A Long Weekend in Denali National Park

by Catherine Bodry on

There are a few ways to experience Denali National Park and Preserve. One is to arrive like a rajah on the second floor of a domed rail car or lofty motor coach, and stay at one of the plush corporate lodges. From there you can book a number of excursions that include flight seeing, river rafting, and guided hikes and tours.

Or you can arrive independent of commercial companies, bus into the park, and backpack through terrain absent of trails but full of grizzlies, caribou, and panoramic views.

Our approach was a compromise between the two options above. A good friend who works for one of the large tour companies got my husband and I free round-trip tickets for the train as a gift for our one-year anniversary. While the tourists arrived from their hotels via motor coach, we parked our car in downtown Anchorage and boarded with large packs. From there it was a spectacular 8-hour ride to the park. The sky was cloudless, and Mt. McKinley (“Denali” or just “The Mountain” to locals) was looming — a rare sight.

After we disembarked we took a shuttle to Riley Creek Campground, just inside the park boundaries. We walked in, but were clearly outsiders; the campground was full of RVs and campers. We couldn’t find any bear-proof storage bins so we left our food outside the tent and hoped for the best. Not the smartest thing to do, but I figured if there had been any bear problems we would’ve heard about them. It turns out that our biggest problem was aggressive and fearless squirrels.

The next morning, our only full day in the park, we caught a 9:30 a.m. “shuttle” (read: school bus) that took us on a several-hour journey to the Toklat River, just over 50 miles in. Along the way our driver stopped for caribou, eagles, and one large but distant grizzly. The park road, 91 miles long, is unpaved and only open to shuttles; the ride is dusty and bumpy, but one of the coolest and easiest ways to access Alaska’s backcountry. You buy a ticket for as far in as you’d like to go and can get off and on wherever you want.

We arrived at the Toklat just after 1 p.m., and since it was such a perfectly warm and sunny day decided to take a hike up an enticing valley across the river.

We crossed the river, filled our water bottles from a bubbling spring, snapped the following photos,

and went on our wary way. We followed a glacial stream up the steep valley until it became more of a canyon. As we climbed, the orange walls became steep and towering and when we looked back, the top of Denali rose heavily above the mountains (see first photo).

It was one of those rare perfect Alaskan days — the sun was warm, there was a slight breeze, and no bugs. We found a patch of meadow and took a short nap before continuing up the canyon. We reached a surreal-looking landscape where the stream we’d been following split and flowed from several sources. This was our stopping point.

Since we had to make the last bus out of the park at 7 p.m. we didn’t have time to scale one of the higher ridges, much to Lael’s disappointment. Reluctantly, we made our way back down the creek, across the river, and on a waiting school bus. Back at camp we devoured our pasta and were in bed far earlier than is normal.

It turned out that our glorious weather was short-lived — it began raining sometime during the night and when we woke up everything was soggy. I peeled my damp pants on over my sweaty, dusty skin and made my way through the rain to the nearby general store, where I indulged in a latte and hot shower ($4 each). Civilization was never too far away. We boarded the train back to Anchorage later that morning, scrubbed and happy.

Band on the Run: Train Crashes the Party

by Ember Swift on

I have been thinking a lot about trains lately.

On August 4th in Prince George, BC, there was a head-on collision of two CN trains just on the edge of town. The resulting derailment created a huge fire that burned into the next day and threatened the nearby Fraser River with contamination from the small gasoline spill. One tanker was northbound carrying the oil product and the other was southbound carrying lumber. The reports say it didn’t cause any “significant” environmental damage.

Isn’t even a little bit of damage significant?

This story caught my attention because it seems to be in line with my life at the moment. I’m heading through beautiful Jasper National Park en route back to Edmonton towards a flight home and I’m thinking philosophically. The elegant mountains and the crystalline lakes, black bears (I’ve seen three!), elk and moose (two!) are all setting the scene for a little self-reflection. Nature does it to me every time.

Beautiful. Pristine. Not deserving of any damage, no matter how “minor” it is deemed to be.

I’ve come to a point in my life when I can see that it has so many possible courses – performance, touring, composition, recording or record production, teaching, writing, language study, activism, China – and I’m wondering at what point it will all collide, head on and messy. Somehow, this weekend’s train crash struck me awake with that inevitability.

(Why so foreboding, Ember? What happened to having a good time? Enjoy the party!)

I was in Prince George when that crash happened. I was there because it was Lyndell’s sister’s wedding and we were able to attend (despite its remote location) thanks to the Edmonton gig and the Wells gig that framed it perfectly.

Anyway, it was the morning of the wedding day when we saw smoke in the sky across town. That cloud hung there all day long and into the night (the fire was visible for miles) and the commotion shut down a couple of roads and was all over the radio and television. Detours were put into place and life for Prince George carried on without much fuss. The bride and all of the wedding party were nonplussed about it all and the ceremony and celebration went off without a hitch.

