Well I’m back from Alaska. I’ve loaded all my photos from the trip onto www.flickr.com/photos/seancarr54 …from there just click the Alaska folder and you can see all of them. It was a beautiful and awe inspiring place in every sense of the world. So much natural beauty is hard to take in sometimes when you aren’t used to it. I saw moose, black bear, brown bear, golden eagle, bald eagle and even a few squirrels. There’s something about Alaska that appeals the the primitive side in me. It awakens the spirit inside that doesn’t need to feed off TV and technological junk. Instead it gets revitalized by a walk in the woods or an encounter with a bear or even the simple view of mountains that reach toward the sky that never sleeps. Alaska is a place of wonder and a place of discovery. I can’t imagine what the first settlers after the natives must have thought. If it was anything like what I thought it probably went a little something like, “holy shit.” The holy shit phase didn’t end until about a week into the trip when I started getting used to the scenery. Then, towards the last days of our trip we hiked out to echo bend on Eagle River and saw the most beautiful view I’ve seen yet. The combination of mountains and river got me good, it always does. They seem to go together well. Whether it’s towering mountains of rock, or rolling hills of dirt and sediment a river or lake always compliments the colossal natural structures well. Today I went for a brief hike/walk through the hills in the area. After Alaska I feel like I could run up and down the hills all day. Alaska taught me to be observant to the world around me though. I had lost that living in Wilmington, NC. So today when I walked through the woods I just took it real slow and listened and watched. I saw three deer, heard a hawk call out from way above me; saw bear scat; four tree stands, all of which I climbed. Last but not least I found a ton of those little red newts on my trail. It’s amazing what you can see if you slow down and take a look around.