March 29

Watson Lake, Yukon Territory, 1350 total miles, with perhaps the slowest 500 miles I’ve ever driven today (eleven & a half hours). It turns out the Alcan exceeds my expectations—not that I anticipated four lane industrialized freeway, but there are considerable stretches wherein exceeding 30 kmh (yes, kilometers) would imperil you beyond belief. The fastest one is permitted to go is 100 kmh (62 mph), so making good time is necessarily secondary to an awareness of your environment, which I suppose I like. Today, after hours of road that made Guenella Pass look like child’s play, I thought I had emerged into an easy driving section prior to the BC/YT border, but found that every half mile or so I had to slow or stop so that small herds of buffalo could graze at leisure along the side of the road, the only strip where the copper-wire grass is visible. They barely glance as you drive past, ignoring Willa’s incessant curiosity. & beyond them, there is the snow, the snow. Towns along the Alcan close for winter; gas stations board up, roads are left unplowed, their points of access a dozen feet buried, cars bow under a long winter’s ice. The rest areas, too, are almost wholly enveloped. There are few of either to begin with, hundreds of kilometers of wilderness constellating them. But look past the dormant ghost towns & you see the mountains in such sheer relief, today against a dull & matte grey sky, a snow-sky. In that light, the water occasionally visible in streams & rivers assumed an aspect almost black, & the ice sheening the sloping peaks appeared argent, a kind of mercurial silver. Again, there were moments when I was rendered so breathless by what unfolded in front of me that my hand found my heart unconsciously. Each vista cleaves to reveal another more vast & more magnificent. A place of enormous & boundless & incomparable beauty.

One odd thing to note here—yesterday, the moment I pulled over in Dawson Creek to take a picture of the zero mile marker for the Alcan, my triptometer hit 777 exactly. One can wonder at that I suppose.

Now, hopefully, sleep, here at the Bighorn Inn. The Yukon Territory. Jesus.