None of us gets enough time on this planet.

This is a fact we must recognize, but never dwell on for too long. If we do, it means we’re not out making the most of the short time we do have.

I will quote the modern philosopher here, one Mr. Dylan: “He not busy being born is busy dying.”

But, with such a big world out there to explore, so many people to meet and wonders to behold, it can be hard to know where to start. Fear not, we have a few suggestions, based on over 40 years of hearing “ooohs” and “ahhhhs” from all the friends we’ve taken to various destinations.

Whip out your “bucket list,” and consider adding all of these (at the top):

The Grand Canyon — This is more than just a national park. Since John Wesley Powell and company made that first trip through the Big Ditch, this marvel of nature has captivated the imagination of millions, all around the world. It has a powerful effect on people that my words will never convey. The rock, the river, the solitude, the splendor — very few places will leave you wondering about creation and your own sense of purpose like this place.

Machu Picchu — Six centuries ago, the Inca ruled an empire from 8,000 feet above sea level, in a city built along perilous cliffs. This UNESCO World Heritage Site will take you back in time, not just to Peru. You’ll marvel at how such a magnificent citadel could go “forgotten” by the world until the turn of the 20th century. And, need we add about experiencing the Andean culture, and rafting and zip lining in the Amazon?

Middle Fork of the Salmon River — The Frank Church Wilderness is the largest such protected area in the continental U.S. Through this pristine Idaho wilderness, there runs 100 miles of river, through granite canyons, alpine forest and grasslands. In those miles, you’ll find 100 sets of rapids, as well as Native American history, pioneer homesteads and a menagerie of wildlife. This is a bucket list item many people don’t even know they’re missing. Don’t be one of them.

Galápagos Islands — When you’re older and telling the stories to the great-grandkids, make sure you’ve got one in the arsenal about the blue-footed boobies, the lava lizards, and your face-to-face encounter with a penguin. Be sure you can explain how you walked in Darwin’s footsteps observing the amazing creatures found nowhere else on earth, and how you donned a mask and snorkel and went where Darwin never could. Don’t forget to tell them how you loved the sea kayaking, and the sea lions you could almost pet from the bow of the sailboat. “Ah, Ecuador,” you could tell them with a satisfied sigh.

Tatshenshini River — Here is another of the few places in the world that time forgot. Let us show you a slice of 27 million acres of Alaskan-Canadian wilderness. We’ll crawl across glacial moraines and sit beneath frozen waterfalls. We’ll raft this milky glacial river pondering the towering mountain ranges on either side. Arriving in Alsek Bay, we’ll try not to be intimidated by icebergs as big as houses, just like we did with the moose and grizzly bears we saw.

Rio Futaleufu — If your bucket list is rife with river trips, this one better be on it. “The Fu” is known in the whitewater world as one of the premier runs. This is heart-pounding class IV and V rafting in unmatched Patagonian terrain. Add to the boating some hiking, climbing, rappelling and horseback riding, and you’re talking about the adventure of a lifetime. You’ll be able to check both Argentina and Chile off your life’s travel list with this one, too.

Zambezi River — Things you’ll say after: “I thought it was already Class V rafting, but then we saw the hippos … I never knew an impala wasn’t a car until my safari in Botswana … From the helicopter, looking at the Batoka Gorge, it was as though the earth had cracked open and the water of Africa was rushing in to fill it … I learned it was one of the ‘7 Wonders of the World’ when we launched our rafts in the mist at the foot of Victoria Falls …” Make sure your bucket list includes rafting on at least 6 continents, and add the Zambezi.

Have you done any of these trips? Chime in in the comments to let people know I’m not exaggerating.

Which trip is most intriguing to you, if you’ve never been on any of them? I’d love to hear about it in the comments below.

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Giant peaks 15,000 feet high gnawed at our vista. So many exist here that most guides cannot keep their names straight. One, however, everyone knows. Windy Craggy Mountain. This pipsqueak tops out at a mere 6,000 feet in British Columbia 15 miles east of the Alaskan border and 10 miles from the confluence of the Tatshenshini and Alsek rivers, not far from our camp.

Windy Craggy could be instead called Mount Doom. This is because Windy Craggy is a Triassic pillow basalt containing 3 percent copper — 100 million tons of it — worth at least $5 billion. Windy Craggy lies in between Yukon’s Kluane National Park and Alaska’s Glacier Bay and Wrangell-St. Elias National Parks and Preserves in a region where mineral extraction was up for grabs. In mid-1993, Geddes Resources Limited of Vancouver pushed for a permit to pulverize the top 2,000 feet of Windy Craggy then gouge its nub into a mammoth, open-pit mine. This meant excavating a staggering 265 million cubic feet of rock by gnawing 60 million pounds off the mountain daily for fifteen years and piping it as slurry 150 miles to port in Haines. From there, Geddes would ship it to Japan.

