Alaska Creative Writing Road Trip

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.LTC Alan Brown led four cadets to south-central Alaska on a 15-day creative writing Academic Individual Advanced Development (AIAD) spanning 1,100 miles. The group included: Taylor Graham '20; Hope Hack '20; Mia Padon '21; and Brenden Shutt '21. Stops in Denali National Park, Anchorage, Seward, Chugach National Forest, Kenai Fjords National Park, Homer, and Kechemak Bay State Park revealed Alaska's surreal geographic diversity, the close-knit Alaskan community and its intimately interwoven connection to nature. Excursions included multiple hikes, a flight through the Alaska Range (and subsequent glacier landing) after soaring around the vast range in a DeHavilland Otter the group landed on a glacier, keeping up with a sub theme of the trip: feeling really small in Alaska's grandeur, a full-day kayak trip in Resurrection Bay and water taxi ride across the bay to Kechemak State Park (to name a few). Cadets stayed in a variety of accommodations including two "dry" cabins without running water and limited amenities, something very common in the Last Frontier. Cadets received daily writing prompts (both poetry and prose) and engaged critically with the work of writers such as Robert Service, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, William Carlos Williams, Jon Krakauer and others.