by Darren Dorris

It’s 7:00 a.m., and I’m on the only daily commercial flight from Seattle that lands on Mitkof Island in the fishing town of Petersburg, Alaska. As we make our final approach, the clouds and rain are so thick that I can barely see the ground, almost until the plane touches the tarmac. The visibility is about what I expected. After all, I just landed in one of largest temperate rainforests in the world.

The airport terminal consists of a garage and a 1,600-square-foot building. Being an East Coast boy, this isn’t the kind of airport I’m used to, but it seems a fitting location to start my journey into the 17-million-acre Tongass National Forest, in which Petersburg sits smack in the middle.