After decades of backpacking with my German shepherd dogs Montag, Sonntag and Kessie in the Shenandoah mountains, and then in Alaska and Russia (Kamchatka), in 2000, I decided to change my mode of experiencing Nature. When I saw that Sonntag, who used a wheelchair, was getting old, I decided to take him on one last road trip, his favorite treat. I looked at a map and saw that the longest road trip one can take from DC in North America we to Prudhoe Bay, Alaska. Weeks later, we were off. It was my first road trip. That journey was twice the feature piece in two National Geographic cover stories under the title, Incredible Journey. Although backpacking into the wild with my dogs will always be at the top of my list, road-camping is right up there with it. Since then, I have taken 12 long road trips in my 1994 NAS Defender 90 with Sonntag, Leben, Erde and now Donner. I now live for these road trips with my dogs. This blog is really for my own enjoyment so that one day when I can no longer travel the wide-open road, I can sit back, with a fire burning in my fireplace, and relive these journeys on my wide-screen TV as if they were happening then and there. The experiences of these trips are burned so deeply into my psyche, that I now see the world through their prism.
(Note: I also have the domain www.IntoTheWild.camp, and one day hope to post my journeys into the wild there.)
No comments:
Post a Comment