Alaska Stole a Piece of My Soul
A thank you to Alaska and the people I met along the way.
Amanda Kos
6/22/20263 min read
The day has finally arrived. The day every traveler seems to meet with both deep sadness and unimaginable relief. The day I somehow hoped would never come.
Today, I leave Alaska.
I’m not going to lie. This trip has had its challenges. Traveling with my two aging parents has required patience, flexibility, and at times, more energy than I thought I had. But there is something deeply satisfying about helping others experience a new place. New sights. New sounds. New tastes.
On this journey, I’ve had the privilege of helping my parents experience their first visit to Canada and Alaska, both by sea and by land.
Together, we stood before glowing blue glaciers and towering white mountain peaks. We watched brown moose splash and feed in icy waters. We scanned the seas, surrounds, and skies for whales, sheep, swans, and so many signs of life in the wild.
But as breathtaking as the landscapes have been, Alaska is more than mountains and glaciers.
It is people.
People from all over. People from different walks of life with stories to tell. People who traveled here to work. People who traveled here for pleasure. People who traveled here to find themselves.
And in the process, all of us are changed.
Like our room steward, Yasa, who left Indonesia to build a better life not only for himself, but for his entire family. Cruise ship life, he told me, was preferable to cleaning in hospitals back home. Every day, Yasa greeted us with the biggest smile, eager to hear about our adventures and our lives.
He was shy about his command of English and told me he wished he were smart like me.
But intelligence comes in many forms.
I reminded him it’s never too late to keep learning, to keep growing. Life has a way of presenting opportunities. We only have to be brave enough to take them.
Then there were the gals I met at Good Spirits, easily the best bar aboard the Island Princess. Melissa (Mo), Susan, and Cathy were traveling together, a mother, daughter, and dear friend sharing their love of life and adventure.
After Susan lost her beloved husband and life partner, these ladies made a choice. They would not let life pass them by.
So they booked the suite. They booked the premium drink package. They booked a trip to Alaska.
And later, when I ran into them again during the land portion of the trip, their faces glowed with stories, laughter, and the unmistakable joy of knowing they had made the right choice.
And then there were the brothers, Eddy and Tony, who had grown tired of the humdrum of life in the lower forty-eight and poured everything they had into the charming Three Bears Gallery in Denali.
They travel in winter, but stay for part of it, embracing the icy cold and snowy stillness. Together, they worked side by side with jovial laughter and easy camaraderie, grateful that their dream was proving itself possible and that retirement had become something more than rest.
It had become adventure.
To the servers, the guest services teams, the tour guides, the bus drivers, and every traveler I met along the way, thank you.
Thank you for touching my life in ways you may never know.
Thank you for offering perspectives I may not have found otherwise.
And to the beautiful state of Alaska, thank you.
Every towering mountain, dramatic glacier, roaring waterfall, and rolling sea stole my breath more times than I can count. Seeing beluga whales, orcas, Dall sheep, swans, and moose in the wild for the very first time thrilled me in ways only fellow adventurers may understand.
In this land where the summer sun barely sets, I have made more memories than I can hold at once.
Memories stitched into my heart.
Alaska, you have claimed a piece of my soul.
Until we meet again!