“The core of mans’ spirit comes from new experiences”
― J. Krakauer, Into the Wild
A lasting poignant bond between that place and your deep inner self! The only memento that really matters, the one that stays with you after soaking in the sights, the sounds and everything in between. A relationship that lasts until you wither, an indescribable halo’ed meta-physical connection between the real and the imagined-between the place and inside your thoughts.
Traveling, not touring; feeling not just seeing. Shooting what you just felt, not what you never saw!
Feeling and capturing the experience behind a lens, putting things in perspective to invoke the moment at will in the future, putting you in the place of “I’m seeing, I’m observing, I’m feeling—something inside me is changing.” And then, somewhere deep inside, it invokes thoughts around, “What if I’m also being seen, being observed, used as a vehicle to learn from?” The watcher becomes the watched. Who am I, really? Thoughts that get your mind racing at a seemingly leisurely pace as you walk the halls of the Museum of the North in Fairbanks that houses the magic bus.
Arrived, have you or is just the beginning of a new journey with new frontiers in the horizon?
As you skirt along the wilderness that lies in front of you, you begin to also wonder if this might have been the same spot that once upon a time, a certain Mr. McCandless had the fortune (or not) of leaving his trace behind. While the motivators might be starkly different as some of us wander the grounds of the last frontier to live, to discover, or invent a version of ourselves that we can be inspired from, “Alexander Supertramp” probably needed the final frontier to be his last chapter. Or was it really his last chapter?
Nature is an endless giver. We can choose to partake in what appeals to our palate, our inner self, and beyond. That element of free will by itself is a liberating factor. We have the freedom, the power to create, cultivate, and manifest both at a metaphysical level alongside our thoughts while at the same time translating it to what we term “societal reality.”
In the multiverse that houses a multitude of versions of ourselves, we have the brawniness within us to invoke the one that appeals the most to us to continue our journey in the world.
One evening, while we sat around a fire at our cabin, our eyes fixated upon the setting sun in anticipation of dark skies that lay beyond, we learnt valuable lessons in of being in the moment, of letting time take its course. The Aurora have a propensity of doing their own thing. Trying to control them is an exercise in futility, you may rely on forecasts to broaden your chances, but your best course of action is to just lay there, shifting your attention to the silence only interrupted by the buzzing of the insects around the fire. And if you are willing to take a break from letting the filters in the camera or your phone capture the moment, the more you feel compelled to focus on the elements in the environment, the more you become one with the moment.
The final frontier presents a myriad and often immoderate opportunities that challenge us to “just be there and connect with mother earth as well as our inner thoughts”. Cruising through Denali, witnessing the Tundra brighten up with hues of reds, yellows and greens leads us to believe what is nature capable of conjuring up if we just sometimes leave her alone..
Also, what happens if we don’t give nature the space and feel the need to intrude at every opportunity. While the glaciers themselves leave us wide eyed, they are also a stark reminder of the impact our relentless consumerism can have. As magnificent as they stand today, they are a shadow of what they used to be a few hundred years ago.
Regardless, as the moments add up, deep within, feelings of gratitude outnumber skepticism by daylight. Opportunities to push our intentions to the universe, as wide as it may be, do not seem outlandish, thus validating views held by time-space continuum aficionados that everything, yes everything, is relative. Our inner will to have control over our thoughts transcends everything that we might have heard or believed otherwise. Everything we need is already there—right inside of us, often reminded by soft expulsions of focused energies. And opening up possibilities to create a vision for our lives because our thoughts dictate what we become, and it starts first by not letting walks through our minds by dirty feet. Everything else is gravy…
And I wished for so long cannot stay.
All the precious moments cannot stay.
It’s not like wings have fallen cannot stay.
But still something’s missing cannot say.Holding hands of daughters and sons,
And their faiths are falling down.
I have wished for so long
How I wish for you today.Will I walk the long road? Cannot stay – The Long Road, Eddie Vedder
