Into the Wild Everyday All Day!

A glimpse of what I ride through everyday!

Every day is an adventure and a chance to explore. After a very hectic few weeks of training I have memorized the trails on both of our tours and am feeling pretty confident in my ATV guiding skills. Our Wilderness tour takes people 10 miles deep into the forrest on old coal mining trails climing hills that lead to epic overlooks and romping across mud pits and creek beds. Us guides know these trails backwards and forwards and have named every twist and turn. We ride down Moose Highway along bear pit to the mud holes, through Blueberry Alley that opens up into Fireweed Meadow.

Leadin a group through a mudpit!

 This particular area of Alaska is one of the highest populated moose populations and we always hope to get lucky and see a few on tour. Just today I was leading a tour and came up to a moose with her baby blocking the trail. Moose are seen as being much more dangerous than bears because of how protective they are of their young, they are larger than horses and can charge right through you! I crept forward reving my machine, standing up as I drove to try and appear bigger (I'm the smallest guide out here) and watched the moose trot into the bushes to the side.

At the end of the tour we end up at the base of a glacier merrain which is a huge carve mark that was made as glaciers were leaving the valley. It looks like a huge sand dune attached to a mountain. Streams criss cross along the dry creek bed, I point out which rocks are jade, which ones are volcanic, and which ones have small specks of gold mixed in.

Glacier Merrain

I do this tour 4 times an day and spend an extra hour afterwards checking drain plugs, powerwashing, and refueling all the machines. By the end of the day I am exausted but soooo stoked on life! Nothing like a hard day's work doing what I love!!

Just Go For It!!!! Regret Sucks!!

Everything I need on my back and my future behind that door!!

Man life is hard to figure out sometimes isn't it? But just when I think I've been out-smarted by my circumstance, Jesus will come through, figure it out, teach me something cool, and without having to try super hard in my own efforts I'll find myself in a sacred place where passions, talents, and dreams collide together and I'm swept away into another adventure. This is where I find myself now. Writing to you from the Black Bear Coffee Shop in Northern Alaska, Denali territory!

After 4 months of working a job that lead me into financial and worldly stability, while simultaneously dying down my passions and dreams, I decided to start looking for a journey. My potential and talents weren't being tapped into at all and if there is one thing I have learned about this life, you get out of it what you put into it. My biggest fear is a wasted life, I want to live, really live until Jesus decides I should come home. I don't want you to misunderstand, this is the course of my life, your purpose could very well consist of a more mainstream courrier and if so go for it, I'm only speaking for myself. Once you get the fact that you don't have to work to make God love you or accept you any more, your freed up to just chase whatever passion and love He has put on your heart!

So here's the lesson, here's the key that unlocked this next chapter of my life.... After 4 months of applying all over the place, from missions in the jungles of Peru to white water rafting in Colorado..

every single door slammed shut! I was trying with all my might and nothing was working out. I felt defeat and failure creeping up on me and finally was forced into a spot of realizing that God would work things out. One day soon after I was playing ultimate frisbee, had a 2 second convo with a friend about a cool job in Alaska, went home and applied for THE WRONG ONE and within 2 days the boss called saying I applied THE VERY DAY someone else dropped out. He told me I was welcome to come and work as AN ATV(4 wheeler) GUIDE IN ALASKA...that is, if I could show up in a little under 2 weeks!

I prayed for confirmation which happened for me in an equally cool way, I had a $400 flight voucher for Alaskan Airlines that I lost 6 months earlier and expired. I called the airlines and somehow they found it in 2 minutes and reopened it for me!

I quit my job, bought a ticket, went for one last road trip, and took off into the wild!!!!! I feel deeply that I am right in God's will, doing what I'm meant to do, deep in his most majestic creation, and playing around on an atv in the wilderness everyday!!! I encourage you to embrace life! Take risks! Do what you love to do! More to come...

"The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time."
                                                                   - Jack London

Looking into my new back yard :-)