Hello! I’m pleased to be writing to you upon my return from a 6 week backpacking expedition across the Gates of the Arctic National Park of the Brooks Range, North America’s northern most mountains, where there are no roads or trails. I fulfilled my longest standing dream of guiding Camp Manito-Wish YMCA’s Outpost’s Alaskan Backpacking Expedition, a 2 month leadership course for high school senior women, one that I completed myself 10 years ago. This program and the Arctic changed my life then, and undeniably so once more. It’s the privilege of a lifetime to have experienced these landscapes of such ancient scale. It’s even more of a gift to have shared it with the world’s most compassionate, silly, thoughtful and whimsical women ever. Our weeks together were filled with so much laughter, water coloring, plant identification, ukulele serenades, burrito crafting, rap battling, mountain climbing, route finding, and most of all friendship building. There’s so much to say about this trip so this is simply a hello society, I can’t wait to share the stories with you!
Leave a Reply