Talkeetna Story-Where the Rivers Meet

 

Talkeetna Story—Where the Rivers Meet

As a child of the ’70s, I spent my days outdoors—unsupervised in suburban Connecticut. The local reservoir was my forest sanctuary. Even then, I was shaping my identity, sensing the spiritual powers embedded in the living landscape. It is there that I began the process of becoming what Mourning Dove calls a “persistent seeker,” one who recognizes the spiritual energies in the natural world.^1 At home I’d sit on my dad’s lap, flipping through National Geographic, imagining what those distant worlds might feel like.

My real nature-immersion story begins later—at twenty-five, when I left my happy home to see what I could find out. I went seeking the moments that Thomas Berry describes: moments when we are truly ourselves.^2

During college, two friends went on outdoor courses with NOLS—the National Outdoor Leadership School. One climbed Mount Aconcagua; the other spent a semester in Patagonia’s wilds. Their stories of survival with only what they carried inspired me. I wanted that too, but the program seemed expensive, impossible even, and I filed it away as a daydream.

After college, living in Seattle, I immersed myself in outdoor culture. I worked at REI, joined The Mountaineers, and even heard Reinhold Messner speak about his Everest expeditions. One night, before a Rolling Stones concert, my roommate and I were in a pub. Nearby stood two men—one large and striking. His friend nudged me, saying, “My friend here just climbed Everest.” I joked, “Reinhold Messner?” He laughed. Not Messner, but similar feats.

He spoke of his recent Everest expedition, where, for the first time, they brought down garbage—used oxygen canisters—a huge environmental effort long before anyone worried about Everest’s trash. I had never considered the human footprint on even the most remote, sacred places.

At the concert, we snuck to their floor seats and danced to “Jumping Jack Flash.” Later, over a beer, I asked Scott how he found his way into the mountaineering life. He shared that in his youth he climbed in the Shawangunks nestled between Lake Minnewaska and Mohonk—not far from my ancestral hometown in Kingston, New York—and later he'd worked for NOLS as an instructor. When he mentioned NOLS, I confessed I had always wanted to take a course but couldn’t afford it. He looked me in the eye: “That’s b.s.—if you really want to do something—if you take the time to look deeply, you find a way forward.” His solution-oriented vision made an impact.

Route-finding in the Talkeetnas—where there are no national park trail maps and no established trails—even staring at a topo map, the best path is never obvious. A friend recently cautioned me, “Don’t mistake the map for the territory.” Instantly, I was transported back to navigating Alaska. It takes real effort to step back, look closely, and see clearly what must be done and where you must go.  I learned there to pause before I act--something I continue to work on today. Barbara Kingsolver wrote that our greatest and smallest explanations of ourselves grow from place; though she referred to one’s place of origin, my experience in the Alaskan backcountry shows that each place we enter in nature reveals more truths about who we are and who we are capable of becoming.^3

The day after I met Scott, I told my cousin—an avid climber—that I had met a mountaineer at the concert. “Scott something,” I said. Then I remembered the business card he had handed me: Mountain Madness—Scott Fischer. My cousin’s reaction: “Do you have any idea who he is?!” Inspired, I took a teaching job, lived simply, saved money, and applied to NOLS. I was accepted for the Alaska Outdoor Educator course in the summer of 1996. Scott had recommended Alaska because he had instructed there and said it was the best place to truly test yourself in nature. In the end, I sold my car to pay tuition and travel to Alaska. I had found my way.

The trip meant more than I realized. I had lost my dad to leukemia a few years before, and I sensed he would have loved this journey for me. Alaska was not just about testing my mettle and learning Leave No Trace practices—it was about mourning and honoring my father.

I walked through icy streams and glacial plains, singing to keep grizzlies away, sharing stories about my father. Those thirty days transformed me. The Talkeetnas’ vastness and beauty revealed a new power: the ability of nature to hold grief, witness pain, and offer space for healing—and to help me find the courage to live fully and bravely.

In Alaska, the land taught me who we are in relation to place. In grizzly country, teamwork isn’t optional—it’s survival. Facades drop. The masks we wear in daily life have no place. You must connect, meet each other as you truly are, see the unique value in every person—and trust your own worth. As Jay Griffiths observes in Kith, land can shape someone’s psyche, giving fragments of themselves that they might not otherwise discover.^4 The people I had just met listened quietly as I spoke of my dad, saying what I could not at his hospital bedside or funeral. The mountains seemed to listen with reverence, and the icy glacial pools washed away the residue of grief. For the first time in years, I felt free. I felt my father’s love.

Myself and my instructor Eleanor Huffines

Two months before my trip—in May 1996—tragedy struck: Scott Fischer died on Everest in a disaster that shook the climbing world. He was very much on my mind throughout my expedition. When asked to share what brought us to the Talkeetna Outdoor Educator course, I told my story about Scott. My instructor, Eleanor Huffines, said, “I knew him well. I am so glad to hear this story. It sounds so very like him.” The media often portrayed him poorly; the man I met at the concert was nothing like Krakauer’s account in Into Thin Air. The man I met had given his life trying to save the group he led up Everest.

I carried his inspiration forward. I loved NOLS so much I returned the following season to work at their Pacific Northwest Branch, in between the Cascades and Olympic Mountains. That job opened doors of opportunity—like teaching in El Salvador, which I would not have done without NOLS’ support. That community never shies from adventure that fosters growth. El Salvador was fresh out of civil war in 1997. My mom worried: “It’s so dangerous! That’s the place where they murdered the nuns!” Yet that experience shaped my life profoundly. Years later, when I completed my  Peace Studies M.Phil. at Trinity College Dublin, I wrote my thesis about El Salvador because in its story I saw patterns of colonialism, oppression, and greed repeated by globalized systems around the world.

Looking back, meeting Scott Fischer was a turning point. His words pushed me from fear and doubt to adventure, growth, and connection with the natural world. Two summers ago, I helped my own daughter Niamh—then sixteen and grieving the loss of her father the year before— to attend the same Talkeetna NOLS course. I guided her through the application process, secured a scholarship, and organized a GoFundMe to supplement the rest. She's called it the best month of her life--and she's had a life full of adventure. Though our experiences were thirty years apart, I love that we shared that experience. In that moment, I understood viscerally what Barbara Kingsolver wrote: “People will need wild places. Whether or not they think they do, they do. We need to experience a landscape that is timeless, whose agenda moves at the pace of speciation and glaciers. Wilderness puts us in our place. It reminds us that our plans are small and somewhat absurd, and that our choices matter a great deal.”^3

My daughter Niamh in the Talkeetnas in 2023 age 17

Alaska was that place for me. It seems to be for my daughter too. The wild, like the rivers converging in Talkeetna, continues to meet us where we are—and shows us who we can become.

Me in the Talkeetnas in 1996

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1. Mourning Dove, “Recognition of Spiritual Energies in Nature,” in Coyote Stories, ed. Jay Miller (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990), ___.

2. Thomas Berry, “Loneliness and Presence,” in The Dream of the Earth (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1988), ___.

3. Barbara Kingsolver, “Knowing Our Place,” in American Earth: Environmental Writing Since Thoreau, ed. Bill McKibben (New York: Library of America, 2008), 946–947.

4. Jay Griffiths, Kith, in A Country Called Childhood (London: [publisher], [year]), 4.