Biography / Geography
Sherry Simpson interviews Sherry Simpson ...

Q. I haven’t read your new book yet, but it sounds like you’re quite the adventurer.
A. Yikes. I’m not trying to pretend I know what I’m doing. The truth is, during my extremely modest little trips, I’ve almost burned off my eyebrows, forgotten important things like the tidebook, taken the wrong trail, nearly gotten divorced, and usually never reach where I’m going.

Q. Oh. So you’re incompetent. Why’d you write about that when there are all those amazing people packrafting from Seattle to the Aleutians and hiking 600 miles across Alaska and rowing around the world?
A. Because only a few people get to be that amazing. Don’t us ordinary people get to be adventurous or to discover something now and then?

Q. You mean, like ancient temples, the headwaters of hidden rivers, and the secret route to Shangri-La?
A. I mean, like how hard it is to keep going when you’re wet and tired. Or what it’s like when a bear isn’t too crazy about you being on its beach. Or why people want to go out into the backcountry at all when they could stay home and sleep in a warm bed and eat something that doesn’t have bugs or dirt in it.

Q. So what did you find out?
A. Well, I decided that one reason people send themselves out on various treks and missions and expeditions is because we’re trying to create stories about ourselves. Not just “look how cool I am” stories (though who doesn’t need more of those?). But also stories about what we’re able to endure, or how we extracted ourselves from fixes, or what kind of people we turn out to be when it really matters. Sometimes those stories are dramatic, and sometimes they’re mild. And sometimes our family thinks about killing us if we tell some of those stories one … more … time.

Q. You point out in the preface that you grew up in Alaska but you were never one of those Alaskans who “flies planes, kills wild animals, fishes open seas, climbs mountains, or treks through the backcountry as if it were no more troublesome than driving to the local 7-Eleven for a newspaper.” So (there’s no polite way to ask this) what the hell possessed you to start making trips when you were middle-aged?
A. Please. You know I don’t appreciate swearing.

Originally, I had this vague, hare-brained idea that it would be cool to retrace some early expeditions. I’d spent so much time looking at old trails on old maps that it made me a little loopy. Also, I was intrigued by the way published accounts of expeditions often read so differently than the private versions. Judge James Wickersham made the public description of his attempt to climb Denali in 1903 sound very manly and noble in Yukon Tales, Trails and Trials. But in his journal, he wrote about who was a big whiner, and who ran off and took the boat, and who was afraid of mules. Maybe that was all the same guy. I forget now.

So what interested me weren’t just the physical journeys, but the internal journeys. Because you become a different person in the backcountry, even in a week. I mean, sometimes I was a big whiner, but I also learned that I was “capable of more than I knew and less than I hoped.”

Q. Wow. That is insightful. So basically you redid a whole bunch of historic expeditions and discovered the meaning of life?
A. Umm. No. One problem was that everybody I asked to come along had, you know, jobs and families and common sense. (For some reason, National Geographic wasn’t interested in being a sponsor.) But over the years, I’d be invited on someone else’s little expedition or a friend would take time off and go with me somewhere. Eventually I realized that all these small journeys weren’t separate from my life—they were my life. You don’t leave your marriage or your disasters or your worries behind, because they’re you—they’re all journeys, too. And those trips that did have historical origins—walking to the foot of Denali, for example—never, ever turned out like I thought they would. Which was another thing I discovered.

Q. Then what were you looking for in the first place?
A. I wanted to remember the girl I was the summer my family lived in Denali National Park. I wanted to see Alaska again the way she did—as if the landscape was mysterious and amazing and a little bit scary, and how every part of it was simultaneously home and unknown wilderness. I wanted to understand how geography shapes identity, and how identity shapes geography. OK, that part’s a lie. That sounds way more lofty than what I consciously intended. But I did want to understand what me and other people want from Alaska. And also I wanted to know why I love my XtraTuf boots so much.

Q. That’s a shameless product endorsement.
A. Not really, because hiking in them also made my feet about three sizes bigger.

