Ten years ago today, with two friends and a dog, I touched a chain-link fence in Valdez and started walking away from a sign that read “800,” the mileage from there to Prudhoe Bay. I didn’t stop for 120 days, at which time I had run out of summer and out of tundra, having reached a sign that read “0,” and the Arctic Ocean.

Today is the anniversary of the first steps of a trip that will always define me as That Guy Who Hiked the Pipeline. With the perspective of a little time, I can now see how a summer-long walk along a road that parallels the trans-Alaska pipeline wouldn’t appeal to most people. But I was smitten with the idea of being outside from the time tree buds unfolded into leaves to the time those leaves turned yellow and fell to the ground. The trip still stands out as my favorite, and probably always will.