Anchorage

The first thing that undid us was the light. We arrived in June, and Anchorage in June barely bothers with darkness — the sun loops low across the sky and comes down almost to the horizon before thinking better of it and climbing again. Our first night, jet-lagged and wired, Lia and I gave up on sleep entirely and walked down to the Tony Knowles Coastal Trail at what our phones insisted was eleven at night. The city was hushed but the sky was gold, and across Cook Inlet the mountains stood pink and unreal. A cyclist nodded to us as though this were perfectly ordinary. For them it was. For us it rearranged something about how days are supposed to work.

Where the Wild Presses In

Anchorage is a real city — traffic, coffee shops, a downtown grid — but the wilderness never lets you forget it is only borrowing the land. On our second morning a bull moose stood in the middle of a residential street, unbothered, chewing, while cars waited patiently behind it. We waited too, hearts going fast. Later, on the Coastal Trail, a sign warned us cheerfully about both moose and bears, and I realised the warning was sincere. We walked out to Earthquake Park, where the ground still slumps and buckles from the monstrous 1964 quake, birch trees leaning at drunken angles above the mudflats. The land here is alive and not entirely tamed, and you feel it in your spine.

The Market, the Salmon, the People

We spent a Saturday at the downtown market on Third Avenue, and it turned out to be the warmest afternoon of the trip. Stalls of reindeer sausage and fireweed honey, a man selling ulu knives, a woman whose entire table was jarred smoked salmon in a dozen preparations. Lia bought far too much of it. We talked to a bush pilot, a schoolteacher, a Yup’ik carver — everyone in Anchorage seems to have arrived from somewhere else with a story about why they stayed. The food surprised me most: fresh king salmon grilled simply, halibut so clean it barely needed anything. We ate at a place near the Ship Creek overlook and watched anglers pull silver fish straight from the water below.

Into the Chugach

You cannot see the Chugach Mountains all day and not want to be in them, so we drove up to Flattop, the most-climbed peak in Alaska and, mercifully, one of the most forgiving. The trail scrambles up over tundra and loose rock to a broad summit, and from the top the whole basin opens — the city small and grey below, Cook Inlet flat and pewter, and on a clear day, far to the north, the pale ghost of Denali itself. We caught it, barely, floating above the horizon like a rumour. Lia gripped my arm. A marmot whistled somewhere below us. We stayed up there far longer than we planned, because the long Alaskan light gave us no reason to hurry down.

Getting There

Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport is the hub of Alaska, with direct flights from Seattle, several other West Coast cities, and seasonal long-haul routes — we connected through Seattle, which is the usual way in. From the airport it is a ten-minute drive to downtown. A rental car is close to essential; Anchorage itself is walkable, but the whole point of the place is the country around it, and the Seward Highway south is one of the great drives of the world. We went in June for the endless light, but late August brings the first autumn colour and, if you are lucky, the earliest northern lights beginning to return to the darkening sky.