Love Affair

My mom often teases me that my greatest love affair has always been with Alaska. She isn't wrong. Love, as I have come to know it through this place, does not require another human being. There is love here in its purest and most intense form. There is magic here that reaffirms my belief that magic is real and reality is magic. The land here is sacred. And here I am offered a connection to the divine; a feeling for which I often feel painfully homesick. It is not just home - the place I grew up - but home, the place where my body and soul understand peace, balance and harmony. It is a place I trust like no other. This is love. And over and over again it reminds me that we are merely a thread in the fabric of the universe ... not the needle that stitches it together.

In this week's episode of adventure (this time closer to 48 hours...) Martha and I explored The Denali Highway. I did, at one point, actually say out loud to Martha: "I give up" as I put down my camera. Because try as I might, I cannot truly capture this love - this divinity - in photographs.

Not pictured: the surprised porcupine, the startled moose and ... the gargantuan, plentiful and legendary Alaskan mosquitos.