Face to face with the wild

Alaska is one of the country's last bastions of adventure in the wild, and journalist Melissa DeVaughn, auther of a new book, "The Unofficial Guide to Adventure Travel in Alaska," is one of its greatest champions. Adventure Beat's Julia Romano spoke with DeVaughn about the pleasures of venturing deep in the wild.

To most people in the lower 49, Alaska itself is already off the beaten path. Melissa DeVaughn takes her readers to the places in Alaska that don't feel like they're even on the map.  Author of the "Unofficial Guide to Adventure Travel in Alaska" and "Alaska off the Beaten Path," as well as an outdoors writer for the Anchorage Daily News, DeVaughn is one of the lucky few whose passion coincides with career. 

When not in her office (it seems like all of Alaska is her workspace), she can be found cycling, hiking, dog mushing, fishing, camping, backpacking — you name it, as long as it involves a whole lot of open space and some comfortable shoes.

DeVaughn's passion took root in 1993 when, while working as a journalist in her home state of Virginia, she decided to hike the Appalachian Trail. "I got back and I thought, 'Boy, I want to keep doing this!'" she says. 

DeVaughn went west. She ended up in Alaska, found a job as a journalist and stayed.  While perusing bookstore shelves for a book to guide her on her own Alaska adventures, DeVaughn realized what was missing. 

"I've looked at guidebooks on Alaska over and over," says DeVaughn. "You go to Barnes and Noble and there are hundreds of them. But none of them focused on adventure travel."

So, DeVaughn wrote the book on adventure travel in Alaska, with a unique twist on the way things are organized.

"I wanted to base each chapter on an activity. For instance, you can look at one whole chapter on cycling, or one whole chapter on skiing, one whole chapter on birding — everything from birding to mountaineering," she says.

DeVaughn generally writes for the audience interested in more active adventure. "You need to make clear what kind of adventure you're writing about, so the person reading what you're writing can compare their point of reference to yours," she says. DeVaughn's preferred reference point: "You are in the middle of nothing, you are off the road system."

However, DeVaughn is not an extreme adventurer, at least not in sense of sports that have appropriated the term "extreme."

"I think there is a place for both of those," says DeVaughn. "The great thing about the X-Games and some of the more extreme adventures is that they ... attract people who want to experience it, but on maybe more of a shorter scale."

Outdoor adventure, or "going into the woods to contemplate," says DeVaughn, "is a whole different animal. I know people who go out on month-long treks into the wilderness, but they love to downhill ski to the point you think they are going to kill themselves. I don't think that one is better than the other."

Besides, DeVaughn notes, outdoor adventure can be more extreme than anything that needs a helmet.  Recalling her scariest moment ("Of course it involves a bear because I live in Alaska") DeVaughn says she begins to shake just thinking about it. 

In 1996, DeVaughn was on assignment in Alaska's Denali National Park.  "I looked up, and here comes this sort of caramelly-colored thing, and it just kept coming closer ... It wasn't charging, it was almost strolling toward us, and its lack of fear put the fear of God in me."  

The bear backed DeVaughn up against a bush. "It was more adrenaline than I have ever felt in my life," she says.  Then, says DeVaughn, "he stuck out his tongue, which was the color of cotton candy — it was the weirdest tongue I've ever seen — and stuck his nose in the air as if he smelled us for the first time, and then he just walked on."

DeVaughn credits her survival to a few days on the trail without a shower.  "I'm glad we stunk, because he's gone, and we're happy."

Nature can be humbling and awe-striking, but it can also be a reminder not to take oneself too seriously.  One sunny night in Western Alaska (the sun never sets in the summer), DeVaughn got an unexpected reminder of that. 

"I was reading a book," said DeVaughn, "and all of a sudden I heard this noise, and it sounded like rain. But the sun was out, and I didn't get it.  I peeked out my tent, and there was a reindeer peeing on my tent. I was just glad it wasn't another bear."  

"The Unofficial Guide to Adventure Travel in Alaska" was published in June 2006 by John Wiley & Sons.