erin and hig did it....

Unimak Island is the outer limit of the bear’s range, the outer limit of the caribou’s range, and the outer limit of the packrafter’s range. Twelve treacherous miles of Unimak Pass, with strong currents and the Aleutians’ ever-present winds, stood between us and the next island’s shore.

It was beyond the reach of our tiny yellow packrafts.

That's how erin sums up the outer end of their non-motorized journey from Seattle to the western tip of Unimak Island, the first island of the Aleutian Chain. I sense they would have gone on and on, could they have. But their superb sense of what people can or cannot do has been at least a step beyond uncanny.

erin promises a book. And a movie, too. After such an important journey as theirs, a book and movie are almost inevitable.

But, along with having performed a physical feat nobody alive can think of as anything less than spectacular, they also showed that the ability to communicate to the entire world, free of having to rely on regular print and broadcast media, can be taken to new levels, as they updated us from isolated settlements, villages, towns and lodges.

They were finally attacked by a bear on Unimak. Or at least their gear was. They ended up repairing most of it with dental floss, over the course of a long, watchful, wet night.

I'm going to once again spend part of Sunday's arts article, sharing some of erin's most magnificent photos and writing with any of you who might not have yet had the opportunity to appreciate the quality and high level of inspiration that is the work of Erin McKittrick.

















images by erin