Ken Ilgunas

This is not a picture taken of me after going for a run, doing pushups, or eating my famed red-hot rice and bean tacos. This is me after...

Step 1: Shave off the beard. I’m back in North Carolina and back in school. Because I have a part-time job working with kids at an...

Day 1: Smoke Whitney and I were flying in the Park Service’s four-seated Beaver float plane en route to the Noatak River. Our objective...

... in the mission to traffic "Joey" out of town Day 4: May 18, Tok, Alaska to Teslin, Yukon Territories (498 miles) My goals were...

Day 3: May 17, 2007. Delta Junction, AK to Tok, AK (111 miles) I said goodbye to Dirk and his family, snapped a picture of them, and held...

Day 2: May 16, 2007. Coldfoot, AK to Delta Junction, AK (349 miles) I didn't like truckers. They were fat, obscene with waitresses, and...

No matter how much time you spend in the Alaskan bush, you never really forget about the bears. Not entirely, at least. Of course, over...

[In the summer of 2007 at the age of 23, I hitchhiked 5,500 miles from Alaska to New York. To preserve and share these memories, I’ve...

Our three-seated Cessna 185 tightly circled around a couple of wolves lounging in the sun. If we were circling around them thirty years...

My feet, to put it lightly, are not my most becoming feature. To be forthright, they’re downright hideous. The bottoms of my big toe and...

As you can see, I’ve been growing my beard out. For some reason, I’ve always been fascinated with facial hair (and bodily hair in general...

When I first saw James’s home, I was stupefied. It was my first summer in Coldfoot and someone—I forget who—showed me the yellow Chevy...

While assembling our tent, just twenty feet away, a wild animal hunched in a shallow brook stared at the strange bipedal...

While waiting for our float plane at Grayling Lake, my fellow rangers and I were engulfed in a cloud of ravenous mosquitoes. Conditions...

This is my second summer as a backcountry ranger and my fourth living in the arctic. I work at the Gates of the Arctic National Park....

It’s odd how we sometimes journey to the ends of the earth to see something exotic and new while leaving the marvels and mysteries of our...

“When you have bought one fine thing you must buy ten more, that your appearance may be all of a piece; but Poor Dick says, ’tis easier...

And so my first semester comes to end. Looking back, I’m quite pleased with my decision to return to school. My brain, for the first time...

I’ve now told eight of my fellow students about the van. I must say I do get some childish satisfaction from observing their reactions....

I came across this van in my parking lot. I'm not sure whether to ridicule or envy him. That does look like some nice head-room...