By Mike Touzeau

Special to the Green Valley News

Tom Saville scratched another dream realized off his “bucket list” after returning to Green Valley from a 55-day, 13,000-mile excursion to the Arctic Circle on a motorcycle.

“Motorcycling is the closest thing to flying,” said a smiling Saville — bearded, shirtless and barefoot — sipping his morning coffee.

With no GPS, no hotel or campground reservations, essentially no plan at all — which is the way he usually does most things — Saville, 73, hopped onto his 2006 BMW R 1200 GS on May 14. His goal: get to the Arctic Circle and, hopefully get some shots of the youngest of the largest mammals, mostly in Alaska and Canada.

The former psychologist/college professor, magician, museum curator, animal caller, archer, hunter, writer, publisher, real estate speculator, pilot, cyclist, biker and, now, experienced wildlife photographer, continues to grab onto life and not let go.

“It sounded like a fun idea,” he fancied. He fumbled with four old torn maps as he tried to explain his routes, mostly two-lane back roads over mountain ranges, through tiny villages and across mud-slicked detours.

“I wanted to get the flavor of rural areas, little towns.”

The bike was loaded down with camping gear, cameras, clothing, food and Native American flutes, which plays like an expert.

He thought he brought everything but found himself without his passport at the Canada border. He was forced to spread all his gear out on tables and get a relative to mail the passport to him in Fairbanks.

Once into Canada he felt lucky to be getting 53 mpg, since fuel was $4.50 a gallon, but the construction detours farther north left him often caked with mud.

“You just hoped the rain would wash it off and you kept going,” he said.

“There are three seasons up there ... winter, winter and construction.”

Overwhelming beauty

On the road to Valdez, he was stunned by the beauty of clouds hugging snow-capped peaks.

It wasn’t all smiles, he admits, as hours of rain and cold for a desert rat on a motorcycle can make things uncomfortable. He found some campgrounds, but not always.

“Sometimes I’d just pull off the side of the road and go down by the creek. You ride till you get tired or find an interesting place to stop.”

He had been riding in the Yukon for nine hours one day and found he had a tent area on a cliff’s edge all to himself (except for the mosquitoes). So he puffed his pipe and played his flute by the fire, pondering only the present.

“I kind of wished I had a glass of wine,” he mused.

Saville learned how to play nose flutes in Utah (Hawaiians believe you can lie through the mouth, but not the nose, he said); took his camera close to moose, bear, mountain goats and big horn sheep; met hobos and biking vagabonds and rode through two hours of nasty rain on the loop through the crossroads of Chicken. He barbecued with fellow BMW aficionados in Wasilla; met a lady in the Destruction Bay who lives in Green Valley; and rode into Banff watching clouds magically appear behind the mountains.

“It was almost a mystical experience,” he said.

Eating from freeze-dried packets, canned tuna and crackers, Oreos and trail mix, he “cheated a little,” he said, when he got back over the border, visiting McDonald’s and Wendy’s.

He neither lost nor gained any weight, never had a breakdown, and would do it again in a heartbeat, he said.

“You’re free, you see new things, get close to nature, and don’t have to be anywhere.”

His lifestyle and habits translate to many as eccentricities certainly, but amid the clutter of countless cameras, a backup of bikes and piles of paraphernalia sits a man contentedly contemplating his next adventure with no agenda.

“I want to keep doing these kinds of things now because one day I’ll be too old to do them,” he says.