“ In the news business, it seems like tragedy comes most often in the sunny season, the season of emergencies, of missing hikers and motorcycle crashes and lost planes. Every summer, we write versions of Jared’s story over and over, stories of adventurers who barrel off unprepared or unlucky into the wilderness and don’t come home, cautionary tales about how Alaska’s vast wild space is at once breathtaking and mean, especially for the young. You could say Jared and his friends were stupid or careless, but I’d say they were no more stupid or careless than any number of boys around their age walking the graduation stage this month. Some faces in that sea of mortar boards won’t make it through the late teens and early 20s, when recklessness feels good and mortality seems impossible. And here, probably more than other places, some will die in woods and ponds and along the highways.
— Julia O’Malley : Young lives lost in Alaska’s sunny season of emergencies. Alaska is a vast and serious place. Good essay.
