Feral by Emily Pennington

Author:Emily Pennington [Pennington, Emily]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-01-31T16:00:00+00:00

We stood on the street corner for several minutes, half laughing, half gasping for air in disbelief. Is this what Alaska is going to be like? We traipsed back to the hotel as the sun sank, hearts open wide, as if we had just crossed the border into some wondrous new country. Snuggled into bed that night next to Adam, I fell asleep dreaming of what wonders the park might hold.

Late the next morning, I had a planning call with our bush pilot, Peter, to plot out the best course of action for our day trip into Glacier Bay. Rain and wind were scheduled for the rest of the week, meaning flying might be unsafe. As we spoke, a light drizzle intermittently fell against the hotel window, and there was a faint lift in the clouds. Sunlight began to stream through, as though the gods of weather were thinking about giving us a break.

“You know what?” Peter asked me with a tone of trickster energy in his voice. “It’s starting to look pretty good right now. Can you meet me in an hour? This might be our time.”

My eyes went wide as I relayed this information to Adam. We weren’t packed. I hadn’t charged my camera batteries or cleaned my lenses. I wasn’t mentally ready in the slightest. But the pilot was right. Better to rush into the approaching sunshine than risk missing our shot. I only needed a few hours of good weather.

Peter picked us up out front of the hotel and, for the entire drive, talked about grizzly bears in town and how dead the tourist economy had been that year. He was at once surly and kind, like many Alaskans we’d encountered. Generous with information and quick to tell a joke, Peter was also the kind of man who could reshingle his own roof or fly out of a snowstorm unscathed at the ripe age of sixty. He parked out back of his airplane hangar, opening a floor-to-ceiling door that spanned the entire front of the building. I’m not really a gearhead, but Peter’s plane was a gorgeous piece of machinery. A totally rebuilt 1956 de Havilland Beaver whose blue-and-white paint glistened in the sunlight like something out of the Jetsons. Retrofuturism at its finest.

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