I spent three months (actually a few days over – I overstayed my visa ! Yikes !), in the largest and emptiest US state. I loved the expanses, the resourceful pioneer attitude, (yeah, aircon included) and the power and danger in the landscape. Ranging from endless forest to tundra, glaciers, isolated communities, abandoned dreams, survivalists and idealists, the state is wonderful to visit.

The combined National Parks of Wrangell and St Elias in Canada form the largest area of protected landscape in the world. My travels there were limited to the ‘paved loop’ (Anchorage, Fairbanks, Tok, Valdez and the Seward peninsula, and the state ferries, I loved to read out chunks of Arctic Dreams by Barry Lopez to give people a view of landscape, wildlife and cultures they may never have encountered.