Day 45, My Dalton and Denali travel partner
As many people know, with few exceptions, I travel alone, whether those trips be simply tours in foreign countries, heavy backpacking trips deep into the wilds of Alaska and Kamchatka (Russia), or my long road-camping trips, the latter when I am accompanied only by my beloved dogs. I just find that mode of travel more difficult, more exhilarating, and more rewarding, especially because of the many people I meet along the way in brief encounters. In fact, on my road trips, there is no room in my Defender for an extra passenger given that my only passenger seat has been removed to provide an extra bed for my dogs.
To put matters in clearer perspective, the mantra on my trip patch makes it abundantly clear that "solitudinem" (solitude) is one of the four hallmarks for these trips, and I try hard to keep it that way. So, some might have been surprised to see, without any prior warning, a travel partner parachute in for the two most important portions of my current trip, the Dalton and Denali drives, like a deus ex machina in a Greek play, but to heighten the drama, not to end it. Well, since i wrote separate postings on Donner and the Defender, let me add one more about that mysterious travel partner, whom I just dropped off at the airport to fly home.
Before I tell you about my brief travel companion, a 24-year old medical student named Stefanie from Germany who is touring the US and Canada on holiday, readers may recall that I extended an invitation on this blog to any reader willing to fly to Alaska to share this experience with me if they were ready to put up with the dirt, mud and cold that the northernmost drives promised. No one took me up on my offer, and who could blame them? So I invited some people I met along the way. Then, on day 34, just as I reached the point of no return and finally confident I would make Alaska, I ran into Stefanie and her friend Kira at a pull off in Jasper. She impressed me so much during our brief 10-minute encounter that when she told me she'd be going Anchorage about the time I would be in Denali, I extended the invitation to her, too. The enthusiasm on her face was like none I had seen before, and we left it at that. The road beckoned, so we parted. Another brief encounter on the road that melted quickly into a memory.
A week later, as I got internet for the first time in days pulling up to the Yukon River ferry at Dawson City, I checked my emails and found one from Stefanie asking if the invitation was still open. I wrote back that it was and invited her to join me on the Dalton Hiway, too. She never actually accepted my Dalton offer, she just showed up in Fairbanks 48 hours later to join me just a few hours after i arrived and had set up camp. Then the adventure started.
As I wrote earlier, if I had been writing this blog as a novel, I could not have created a more perfect companion for the two most adventurous parts of this trip than Stefanie. We were inseparable almost 24 hours each day for nine intense days and never once did a negative word appear on either of our lips or negative expression on our faces.
Stefanie was not only a joy and fun to have around, but she took on without being asked more than her share of the numerous arduous daily chores in road camping, setting up the camp, loading and unloading the Defender as she climbed up onto the roof rack as if she had done it a thousand times before, shopping, preparing the meals, grooming the Defender, and, most helpful, driving the Defender, the first person I trusted to do so. In fact, she took to driving the Defender on the treacherous Dalton and Denali roads as well or better than I, navigating that magnificent precision machine so adeptly I never once doubted my confidence in her.
The words from her I heard the most were, what can I do to help?
The bond between us became so strong that once when she took a walk alone, the first of only two times we were briefly apart, she returned after only 10 minutes and told me, I missed you.
We became so familiar with each other's minds that at a Barnes and Noble bookstore in Anchorage, when she asked me which of perhaps 75 classic books on display in front of us she should take with her for her flight, knowing also that she reads at the rate of 100 pages an hour, I selected War and Peace, and she told me that that was exactly the one she was thinking about.
I taught her that mental Day Of Week calculation I developed and she quickly became only one of three of the hundreds I taught to learn it immediately.
Stefanie thanked me repeatedly for the invitation and told me often how lucky she was. But I was the luckier one. Having met her, I like myself better than before.
I could go on for many lines more, but I think you get the picture. Stefanie's only peccadillos that I might have seen were her penchant for cleanliness even on road camping trips, her insistence on my adhering to our schedule and my driving precisely, and her inability to distinguish between my talking to myself so I do things right and my talking to her, all of which actually enhanced the trip for me.
In return for all of the above, she got an adventure that she will remember for a lifetime. I, in turn, got a trip that was heightened significantly by a smart, fun, personable companion with whom I shared this experience.
Watching the expression of joy on her face as she basked in the adventure was more exhilarating for me than the incredible experience that was otherwise unraveling before my eyes and churning under the wheels of the Defender as it rocked, rattled and hummed over the rough, often muddy or snowy roads in some of the most beautiful scenery on the planet.
As I watched this young woman live and appreciate this experience to its fullest, and listen to her stories about her family, it occurred to me that the only source of her goodness could be her family, her parents and her younger siblings, two sisters and three brothers, and how they live their good, wholesome lives.
This entire trip was filled with nothing but adventure for me from the start, but I know which one I will remember for a very long time because of a young woman from Germany who took an incredible risk because she trusted me. I, for my part, made sure she will never forget it.
Only two photos of Stefanie appeared on this blog so far, and those were all of her in road or camping garb. So I lifted (below) with her permission one of her Facebook photos so you can see the everyday Stefanie. What an absolutely wonderful companion she was.
Another brief encounter on the road, now a memory.
The road beckons.
Ed, from the Anchorage airport.
Vincero, Vincero, VINCERO
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