The Call of the Wild

I slept in late today after a restless night that was full of uneasy dreams of the epic variety: vast canyons that required the jumping skills of a tomb raider, an ocean voyage plagued by storms, and an airport with an infinitely long check in queue, where luggage is lost and then burnt in some cavernous foreign furnace - ah, wait, the last one isn't a dream, it's what's happening at London Heathrow's new Terminal 5: a system so 'advanced' that will change the future of air travel as we know it.

God help us all.

When I realised what day it was today, my heart began to pound and I was overcome by the urge to make many lists. That can mean only one thing of course: I am setting off on another great adventure. (and something very different to anything I have experienced before)

This time next week I will be in the Alaskan interior; in the heartland of 586,000 square miles of breath-taking natural beauty that I expect will surpass anything I have seen before. In the forests spring is only just awakening its inhabitants from the long deep winter, and beyond the forest, vast expanses of tundra stretch up to a horizon zig-zagged by snow-capped mountain peaks.