Seattle to Seldovia: ‘4000 Miles by Boot, Raft and Ski’

Couple documents wilderness trek to Alaska

By Naomi Klouda
Homer Tribune

On June 8, 2007, Bretwood Higman graduated with his doctorate in geologic hazards from the University of Washington.
The very next day, Higman and his wife, Erin McKittrick, set out on foot down a busy Seattle byway on the first part of their 4,000-mile trek to Alaska.
“My aunt held a giant banner that read, ‘Walking to Alaska,’ and my dad and stepmom offered me a freshly baked chocolate chip cookie,” Erin wrote. “When we started down the street, we had a parade of 30 friends and family walking with us. Over the next several miles, our entourage slowly peeled away, as various relatives and friends gave us hugs and farewells before returning to their cars.”
Cars zoomed past, and it would be days before the couple would see wilderness.
And so begins the story – newly released this week – “A Long Trek Home.” The 220-page work of nonfiction by McKittrick – a Seattle native who grew up hiking with her family in the Cascade Mountains – details a year-long trip from 8th Avenue in Seattle to the Unimak Island.
Higman and McKittrick spent the summer making their way through British Columbia’s Great Bear Rainforest. After crossing the border into Alaska, they spent the fall in the Tongass National Forest and on the coast along the Gulf of Alaska. That winter, they were in the Copper River Delta, then Prince William Sound. They traveled by skis to Valdez, heading inland through the Chugach Mountains. After visiting the proposed Chuitna Coal Mine site, they skied through the pass to Lake Clark, then Bristol Bay watershed, and through the site of the proposed Pebble Mine. Following the windy Alaska Peninsula throughout the return of spring, they made it to Unimak Island, the first of the Aleutians, in June of 2008.
The couple will give a presentation on their journey – “A Long Trek Home; 4000 Miles by Boot, Raft and Ski,” – Thursday night at Islands and Ocean Visitor Center.
McKittrick, who holds a master’s degree in molecular and cellular biology, will read from each of the four seasons in her book. The couple will also answer questions about how and why they spent a year on such a trek.
“We already had done a fair amount wandering around in Alaska – about 3,000 miles,” McKittrick said from her home in Seldovia on Friday. “We were kind of hooked already, but I wanted to walk from Seattle to the first Aleutian Island.
McKittrick said Higman thought she was crazy at first.
“Then he liked the idea,” she said. “Our main goal was the adventure, but we were also interested in natural resources and environmental issues – such as the Pebble Mine. We wanted a broad picture of what was going on. We wanted to see the developed areas and the wild areas, and talk to people along the way. That was really an amazing part of the journey.”
During the trip, Higman and McKittrick relayed information about the environment through their Ground Truth Trekking organization. Their blog, www.groundtruthtrekking.org, was updated whenever they could reach areas with access to the Internet to chronicle their discoveries and difficulties.
The importance of doing this comes from the observation that eyewitness accounts are increasingly rare in this high-tech world.
“The idea of being ‘on the ground’ is that it lets us see what’s going on,” Higman said. “In 2005, Erin made a solo trip around Pebble. It was then we really realized the value of having that immediate on-the-ground perspective. That is changing how we look at our trip. We always want them to be fun too, but what are the questions we want to answer by wandering around somewhere?”
Ground Truth Trekking attracted donations and sponsors, which helped them raise the money for their trip; mostly $15,000 that was spent on food.
“We had to eat twice as much as an average person, and shopped in remote villages,” Higman said. “That can get really expensive.”
Now, at the end of the journey, when the couple has settled down to life in Seldovia where Higman was raised, Ground Truth functions as an educational forum that allows them to share their findings throughout the world. Both say the walk changed their lives; how they came to view forests and fish, people and towns, and even the changing nature of seasons.
One other event changed their lives fairly significantly some eight months ago: A son, Katmai, was born.
“We discovered Seldovia is a good place to settle down, after visiting so many small towns,” McKittrick said. “And being outside a whole year has given me a deeper appreciation for seasons than I ever had before.”

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Posted by Newsroom on Oct 14th, 2009 and filed under Arts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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