Q. So what didn’t you write about?
A. I forgot to emphasize how miserable the mosquitoes can be. I didn’t name a particular part of Alaska because friends convinced me that some places should remain as unknown as possible. I didn’t write as much as I should have about how much fun it is sitting around a fire with your pals, or solving some dopey little problem like broken glasses, or learning how to tie knots. I didn’t name everybody fully because they were on their own journeys, and it didn’t seem fair to pretend I understood what they wanted. Many of them are writers, too, and you know what they say about paybacks. Also, I was afraid they’d want a share of royalties once Oprah turns this into a movie.

Q. Ha! You wish. On another subject, you never reveal in the essay “Turning Back” what happened to your dog Jenny after she falls ill.
A. Everybody asks about her. She spent about two years being diagnosed with a variety of maladies in which the cures were often worse than the symptoms. Finally, we sent her ahead on that Great Trail in the Sky, which was terrible. But she was almost 16 when she died. A couple of years ago I tricked my husband into getting another blue heeler puppy. Bix is simultaneously an excellent dog and a holy terror. But he does have his own backpack. Now if I could just convince him to carry my pack, too.

Q. Why did you call this The Accidental Explorer?
A. First, because The Buck-Naked Explorer sounded like it was pandering to the audience. Also, because The Accidental Hedonist, The Accidental Centaur, The Accidental Adventurer, The Accidental Husband, The Accidental Tourist, The Accidental Environmentalist, The Accidental Guru, The Accidental Oracle, and The Accidental were already taken. Finally, because nobody important liked my original title, A Nuisance to Myself and Others.

Q. You’re right, that’s a much better title. Now, weren’t you going to tell us something vaguely informative about you in this interview?
A. You mean, about my day job as an astronaut and my early training as a rock star?

Q. Don’t lie. It’s unbecoming.
A. Look, I’m just not that interesting. Okay, how about this. When my parents informed us that we would be moving to Alaska, I started crying. I don’t know why—apparently even at age 7, I’d learned that “Alaska” was a synonym for “horrible wasteland from which nobody ever returns.” That turned out to be untrue, so my youthful years in Juneau were damp but fun, interrupted only by that one year of teen-age exile when my father was transferred to Washington, D.C., and we lived in Virginia until my parents regained their senses and we moved back home. So when I say I’ve lived in Alaska since I was 7, I’m not really lying, I’ve just blanked out The Lost Year.

Q. Yawn.
A. I know! I said it was boring. Here is the telegraphed version. Terrible but earnest basketball player for the Juneau-Douglas High Crimson Bears. (Go Bears!) Spent college fund traveling to Great Britain after high school. Returned to recognize future husband was conveniently also best friend’s brother and boyfriend’s roommate. A succession of low-paying jobs in music stores, delicatessens and offices until a clue was had about future. Attended University of Alaska Fairbanks for years, maybe decades. Marine biologist? Not with those chemistry grades. Journalist? Sure, why not. Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, Juneau Empire, radio, embarrassing early stint in TV. But…how to become a better writer since not that great of a reporter? M.F.A. program at UAF, followed by publication of The Way Winter Comes thanks to Sasquatch Books. Became fantastically rich, yet still humble enough to teach creative writing in the low-residency M.F.A programs at the University of Alaska Anchorage and the Rainier Writing Workshop while living in Italy most of the year. Raised a pack of blue heelers, bought them their own herd of cattle, gave husband Porsche for his birthday one year and a tropical island another year.

Q. You’re really a terrible liar.
A. Thank you.

Q. So what grand adventures do you have planned now?
A. Well, it turns out that teaching creative writing is a great way not to do much creative writing. I owe a very patient editor at the University Press of Kansas a book about bears and people in Alaska. After that, I have a book in mind about a bizarre murder in Fairbanks that involved most of our newsroom. It’s kind of a “Miss Marple meets Hannibal Lecter” story. Or maybe an “Under the Midnight Sun in the Garden of Good and Evil” story.

Q. No, I mean “adventures” as in hiking or kayaking or something fun like that.
A. I’m not telling you. You’ll just tag along and complain the whole time.