"So I'm thinking of going on a vacation," he tells me.

"Really, that's great," I reply.

"Yup, thinking of taking a trip and my wife doesn't want to go." Long pause.

"Well, Neal, I mean, yeah, great ..."

"So I'm thinking of going to Alaska."

OK, so now I'm trying to figure out what my taciturn friend is talking about, and it dawns on me. "And you're telling me this because -- you want company?"

"Yeah, of course," he replies, as if to say, "You want me to spell it out for you?"

So here we go, into some image of the Alaskan wilderness, a consultant having a premature mid-life crisis and a recently divorced New Yorker. No itinerary, Anchorage and the Kenai peninsula, looking for something.

Alaska, the last wilderness, they say. Alaska, bigger than the United States east of the Mississippi, they say. Alaska, virgin land, hardy people, glaciers, mountains, eagles, Eskimos and Dr. Fleischman, Maurice the astronaut and the rest of the "Northern Exposure" crowd. Alaska, pipelines and oil spills and strange young men wandering off into the wilderness of Denali, Jon Krakauer tells us. Alaska, fishermen and endless night and nightless day, and frozen wastes. Alaska, what we once were but aren't anymore.

Alaska has become a giant projection screen for the angst of the lower 48. Against the backdrop of the Alaskan wilderness, the conundrums of late 20th century urban/suburban life suddenly become less perplexing. They also appear in sharper relief. Juxtaposed to pristine mountains, angry weather and vast open spaces, the foibles and worries and fears that beset us in cities and subdivisions seem absurd. They also become more troubling.

The day of departure came. I woke up in New York; 10 hours later, I stepped off the plane in Anchorage. It was 9 p.m. It was twilight. The sky was filled with luminous gray clouds, and the snow glowed on the mountains surrounding the city.

My friend had rented a car, and he picked me up at the airport. We had a quick meal at a place called The Humped Whale or The Frolicking Seal or something to that effect. Salmon, halibut, steak, hamburgers, salmon steaks, halibut steaks, halibut burgers, halibut tacos and of course, salmon tacos. For the next week, halibut and salmon would haunt my waking hours. Salmon from the Kenai Peninsula, the Copper River, the Kenai River, the Prince William estuary, salmon from streams and oceans, salmon spawning. And halibut from trawlers, halibut from the fishing ships docked at Homer, docked at Seward. Halibut that signs informed us we could catch, for $100 here or $150 there.

Lesson No. 1: Alaska isn't cheap, at least not for the average tourist. Improved roads and communications around Prince William Sound and on the coast south of Juneau have made Alaska less expensive in recent years, but it still costs more than most parts of the United States outside of New York and San Francisco. The high cost of this wilderness is one of those unmentioned ironies of modern life. To spend a meaningful week in a motel on the edge of nowhere, or to sleep under the stars in order to be kept awake at night by the cacophony of nature costs more than most people make in a month. Getting away from it all is a luxury that not many can afford.

After a night in the Captain Cook hotel, we drove off to the Kenai Peninsula, heading for Homer. Alaska is vast, but the Kenai Peninsula is compact. It's less than 300 miles from Anchorage to Homer, which lies at the tip of the peninsula. What Kenai lacks in scale it more than makes up for in scope. It's often said that Kenai is Alaska in microcosm, containing rivers, forests, mountains, glaciers and fjords, and surrounded by ocean. Because it has one of the only real highway networks in Alaska, Kenai in summer gets clogged with RVs, hotel rooms are scarce and dear, and everywhere you go, sightseeing companies try to entice you into day-long "wilderness" adventures.

In June, with more than 20 hours of daylight, the ethereal beauty of the night sun cast our journey in a peculiar light. Surrounded by glaciers and volcanic mountains, our conversations about urban ills had a pure simplicity. "I have everything," my friend told me one evening, "a perfect job, a wonderful wife, money, and this glorious little daughter. So why the hell am I so miserable?" In the background, the mountains fringed with snow rose starkly from Homer Bay. "I didn't realize how numb my life had become until I felt the joy of being around my daughter."

Lesson No. 2: Ever since modern man invented the wilderness, we've tried to find ourselves there. There's something so very American in seeking truth in the land, in going west to find answers to the ennui of our lives. It's been said that before civilization, humans looked at the grandeur of the mountains, at the wide expanses of space, at the majesty of nature and saw -- nothing. Today, we see what we want to see, and in Alaska, we see the antithesis of America, the land of malls, interstates, high-rises and suburban sprawl.

When my friend and I spoke, the words had an echo. Like a man speaking ancient Greek at an Amish picnic, they were out of place, and the feelings behind them were detached from their source. I talked of my recent divorce, he mused on the gap between how his life looked from the outside and how he experienced it, and we both felt oddly -- OK.

Lesson No. 3: The people we encountered in Alaska fall into distinct categories. There were the fishermen, not much different from the hard-drinking, hard-working souls who cling to the shores of New England. There were the oil workers and executives, who live in Anchorage or Fairbanks. There were the people who work in various service industries that cater to tourists. And then there were the refugees from the states, the ones who moved to Alaska in the past two decades in order to remain in the '60s and commune with the land.

