Answering the call of the Alaskan wild

Travel: Much like his memorable, agonised retailing of his Beirut captivity, An Evil Cradling, Brian Keenan's account of an Alaskan journey is as much a journey into the soul of Keenan himself, the "landscape of the heart", "a metaphysical environment", as it is an exploration of the extraordinary Alaskan landscape and people.

Keenan sees himself as a Captain Ahab chasing "a metaphorical white whale" on a trip inspired by a childhood fascination with the world conjured up by Jack London in his The Call of the Wild.

"When a man journeys into a far country," London enjoined his reader, "he must be prepared to forget many things he has learned, he must abandon the old ideas and the old gods and often times he must reverse the very codes by which his conduct has hitherto been shaped."

Keenan takes him to heart. And such introspection is both the strength and weakness of his book, lifting it beyond a routine account of an adventure holiday, giving it a coherence beyond a list of bizarre or entertaining incidents. But at times it bogs the reader down in a somewhat exasperating and repetitious soul-searching that verges on the self-indulgent. More than once I was tempted to ask if occasionally cellmate John McCarthy, or the patient Audrey, his wife and co-traveller on this trip with their young sons, Jack and Cal, had been forced to protest, as I did: "Give us a break, Keenan." A stronger editorial hand on the dog-sleigh might have helped this land speak for itself.

Yet Keenan's admiration for the Alaskan wilderness and its sturdy, slightly mad people is infectious (there was a lot of truth in the endearing TV series, Northern Exposure - solitude and an absence of light can have strange effects). It is an enthusiasm I share, the result of a winter Irish Times assignment in 2001 to visit Alaska's far north, the Arctic National Wilderness Reserve. Known as ANWR, it is a roadless tract the size of Ireland, a bleak, unique protected habitat for birds, mammals and fish, where the Bush administration wants to drill for oil, a project still being stymied, rightly, by Congress.

I too have experienced the terror of being thrown around the sky of this wild vastness in a tiny 10-seater plane, to land on a tiny strip of ice miles from nowhere. But I too was captivated by the mighty McKinley, and entranced to walk the crisp blue snow of an Arctic night under the richest canopy of stars imaginable. I even got to taste whale blubber and caribou - once is enough!

Indeed, our paths crossed, albeit a year or more apart, in meeting up with the indomitable Sara James, a champion of the Gwich'in native Indian campaign to save their traditional way of life and the caribou whom they regard literally as their brothers.

"Caribou are who we are," she told me. "Our food, our dance, our clothing, our shelter. We are part of the caribou from time immemorial. We always took care of them and they always took care of us in return."

The fear is that drilling for oil will drive the vast nomadic herds off the narrow strip of land between the Beaufort Sea and the vast Brooks Range where they have traditionally calved.

Keenan's visit to one of the Gwich'in settlements, Arctic Village, on the south slopes of the Brooks range and the edge of ANWR, is one of the high points of his trip, although it is initially marred, as he tells self- deprecatingly, by his insistence on pitching his tent on a sacred caribou site. Little wonder, he notes wryly, the somewhat surly welcome he initially received.

His cast of characters is wonderful, ranging from the spiritual shaman, Debra, who acts as guide and mystic healer and who, it turns out, has an extraordinary connection with him, to the silent Dan and his team of dogs, and the rugged millionaire owner of more than 30 gold mines, John Rees. And there are Charlie and Lena, living a solitary simple life of deep contentment on the edge of the Chukchi Sea - the latter teaches our hero to skin seals. There are encounters with Alaska's legendary mosquitoes, bears, moose, wolves and, of course, the caribou - Keenan finds himself nervously standing in the middle of a migrating herd.

And so, does Keenan ever, in the words of the song, find what he is looking for? No. Just more questions. But then he would be a different, altogether less intriguing, less driven, though perhaps less exasperating, Keenan without the continuing quest.

Four Quarters of Light: An Alaskan Journey by Brian Keenan, Doubleday, 345pp. £18.99

Patrick Smyth, formerly Washington Correspondent of The Irish Times, is editor of the paper's Opinion page