Pockets of Roads in a Great Sea of Wildness
Growing up, I never really noticed them. It happens to us all. Certain parts of the landscape drift by without our acknowledgement. We utilize them, depend on them, require them, and we do it automatically, our need hardly registering in our busy, cluttered minds. They’re simply part of the landscape, like trees, rocks, lakes, and mountains; they are there and we don’t give them a second thought. But with the right opportunities, the right timing, the right perspective, suddenly we can’t help but notice them, and they are no longer a subtle part of the landscape we have so long known. They are instead the most dominant and shattering aspect of the world we know so well.
After I graduated from college, I moved to Alaska. I had grown up in Maine, a wild and remote state by its own right, but felt drawn West. I ended up in Anchorage for a year and then for two more years in a cabin in the woods, five miles from a small ski town called Girdwood. In a two week vacation, you can drive almost every road in the state. It isn’t hard. From Anchorage you can drive south or north. That’s it. If you go south, it’s two hundred miles down the Kenai Peninsula to the ocean. If you go north, the highway splits, skirts mountains and lakes and meets again in Fairbanks.
I drove all of those roads in two short summers. In the entire state, roughly 600,000 square miles, there are only 14,400 miles of roads. All these roads — local, county, state, highway, Forest Service, National Park Service, paved, dirt, and jeep trail — all of them total just 14,400 miles. Montana, where I live now, has more than 73,000 miles of roads including the Forest Service roads that snake for thousands of miles through our public lands. Maine, where I grew up, has 23,000 miles of roads, all built without the helpful hand of the U.S. Forest Service. Both states’ land areas added together comprise just 1/5 of Alaska, yet they offer 82,000 additional miles to drive.
It is humbling and powerful to live in a place that has so few roads. I think it is the single largest difference between Alaska and the Lower 48. Here in Montana we have towering mountains, grizzly bears, wolves, and pristine lakes by the hundreds. We have glaciers and seemingly endless forests, wild rivers and far flung locales — you just have to hop in your car and drive a few hours to see them. In Alaska however, you have to walk. Granted there is an historic and fabled bush pilot industry that can whisk you to the most remote corners of the state, but these flights cost money — a lot of money. From the heart of Anchorage, it takes twenty minutes to get to the edge of town, and from there you can shoulder your bag and never cross another road or trail for the rest of your life. It’s an incredible feeling. To live on the edge of such a large, intact landscape bridges the gap between the one-hundred and fifty years of roaded and roadless that separates the Lower 48 from its wild past. Suddenly, all the technology, advanced suspension, horsepower, and power steering in the world don’t make the next ridge any easier to summit. Suddenly, the only thing that matters is the strength of your legs and the capacity of your lungs.
The last summer I lived in Alaska, I lived in Cordova, a remote fishing town on the south end of Prince William Sound. No roads in or out. I lived on the fishing boat in the harbor and walked to town when I needed to. While you could bring a car onto the ferry, I had parked my truck at a friend’s house in Valdez and had ridden carless to Cordova. I’d never lived in a place that you couldn’t drive to, and I left feeling like it was probably my most favorite place on earth. Occasionally we’d borrow our skipper’s old Subaru and drive the fifty miles out of town to the river and glacier that cut us off from the rest of Alaska. We’d get out, watch the ice calving, turn around and drive home. Being so totally disconnected from the rest of the world fans the embers of real independence. You feel isolated but capable, alone but empowered, small but resilient. When there are no roads, there are no excuses. You have to get the right parts to fix whatever’s broken the first time. You measure twice; you write everything you might ever need on a long list and staple it to your pants. You can’t forget and if you do, you go without. It’s the best way I’ve found of recalibrating what’s truly important and what’s not.
When I moved to Montana, the first thing that truly struck me as different was the incredible number of roads. I could leave my house in my truck and drive forest roads to Canada, Idaho, or Washington without touching the paved variety. In Region 1 — Montana, North Dakota, and the Idaho panhandle — the Forest Service alone has built 55,000 miles of roads. It is unlike anything I had ever seen. You can spend your life in those national forests, winding from valley to ridge and never touch the same dirt twice. The farthest you can get from a road in the lower 48 is in Yellowstone and it’s about twenty miles — you can still see and hear the lights from the highway. Down here, it’s easy to shoot to the store, to the movies, to a restaurant. It’s easy to go for a drive and come back a thousand miles later. But that ease has come with an incredibly steep price. Its cost is borne by the shattered landscape, the watersheds, the fish and the wolves. They suffer the most and have no voice to make their suffering heard. As I fly in and out of Missoula, traveling here or there, it makes me sad to watch as the landscape unfolds beneath the jet; I see not pockets of roads in a great sea of wildness, but rather pockets of wildness in a great sea of roads.
