Traversing the Brooks Range, step by revealing step

When I put the maps of my Arctic traverse end to end, as I sometimes do to relive the experience, all the wilderness I could ever want spreads across my living room floor. Riven by glacial valleys, shoaled by the coastal plain, Alaska’s treeless Brooks Range spans the state’s entire width, arcing east to west, a thousand miles scaled down here to just 13 feet. To save weight on my 60-day trek, I kept a journal on the maps’ backs and in their margins. The dot-and-dash line of the Continental Divide, which I’d crossed numerous times, squirms on the mountainous spine, splitting waters headed north, to the Arctic Ocean, from those southbound for the Bering Strait.