by Tyler Dempsey
Alaskans are well-traveled. The State being so big it warps perception of distance. “It’s only 8 hours away,” you can overhear at a bar. And frequently, I found myself mouth-breathing while one of them detailed a trip they’d taken to Thailand on the tail end of a 400-day backpack across Europe. Barely farting out, “Wow,” before they’d sprinted off to begin packing for Antarctica.
Any time I worked up the nerve and answered, perhaps sharing how I’d just returned from a whiplash trip to Homer—or Kodiak, or Seward, or any other place in their own damn State—they displayed a hint of disgust before saying, “Yeah, I haven’t been.”
It was too familiar. They didn’t see the point.
***
Travel is expensive. It’s also uncomfortable. And scary. Why the hell do we go anywhere, you might wonder? We toil year-round to fill our homes with metric tons of shit aimed at shaving the sharp edges off existence. Then turn around and burn a hole through vacation hours getting as far away from that place as possible.
We contract diarrhea. Yell at our loved ones. And embarrass ourselves with how little of a foreign language we learned. All to return, share pictures with people who don’t care, duck our heads, and do it all over again.
***
“The fish of 10,000 casts.” “The fish of a lifetime.” “That sumbitch.”
Google “list of hardest freshwater fish to catch in the United States” and the muskellunge is at the top. A species of pike growing up to 4 feet and weighing close to 70 pounds. Resembling what a tyrannosaurus might have imagined a missile looks like. Ever see an article where, for the first time in 20 years, some species washes up in Japan, or wherever, and you see it and think, “Eww, put it back?” That’s the type.
A muskellunge is the apex predator in fresh water, feeding on all other fish. But also enjoying rats, ducks, and small children.
Just kidding.
Because of its uncommonly large prey, anglers—saps wasting infinite weekend hours dragging stupid fake fish through the water—use lures weighing a pound or more. The toll on their bodies increases each year.
Holding a muskellunge is rare. But it isn’t uncommon for fishermen to watch one follow their lure right up to the side of the boat. Then turn around at the last minute and leisurely swim away.
What is it? Why this fish? Why do so many people become obsessed with landing it? Why is there a YouTube documentary about a fish?
For the same reason travel is addictive. Why we return home sunburnt, missing a comma in our bank account, swearing something truly remarkable, whose shape was too blurry for us to make out, got so close we almost touched it.
***
If you want to impress an Alaskan with travel within their State, say you just got back from Wood River.
Haven’t heard of it?
That’s why everyone wants to go.
Wood River was a gold-bust town of the late-1800’s, then a basecamp for hunters feeding people building the Alaska Railroad through the early 20th Century. The property eventually obtained enough supplies and lumber brought in by horse and sled dog to transform itself yet again. That’s when Lynn Castle bought it. Back in 1965. Being a world-renowned hunting guide, Wood River quickly became a name whispered in certain circles worldwide as a high-end lodge for trophy hunters. Until 1991, when Lynn crashed his plane into the very river that was its namesake.
After his death, it sat, virtually untouched, until new owners bought it in 2018.
I inquired about the bizarre placename, 28 air-miles east of Denali National Park and 33 miles from the nearest road, when I first moved to Denali in 2009.
“Really, it’s just sitting out there?”
The old codger I spoke with was friends with Lynn. He said, because his death was so unexpected, and since Wood River was so difficult to get to, the Lodge had been left the way it sat when Castle hopped in his plane that morning for a weather-check.
Beds were immaculately made. Drink coasters lined the bar awaiting the next patron. Except, no one had stayed there in 18 years.
When I asked about getting there, all the pilots I knew went, “Welllll……”
It was foolhardy at worst, stupid at best, they explained. The dirt landing strip beat in decades prior was eroding into the adjacent Wood River, making landing and takeoff exercises in stunt piloting. You had a worse chance of your plane touching down and becoming airborne again than succumbing to the same fate as Castle.
“Hmmm,” I answered.
Still, about once a year, I’d see a wild look in someone’s eyes and learn they’d just returned from a weekend at Wood River. Sleeping in the California king beds. Listening to grizzlies bang down the halls like they owned the place. Each one showed me some keepsake. A dated trinket they pocketed from the wildlife-themed lodge. Handling it like it might hold the secret to the universe.
I never went. But I did fly over once. I studied the ass-puckering runway. Gawking at the million-dollar excavators slowly rusting on the blueberry-speckled landscape. Buzzing over Anderson Mountain, I craned toward the trail zig-zagging from the lodge to a bench on its summit, overlooking the mountainous expanses beyond.
Pressing my nose to the plexiglass, I wondered what of the destination’s combination of features—remoteness, history, abandonment—made it such a trophy even for those who knew the landscape intimately.
***
In his book Catching the Big Fish, David Lynch opens saying, “Ideas are like fish. If you want to catch little fish, you can stay in the shallow water, but if you want to catch the big fish, you’ve got to go deeper. Down deep, the fish are more powerful and more pure. They’re huge, and abstract, and they’re very beautiful.”
I’ll often say to my wife I’m working on a new essay. Because she’s beautiful, and loves me very much, she’ll ask, “What’s it about?” And I say, “That’s a good question.”
When the universe offers a treasure, it’s often in the form of a puzzle. But, disassembled, and missing its box. The line, image, whatever came to you, is disconnected from the bigger picture. But it’s a clue. And from that clue, you start to sense its shape. Recognize the timbre of its voice. But you have no idea what it is.
What Lynch means by “abstract,” is an object, that for some reason, has fractured our ability to understand it entirely. A hunting lodge is very easy to imagine. But one that is prepared for customers, but hasn’t housed any in almost two decades, is not.
The more abstract, the more magnetized the idea is. Meaning, after an initial idea comes to us, it seems to suck all thoughts back to it. We become a conduit to its creation.
If we ignore it, it’ll be painful. It may take weeks but eventually it’ll go away. But, if we don’t, we find using intuition, paired with our focus, other thoughts and ideas begin connecting themselves to the original.
Even if they seem to have little in common.
***
There is an excitement when two disparate things seem to relate to one another. I interview writers. And when I ask why they wrote a book, which is a very hard thing to do—so hard, it makes you wonder why anyone does it at all—the most common answer is that they couldn’t ignore a question. This question hinted to them about a secret. And each time they would connect that to something else, more of the whole came into view. It made them happier. Even if they didn’t know what they were making.
When my wife asks what I’m writing, and I say, “That’s a good question,” I mean it in two ways. The first is, that I am a person, and everyone likes to have someone want to know more about them. Dig deeper into their being. So, there is goodness in that question.
It’s also me answering literally.
***
Over 31.5 hours—from April 12 to April 13 of 2025—I ran 100 miles.
Running 100 miles is very hard.
There’s value in doing very hard things. Not because it proves you are strong, or cool, or that anyone else should care. But because once a hard thing passes a threshold and becomes a very hard thing, it becomes an abstraction.
Most 100 mile runs start and end at the same place. But, when you return, you’re not the same person.
Do something, that, by your own math, you only have a 50% chance of succeeding at. Bring some abstraction into your life. Cast your line into those waters. Even if you cast 10,000 times and come back empty handed, it’ll be worth it. Because you’ll have tried connecting to the Universe.
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Tyler Dempsey is the author of 4 books and host of Another Fucking Writing Podcast. He lives in Utah with his wife and dogs. Find him on Twitter @tylercdempsey.
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