— Greg Peters was born in Maine way back in 1978. After graduating from college in St. Louis, Missouri he headed to Alaska and worked in Americorps for two years teaching Adult Education and English as a Second Language. Since returning to the “Lower 48,” he’s worked as a janitor, ski instructor, and organic farmer, and is currently pursuing his master’s degree in Environmental Studies at the University of Montana.
After I graduated from college, I moved to Alaska. I had grown up in Maine, a wild and remote state by its own right, but felt drawn West. I ended up in Anchorage for a year and then for two more years in a cabin in the woods, five miles from a small ski town called Girdwood. In a two week vacation, you can drive almost every road in the state. It isn’t hard. From Anchorage you can drive south or north. That’s it. If you go south, it’s two hundred miles down the Kenai Peninsula to the ocean. If you go north, the highway splits, skirts mountains and lakes and meets again in Fairbanks.
I drove all of those roads in two short summers. In the entire state, roughly 600,000 square miles, there are only 14,400 miles of roads. All these roads — local, county, state, highway, Forest Service, National Park Service, paved, dirt, and jeep trail — all of them total just 14,400 miles. Montana, where I live now, has more than 73,000 miles of roads including the Forest Service roads that snake for thousands of miles through our public lands. Maine, where I grew up, has 23,000 miles of roads, all built without the helpful hand of the U.S. Forest Service. Both states’ land areas added together comprise just 1/5 of Alaska, yet they offer 82,000 additional miles to drive.
It is humbling and powerful to live in a place that has so few roads. I think it is the single largest difference between Alaska and the Lower 48. Here in Montana we have towering mountains, grizzly bears, wolves, and pristine lakes by the hundreds. We have glaciers and seemingly endless forests, wild rivers and far flung locales — you just have to hop in your car and drive a few hours to see them. In Alaska however, you have to walk. Granted there is an historic and fabled bush pilot industry that can whisk you to the most remote corners of the state, but these flights cost money — a lot of money. From the heart of Anchorage, it takes twenty minutes to get to the edge of town, and from there you can shoulder your bag and never cross another road or trail for the rest of your life. It’s an incredible feeling. To live on the edge of such a large, intact landscape bridges the gap between the one-hundred and fifty years of roaded and roadless that separates the Lower 48 from its wild past. Suddenly, all the technology, advanced suspension, horsepower, and power steering in the world don’t make the next ridge any easier to summit. Suddenly, the only thing that matters is the strength of your legs and the capacity of your lungs.
The last summer I lived in Alaska, I lived in Cordova, a remote fishing town on the south end of Prince William Sound. No roads in or out. I lived on the fishing boat in the harbor and walked to town when I needed to. While you could bring a car onto the ferry, I had parked my truck at a friend’s house in Valdez and had ridden carless to Cordova. I’d never lived in a place that you couldn’t drive to, and I left feeling like it was probably my most favorite place on earth. Occasionally we’d borrow our skipper’s old Subaru and drive the fifty miles out of town to the river and glacier that cut us off from the rest of Alaska. We’d get out, watch the ice calving, turn around and drive home. Being so totally disconnected from the rest of the world fans the embers of real independence. You feel isolated but capable, alone but empowered, small but resilient. When there are no roads, there are no excuses. You have to get the right parts to fix whatever’s broken the first time. You measure twice; you write everything you might ever need on a long list and staple it to your pants. You can’t forget and if you do, you go without. It’s the best way I’ve found of recalibrating what’s truly important and what’s not.
When I moved to Montana, the first thing that truly struck me as different was the incredible number of roads. I could leave my house in my truck and drive forest roads to Canada, Idaho, or Washington without touching the paved variety. In Region 1 — Montana, North Dakota, and the Idaho panhandle — the Forest Service alone has built 55,000 miles of roads. It is unlike anything I had ever seen. You can spend your life in those national forests, winding from valley to ridge and never touch the same dirt twice. The farthest you can get from a road in the lower 48 is in Yellowstone and it’s about twenty miles — you can still see and hear the lights from the highway. Down here, it’s easy to shoot to the store, to the movies, to a restaurant. It’s easy to go for a drive and come back a thousand miles later. But that ease has come with an incredibly steep price. Its cost is borne by the shattered landscape, the watersheds, the fish and the wolves. They suffer the most and have no voice to make their suffering heard. As I fly in and out of Missoula, traveling here or there, it makes me sad to watch as the landscape unfolds beneath the jet; I see not pockets of roads in a great sea of wildness, but rather pockets of wildness in a great sea of roads.
— Greg Peters was born in Maine way back in 1978. After graduating from college in St. Louis, Missouri he headed to Alaska and worked in Americorps for two years teaching Adult Education and English as a Second Language. Since returning to the “Lower 48,” he’s worked as a janitor, ski instructor, and organic farmer, and is currently pursuing his master’s degree in Environmental Studies at the University of Montana.
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