Our kayak guides had never met each other before, but they even looked alike, bedecked with clothing instantly traceable to Haight-Ashbury circa 1975. "We've been living here for two years," the woman told me. "My boyfriend and me, we got this place, and we're almost done with the room. It's cool, you know, because we're off the grid." The other guide, who was in his late 20s, made an approving face. "Off the grid," he nodded. "Cool." Noticing our incomprehending looks, he explained to us. "Off the grid means off the power grid in Homer. So we don't use electricity and contribute to the oil-producing economy."

I asked how they heated their homes and what they used for light. "Kerosene."

It occurred to me that the environmental difference between kerosene and oil was about as great as the difference between renting at Avis and renting from Rent-a-Wreck. One cost less and had a certain hipster cachet, but no matter which, you're still renting a car. "Off the griders" in Alaska may buy their own kerosene tanks from the local store and they may avoid paying a monthly stipend to Alaska Gas & Electric, but they aren't exactly roughing it or saving the earth.

Many people have come to Alaska in the past three decades in order to escape post-industrial America and its corporateness, yet without the Alaskan pipeline, without Exxon and Mobil and various oil consortiums, without the supertankers trolling Prince William Sound, and without the fishing ships that load up on that oil in order to catch salmon and crabs and halibut, and the canneries that package the fish, and the ships that then take those cans to the lower 48 for sale, those people couldn't live off the grid with their kerosene tanks and macrame.

Lesson No. 4: In Alaska, you learn that, unless you subscribe to the Outward Bound philosophy of pushing your body to the brink, you need civilization to enjoy the wilderness. Unless your taste in travel runs to privation, freezing and suffering, Alaska is enjoyable to visit because it's so easy. Nowhere in the world, except perhaps Switzerland, can you so effortlessly transit from the creature comforts of modernity to vast expanses of land, ice and forests. An entire economy has developed to help people experience the wilderness.

We could wake up one morning, take a trawler out into the bay to a tiny island, get in a sea kayak, start to paddle around the island, and spend the day surrounded by sea otters and their babies, plus the occasional seal, with more than a dozen bald eagles flying over our heads. Then we could head back to the town for beers and an NBA playoff game on ESPN in the bar.

This odd melding of virgin wilderness and modern amenities somehow added to the appeal of the Kenai Peninsula. One minute we were sitting by a glacier lake with no sound but the breeze and the ripples; the next, we were eating hot cinnamon buns at a roadside bakery. Two miles of ugly stores, gas stations and McDonald's would give way to 50 miles of unadulterated beauty. One night we were getting drunk in a honky-tonk bar while a dead ringer for Frank Zappa sang John Mellencamp songs and some nurse on leave from Anchorage draped herself over some guy just out of the merchant marine dripping with tattoos. The next morning we were heading out into Seward Bay, waves high, rain in the air and volcanic cliffs jutting angrily out of the ocean.

Day by day, I noticed a peculiar cadence to our conversations. As we meandered through the peninsula, we talked, sometimes elliptically, sometimes in long, intense bursts. Yet these conversations, about life, about finding some meaning, about purpose and vision, about what to do, all took place in hotel rooms, in the car or in restaurants. When we were hiking, or kayaking, or walking, or boating, thoughts of that world -- of work, family, children, aging -- evaporated, as if such concerns were of another life, felt by other people in other realities. Divorce has no meaning next to a cobalt blue lake carved millennia ago and hardly touched by man since. Financial consulting has no substance in the midst of an electrical storm.

Lesson No. 5: You cannot escape your demons. Once enveloped -- cushioned -- by the familiar accoutrements of modern life, our baggage reappeared in the wilderness with a vengeance. Our questions and conversations seemed so starkly middle-class, so very post-Freudian, with a twist of New Age and a dollop of therapeutic jargon. But the struggles were very real, and the pain of life, of mortality, unmet expectations, and the unknown demanded -- and rightfully so -- our attention. That's why those who flee to Alaska find their demons chasing them there. Two guys can go hiking for a day or traveling for a few weeks, but if my friend and I had moved to Alaska in the hopes of avoiding ourselves, we would have been quickly disillusioned. Living off the electrical grid doesn't take you off the emotional grid.

Still, as a contrast with the streets of San Francisco or the bars of New York, Alaska underscored just how insidious modern American angst can be. In our daily lives, not only do we feel that vague disquieting ennui, but we are constantly reminded of how trite those feelings are. My friend is not supposed to feel depressed when he possesses the external trappings of success, and if he does, then he is reduced to a caricature of modern man. In his quotidian existence, he hears in a thousand indirect ways that he doesn't have the right to have the questions he does, that having them is pathetic because he has so much materially.

No wonder, then, that he felt the need to leave his life and go to Alaska, even if it was only for two weeks. No wonder so many disoriented souls seek in Alaska that which they have no room to find in the lower 48. For a few weeks, the distance makes the pathos bearable. The vastness and power of the land puts it in perspective. And in the quiet of the glacier lakes, no one can hear you cry.

At the end of our trip, we splurged at a Westin ski resort 30 miles from Anchorage. At the top of a ski lift, there was a four-star nouvelle cuisine restaurant, with 360-degree views of the steep peaks. And there we sat, and talked late into the night, sipping scotch, filled with the warmth of that endless sun and the sureness of a friendship. I grew sentimental about my ended marriage, and he spoke of depression. And we sat, in that strange juxtaposition of worlds, and it grew quiet. And for a moment -- final lesson -- everything was still.