(Well, except for them getting hitched of course – har, har!)

Still, it was on my mind.

I remember an incident in high school when two students – one rushing east down one hallway, the other heading south along another – collided head on and emptied classrooms with their yelling. Both were hurrying, head bent, towards their single-minded destinations. At that hallway juncture, both hugged the corner as tightly as possible for ultimate speed and efficiency and they arrived at the point of collision at the exact same moment with the exact same impossible angle to see the other or to swerve around and avoid the impact. One got a mild concussion and the other a giant goose egg but nothing terribly serious. It was forgotten the next day.

“Two Students Rushing Towards Their Futures Collide: No Significant Damage.”

I thought of all this when I was reading the online headlines about the CN crash. One talks about it being a result of “management error,” which (now that I’m gratefully back being self-managed) got me thinking about my renewed active role in all this coordination. Responsibility.

It’s so much easier to blame someone else, isn’t it?

As an artist/musician, I have been five months without management and I couldn’t be happier to no longer be in that working relationship. To say it was toxic is an understatement and saying goodbye to that bad energy in my life and career was one of the best decisions I’ve made in awhile. Of course, I learned a lot – plenty – and will always be grateful for that learning, but two and a half years of working with management does not make me an advocate of hiring a manager when asked by other artists. Quite the opposite, actually.

The trouble is, since I “broke up” with my management company, I’ve realized that I don’t really want to do it either. So much paperwork and responsibility all the time and it makes me want to reverse this locomotive and ship myself back to China where my career wasn’t in my face needing maintenance, needing management.

So, “management error” sounds quite right to me, because there were a lot of those in my two and a half years of having one. But, I’m ashamed to have become accustomed to the deflection of responsibility that having the management of your career in someone else’s hands offers.

I guess it’s like letting someone else drive the train, so-to-speak.

Deep breath.

This time in my life reminds of the end of high school, a time when it was all about options and the anxiety that they presented. Because options are choice – equal levers on the train tracks leading to new lines that are just as easy and hard to navigate as the old ones were. And these new lines lead into other landscapes that are no less beautiful than the ones I’m writing this in. Everything is possible.

I guess we’re all just as liable to be on a crash course with our futures as we are to be leading ourselves safely down the tracks. The trick is making it all work together without the collisions, like a symphony, like a network of trains, like a marriage.

So, throughout the wedding, the train crash haunted me – a day to witness a couple’s significant choice: two people coming together in lifetime union.

Sounds like a soft collision to me.

Maybe not all collisions are unsafe and cause damage.

Maybe.

I’m just going to choose to believe that and stop worrying. Enjoy the party, kick back and laugh more. After all, no mistake is going to be intentional and it all leads to learning, no matter how messy it becomes. And this natural world — this gorgeous country — is just too beautiful to not enjoy while we still can.

[It was at that conclusion that I rolled down the windows of the car and started taking pictures.]

Trust.

Band on the Run: The Gatineau Choo-Choo

by Ember Swift on

I just got back from a weekend in Wakefield, Quebec. I’m at home for one day between tours and as I’m typing this, the train whistle is calling me from across the fields through my open windows. Whenever I hear it, and provided I’m not completely indisposed, I go to the window and watch the train pass. I love watching it flicker through the trees, emerge along the neighbouring fields and then disappear into the distance.

The country is beautiful out here.

Trains are also amazing pieces of machinery. In Wakefield, they have a century-old steam train – one of the few remaining working steam engines in Canada – that runs up and down the Gatineau Hills. It is a tourist attraction and I was right in there too, snapping pictures and smiling. I especially loved the sounds it makes. It really sounds just like a cartoon train with its “choo choo” and “chug-a-chug-a.” You can almost hear it whispering “I think I can, I think I can” as it gathers speed and rolls away.

Wakefield is its turning point (i.e. it actually turns around in Wakefield), which is a sight to behold.

The train gets turned around on what is called a train turntable. When the engine is pointing back the other way again, caboose taking up the rear, it chugs on back to whence it came.

The people working on the train helped to push it around, including the musicians. I couldn’t resist the punny jokes about musicians being turntablists on the side. Imagine being employed to strum your guitar on a train with the caveat that you had to be on the “train turning” crew at half time! Such a mixed list of workplace expectations! It made me smile.

My friend works at CN and talks regularly about the environmental impact of planes and automobiles versus the lighter footprint of rail travel. Trains use up to 70% less energy and cause up to 85% less air pollution when compared to a jet. They use 17 times less fuel versus a jet and 5 times less than a car per passenger kilometre. (source.) Think of how many tractor-trailers we could take off the road if we were to put more of our tax dollars into repairing rail lines and renewing efforts to promote rail transport! It boggles the mind.

