier
Rust never sleeps. Neither does tourism. But somewhere between Rainbow Falls and the cruise-ship wake, Alaska still manages to make the traveler stop, look, and get his bearings.