A Mile at a Time by Mark "Mace" Macy & Travis Macy & Patrick Regan

Author:Mark "Mace" Macy & Travis Macy & Patrick Regan [Macy, Mark "Mace" & Macy, Travis & Regan, Patrick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Charlesbridge
Published: 2023-03-14T00:00:00+00:00

SIX

What about “The Guys”?

Wyatt and Gracie and Jaxon are very intelligent kids and sometime, in fact in a very short period of time, they are going to realize I have a very serious illness and, in fact, am going to die. I don’t know when that will be, but that’s certainly going to be a sad time for all of us.

—MACE‘s JOURNAL

THE FORTY-NINTH STATE began speaking to me early in my life. I wasn’t ready as a child for James Michener’s 868-page epic novel Alaska, about the fauna, flora, terra firma, seas, sky, and people of the “last frontier” (though I frequently recommend it now), but I was totally game for watching for the millionth time Iditarod dogsled race highlights with Dad on VHS, or hearing his stories about getting lost during—and then winning—the 100-mile Idatashoe snowshoeing race. My previous trips to Alaska with the family had laid the foundation for leading outdoor trips (hiking, backpacking, sea kayaking, rafting) with Overland Adventures up north in 2004 before my senior year of college at CU-Boulder. Dad and I did a weeklong running/snowshoeing race in Canada’s Northwest Territory (not Alaska, and not actually very close to it, but still way the hell up there) in 2008, and the summer of 2018 found me accompanying my friend Greg McHale on mountain goat and mountain caribou hunts in the Yukon for his adventure TV show, Greg McHale’s Wild Yukon. Simply put, Dad and I can’t get enough of the far north, and we were totally pumped to get up there with Wyatt, then eight, in July 2019, two months before Eco-Challenge Fiji.

Nothing forces an emphasis on living in the present and creating memories like looming mortality. I knew our seventeen-day odyssey was something special, and I made a point of keeping a daily video journal. Excerpts tell the story of three generations having fun together: an energetic kid who can’t get enough of the fishing or of his grandpa; that grandpa, a little uncertain about the daily schedule or how to work the camper but present and enthusiastic and plenty fit enough to keep up with an eight-year-old kid; and a dad, mostly happy and in the moment but also a little stressed in managing the details of a long trip while simultaneously navigating his own waves of sadness and uncertainty. Maybe sometime I’ll turn these home videos into a Warren Miller–style film, probably featuring Dad’s favorite, “On the Road Again” (original Willie Nelson version, of course), and a posh Instagram-ish filter to make it look classically Alaskan. The scenes might run something like this:

Seated at the bar in a 50’s-style diner in Anchorage: Grandfather, Father, and Son wolf down pancakes while telling the camera how excited they are for the upcoming journey: fishing, camping, travel, guys’ stuff.

First fish of the trip: Son casts off the beach along the spit in Homer to pull in a Dolly Varden. Grandfather and Father beam with pride in the three-man/one-fish selfie. Three generations partake in a day of guided halibut fishing way out in the ocean.

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