I was walking alongside of this tourist train with my friend Virginia and her son, Rowan. Virginia is my drummer Cheryl’s partner and together they have this perfect three-year old whose little voice saying “choo choo” was enough to melt me into a puddle of goo right there. He was so excited about the train, (which he was correctly calling a “steam engine,”) that we had to walk its length so we could see it all as it was preparing to roll away. He kept saying “Look Mommy! It’s the conductor!” or “Look Mommy! Look at the steam!”

I followed them slowly, snapping photographs and feeling wistful. My friend’s father drove trains for a living and he passed away a few years ago now. She’s told me stories about getting to ride with him when she was a kid and I wondered if she was as excited as Rowan was right now, exclaiming the whole time to her “Papa” about what she was seeing around her. What a thrill it is for a kid to just see a train up close, let alone get to ride with the conductor! I made a mental note to ask her about those experiences the next time I see her.

When we got to the engine it was giving off shimmering rays of heat, so much so that I had to stand back a bit out of its aura. The conductor, wearing the requisite overalls, sat in his little area in the engine car equipped with a window opening large enough for him to lean out of, one summer-tanned arm dangling over the edge like the train were his personal roadster. He tipped his striped blue and a white cap for the tourists and pulled the whistle from a string above his head, just like in the cartoons, and the steam billowed upwards with a woosh. It was all so storybook-like that I just stood there gaping at the thing, captivated.

As it pulled away, we waved to all the strangers who smiled and waved back. Each face looked happy to be waved at, as though they were the only ones we were seeing and bidding farewell to. The illusion was perfect; everyone could feel special when we were waving from the platform because (separated by the tall seats) they couldn’t see their fellow passengers waving back as well. Though regardless, the smiles were genuine. I think the charm of the experience reflected in everyone’s eyes. How could it not?

When the caboose finally passed by us it was like the flop of a dragon’s tail before it disappeared into the ocean. The sound of the train moving into the distance bounced off the river water – the perfect reverb on the fade-out to a perfect evening scene. We watched it weave around the angles of the river and leave Wakefield behind. Rowan was sad to see it go and wanted to follow it, but his Mommy reminded him that there’d be another one the next day and we could see it again. He perked up quickly. Not much keeps that little voice from sounding sunny.

And now as I’m writing this, I’m wistful again. There’s something about having been around the new joy of a three-year old that can remind a grown-up exactly how beautiful everything really is. Well, that’s what it did for me.

As I leaned out my upstairs window today and watched the train, I thought about how every moment can be complete if we just give it the space to be filled. Watching the train pass by at my house takes about two or three minutes, but they were the best three minutes I have spent all day.

I’m glad I took the time.

Bangladesh’s Train Riders

by Willy Volk on

In Bangladesh, it’s common to see people riding on the roofs of trains. No, it’s not some crazy stunt; due to the huge population in the country, an inadequate number of seats on the local trains, and punishing poverty, some people are forced to “borrow” a ride now and then. I’m sure they’ll pay it back.

GMB Akash is a Bangladeshi photographer whose work captures the culture and experiences of many different kinds of Bangladeshis. One of his photo essays shows these train riders clinging to the rickety, rocketing engines. Some of the riders appear perfectly content — and some are even able to sleep on the roofs of these moving trains!

Akash is a genius at capturing motion with the lens, and his camera provides a fascinating look at a completely different world. I was amazed by the photos, and I’m sure you will be, too.

Rajasthan’s “Palace on Wheels”

by Willy Volk on

The best way to get from Lusaka to Dar es Salaam (without flying) is to take the Tanzania Zambia Railway Authority (TAZARA). I made this 2-day trip, and I loved it.

The Advantages:
* Highly affordable.
* You can easily see the surrounding countryside.
* You can chat with locals on the train and those hawking goods at the stops.

The disadvantages:
* There are no toilets; there are just holes in the floor.
* They ran out of water half-way through the 1150-mile trip.
* They stopped accepting the currency of one country the instant we crossed the border. We hadn’t changed money in advance and were charged an exorbitant rate.

In our minds, the pros outweighed the cons, however, and though we sat most of the way, it was still a rollicking adventure. That said, it was certainly no “palace on wheels.” That title is reserved for Rajasthan’s train.

The Palace on Wheels is a rail journey through northwest India. Starting in Delhi and chugging through Jaipur, Jaisalmer, Jodhpur, Sawai, Madhopur, Chittaurgarh, Udaipur, Bharatpur, and Agra, the train is vaguely cruise-ship-like — in the sense that everything is planned out, and there are time restrictions to which you must adhere. However, considering the stops and the experience, generally, it could be classified as “luxury adventure.” If you haven’t got a month to Rajasthan, this may be the best way to compress it into one week. Sign me up!