From Valdez to Prudhoe Bay Along the Trans-Alaska Pipeline

By Ned Rozell

From very early on in our lives in Alaska, people have asked me if I am any relation to Ned Rozell. It is an unusual name, and this book had only been out a few years when we arrived in Alaska. I have had to explain many times (again just yesterday, in fact) that no, I am no relation.

Ned Rozell was searching for something and thought he might find it along the Trans-Alaska pipeline that carries oil from the southern tip of Alaska in Valdez to the far northern tip in Prudhoe Bay. Ostensibly looking for who might live along that corridor and why, he was also looking for something unnamable within himself, and sometimes found that unnamable thing in others. And so he hiked, in one summer, from bottom to top, writing weekly columns for the Fairbanks News Miner along the way.

I found it interesting that Ned seemed to focus on those people he met who demonstrated a spirituality that spoke to Ned on some level. The way he wrote about it seemed to indicate his desire to posses the same kind of faith and spirituality that were dynamic and authentic in others.

I have thought a little about the path itself. It is both remote and wild, but also seems very tethered. I didn’t know, but apparently there is a gravel service road along the pipeline’s entirety, and as long as the pipeline is in sight, there is little chance of getting lost.

So many things have been done, so many roads traveled, I applaud Ned for walking the length of the state in one summer. The tales about the people he met are mostly interesting, but it also drags in places. A number of times it occurred to me that this is something I might have written, and an endeavor I might have undertaken. And by that I mean I’d give the trip and the book both a B-.