I took my 11 year old son on a winter trip to Alaska – and it was the best trip we’ve ever taken

The Far North is a good place to be alone with your thoughts. Since my divorce, my little son and I have been living on our own invisible inner border, and AlaskaThe deserted interior seemed like the right place to get used to feeling more alone in the world, yet more fully integrated into it. So, despite my usual trepidation when I’m miles from civilization, the two of us set out for central Alaska in January, when daytime temperatures remain below freezing and daylight hours are less than five hours, to face the darkness and silence of the subarctic winter.

Our hosts, husband and wife team Jenna and David Jonas, have been living sustainably off the grid since 2012 on a bluff above the Tanana River, about 60 miles west of Fairbanks. David is the younger brother of one of my oldest friends, and when we were all teenagers, he built a cabin on his parents’ wooded lot in Vermont with no power tools and lived there for two years. Now he and Jenna are experienced wildlife guides, and their home business, Alaska Homestead Adventures, offers private, all-inclusive winter vacations.

David and Jenna live seven miles from their nearest neighbors and 20 miles from the nearest town (Nenana, population 358). They cut ice for water, heat with wood, make sleds by hand, hunt, forage, or grow most of their food on their piece of what the locals call the Big Earth. They offer guests an alternative to the highly mediated, comfortable visits to remote natural landscapes that most luxury tour companies provide. Instead, their adventures at the homestead involve total immersion in the daily grind and enjoyment of life on the frozen frontier. This includes a wide range of indoor and outdoor winter activities, from fishing to ice fishing, as well as three home-cooked meals.

I was apprehensive about spending three days in 225 square feet with an 11-year-old and no running water, but David and Jenna lived in our cabin, a one-room Sun Lodge, for seven years before hand-building a larger log. the hut, a five-minute walk away, where they now live with their two young children.

Having spent the night in Fairbanksmy son and i got up early to take a taxi 45 minutes south to the trailhead where we were met by david with his ratrak. We traded our snow boots for warmer pairs he had brought, along with huge coats and what looked like glassblowing mittens. Then we rode a sled attached to a ratrack, standing at the back, holding on to the crossbar – it felt like water skiing. We traveled through loose snow and a forest of black spruce and here and there an aspen covered with the bite marks of a hungry moose.

We arrived at the homestead in time to have a delicious and tasty moose lunch. We ate from wooden bowls with wooden spoons that our hosts had carved out of their own logs and tree branches. An outhouse protected by birch walls stood a minute’s walk away. After lunch we put on our snowshoes, and in between slipping and stumbling we found and ate cranberries, bright red and frozen on a branch. It was dark in the early afternoon, so we donned headlamps, but the trail between our lodge and the main cabin was marked by Jenna’s fancy ice lanterns with candles burning inside.

The next day, after a delicious hot breakfast, we lit the hand and foot warmers and got on the dog sleds. A team of nine huskies led by David (and a dog named Jack) pulled us down the Nenana River, which was frozen 20 inches thick and covered in ice. David stopped to point out lynx and otter tracks. In breaks in pulling, the dogs would lie in the snow and bite it to cool off. Returning to the lodge, we helped untie and relocate the dogs. Channeling his favorite Calvin and Hobbes, my son helped shovel the powdery snow into a pile to form Quinzee, or the Athabaskan snow shelter. The snow was very dry, but David told us that within a few hours it would sinter or consolidate into a new and denser crystalline structure. The baking seemed to me a wonderful metaphor for our journey, which was already strengthening and uniting our newly smaller family.

My son and I wore the same two-layer wool pants and socks for all three days, and we made heavy use of Jenna and David’s extra winter gear. Ratrak runs on gasoline, but other than that, we were not part of capitalism. I kept my phone charged at the lodge and left it there for most of our day adventures. Nothing we did was anything like tourism. Instead, I felt as if we had stepped through a portal into a cold, slow, alternative life.

On our third and final day my son wanted to practice his bushcraft skills so we went to the edge of the cliff where David showed us how to make a fire from dead branches. We were lucky enough to find witches broom, an abnormal growth on a black spruce that makes a great fire. When we got back to the cabin, David brought some giant scrolls of birch from the workshop, which we cut, thinly cleaned, rubbed with oil, and folded into decorative stars. My son still had time to dig out the inside of his snow shelter and sled down the mile-long trail one more time before we sledded back to Park Highway and taxied back to Fairbanks.

We hoped to see the elusive northern lights. Every night I set my alarms for midnight and 1:30, then get up, put on my parka, and stagger a few steps outside the Sun Lodge. Unfortunately, it was cloudy both nights. And although we signed up for Aurora wake-up calls at our hotel in Fairbanks, there were no calls, just clouds. To my surprise, I wasn’t disappointed that I had left this classic experience off my bucket list; as it turns out, we didn’t need to see it to experience the majesty of Alaska. The far north showed us another way, and giving up modern comforts and ease for a few days reminded us that we already have what we need; in fact, we had more than enough.

Adventures in an Alaska homestead offers two- to seven-day stays for four people, December through March, from $525 per person, per day.

A version of this story first appeared in the November 2024 issue of the magazine Travel + Rest under the heading “Chills and excitement.”