A simple plan.

The Complication

Too simple. The complication? Windy Craggy is also 40 percent sulfide. When the 375 million tons of crushed tailings the mine would produce as waste became exposed to atmospheric oxygen it would unleash immense quantities of sulfuric acid to flow through the wilderness. This acid would leach out heavy metals like cobalt (0.1 percent of Windy Craggy is cobalt). This combination of acid and heavy metal contamination is so sinister it has its own name, Acid Mine Damage, or AMD. AMD permanently poisons a drainage ecosystem. It devastates fish and the creatures that eat fish—from grizzlies and otters to sea gulls and eagles. AMD is so hideous that already the USA was spending $1 million per day to mitigate AMD heavy metals along 4,000 miles of its poisoned streams.

The estimated cost to de-toxify Windy Craggy Crater once Geddes sucked it dry stood at $1 billion. If nothing went wrong.

Geddes planned to hide their hundreds of millions of tons of sulphide tailings from atmospheric oxygen under a 2.5-mile long reservoir three miles from the river. The problem? Windy Craggy sits in the most active earthquake zone in North America, one triggered by the Fairweather Fault. In 1899, the second largest earthquake in North American history, 8.6 on the Richter scale, hit 75 miles northwest of Windy Craggy and lifted entire mountains 47 feet higher! The quake also sent glaciers slamming down their canyons half a mile in five minutes. In 1958, a Richter 7.9 quake epicentered 30 miles from Windy Craggy shook it like a rag doll.

The upshot? No dam can withstand such force. Indeed, British Columbia’s Commission on Resources and Environment (CORE) estimated that an ecological disaster would occur here every twelve years.

It Gets Worse

But Geddes’ overall plans proved even more frightening. They aimed to build hundreds of miles of roads, bridges, and pipelines through virgin wilderness and to construct a town and processing plant on site. These alone would be the ecosystem’s kiss of death.

An economist might argue that losing some wilderness was worth the metals. Yet an economic analysis of Geddes’ mine made no economic sense even in the short run. To gross $65 million non-sustainably per year for fifteen years, the mine would permanently devastate sustainable fisheries worth almost as much, forever. Fisheries in the Tatshenshini-Alsek system and the Lynn Canal into which Geddes planned to dump slurry effluent are worth $49.5 million yearly. Spills from Geddes’ slurry line would also endanger the world’s largest concentration of bald eagles, 3,500 of them, who converge on the Chilkat and fuel a lucrative tourist industry.

Grizzlies Threatened

The icon of the north is the grizzly mainly because men have wiped it out nearly everywhere else south into Mexico. As with sex, religion, and politics, grizzly bears never plod a neutral path across the convolutions of the human brain. For nearly a century, California’s only grizzly has been Samson, the bear depicted on its state flag. Oregon also extirpated its thousands of grizzlies. As did Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and Utah.

The most important stronghold of this threatened species lies along the Tatshenshini, a habitat so perfect that one grizzly exists for each three square miles. AMD from Windy Craggy Mine would devastate the ecosystem. Geddes’ roads would expose bears to hunters. Geddes’ tailings reservoir would block their migration. “Grizzly bear populations,” reports Stephen Herero, head of the I.U.C.N. Bear Research Group, “would be lowered, degraded, fractionated, and alienated from prime habitat … The most important area in the Tatshenshini drainage known for grizzly bear denning would likely be abandoned.”

The Fight To Protect And Preserve

After spending $47 million developing the mine Geddes said, “[Windy Craggy Mine’s] impact on the environment would be negligible.” Besides, explained Geddes’ president Gerald Harper, the Tatshenshini region “isn’t wilderness, it’s barren land.”

In contrast, British Columbia’s Bureau of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources decided: “It is clear that there is a serious lack of understanding [by Geddes] of the actual potential for AMD from the pits, both during and following mine operations.”

Because AMD caused by mining Windy Craggy Mountain would violate the World Heritage Convention, the U.S.-Canada Boundary Waters Treaty, the Pacific Salmon Treaty, and the Migratory Birds Convention, a coalition of 50 conservation organizations urged British Columbia’s provincial government to create Tatshenshini-Alsek Provincial Wilderness Park. Combined, this 36,000-square mile protected region of the Yukon, British Columbia, and Alaska is the world’s largest international park and Global Biodiversity Reserve.

On the Tatshenshini-Alsek things have gone well. The area was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1994 for the spectacular glacier and icefield landscapes as well as for the importance of grizzly bear, caribou and Dall sheep habitat.

We soon rowed a mile-wide river flowing into the heart of the Saint Elias Mountains, arguably North America’s most remote — and now protected — region.

This essay was originally created for the 2011 O.A.R.S. catalog. For more compelling stories from other renowned writers, request your catalog copy today!

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