Wed 17 August 2005 - INTO BRUTISH COLUMBIA!
From Demmitt AB to Buckinghorse River BC
EARLY, we're rolling out of Demmitt Alberta. Just before the BC border, gas at the FastGas is 99.9¢ per liter (US$3.09 per gallon) which as Maureen points out is still cheaper than soda. With gas, ya don't have to pay a deposit on the container. Container deposits are stiff up here, like 20¢ for a 2-liter plastic bottle. Save those Coke jugs!
Meanwhile, the catch-phrases of the morning: USE THE LOO BUT DON'T LOOSE THE EWE, and I'M ALL WRAPPED UP IN MY WONTONS AND I'M READY TO GO. Yeah, I got wontons on, over me skivvies.
And we enter BC — no military checkpoints, no agricultural checkpoints, but there's the RURAL CRIME WATCH. We've been seeing all these signs for RURAL CRIME WATCH and we've been watching for rural crime and we haven't seen any yet. When does it happen? Will we miss it all? Does the extra 8% BC tax help or hurt?
(Numbers if you're interested: the current exchange rate is: US$1.212 = CA$1.00 or CA$.825 = US$1.00. 1 gallon = 3.75 liters. CA federal tax aka GRS is 7.5% and the BC provincial tax is 8% on top of that. No extra taxes in Alberta or the Territories. But almost everything up here costs more anyway, except coffee at CostCo.)
We pass a sign for WILDWOOD TAXIDERMY. So, now they're stuffing trees. Stuffing the wild woods, but with what? Maureen suggests, critter carcasses. I mean, they stuff animals with sawdust, why not stuff trees with animals? It's perfectly logical.
DAWSON CREEK: Mile zero of the Alaska Highway. Fresh RV batteries, a sunny day. Mile zero for us is 100330 on the odometer. And we had a lovely time at the lovely Dawson City Visitor Center, the lovely staff filling us with info on stuff to see in the area. But we seem to be itching for the more remote North Country. It's just too civilized here for us. So we're moving on. Maybe on our return, eh?
It's a beautiful day in these low rolling hills with boreal forests cut back for farmland here and there, fleets of cumulus clouds sailing across the sky. A small group of BIG (what I think are) mule deer bucks with full racks of mossy antlers go bouncing across the road right in front of us. Just a few guys. The right-of-way is cleared maybe 20 meters wide or more along the road. Maureen's supposition is that it's so drivers can see oncoming elk-deer-antelope-moose-bison-wolverines etc, so they can't just sneak up on ya, unawares.
We fall off the high plains to drop into the great Peace River canyon. Wide fast river, lush green countryside, blue skies and white clouds, yada yada — so colorful. This is all still high prairie with rolling hills, even up here past Fort St John. Some of the hills roll a little more than others, some a little less. Still high plains with boreal forest and occasional muskeg. We won't cross the continental divide again for a ways. What's left of the Northern Rockies is off to the south and west of us.
Of course, these are "rolling hills" to my California eyes. To an Easterner, this might be the outskirts of the Appalachian mountains or the Ouachita-Ozark plateau, only cooler. And generally cleaner. The $2000 fine for littering probably helps with the cleanliness situation.
Be that as it may, we're off those lower plains of Alberta, out from under that storm system.
PETRORAMA: The guidebooks say this is BC's oil and gas region. In places, I can smell it in the air. Miles and miles of boreal forest, and every here and there, tucked away behind the trees, is a petroleum transmission or activity site. We pass a fair number of petroleum-industry trucks, not fuel tankers, but carrying large pipes and machinery, pumping and drilling and processing equipment.
A greater number of big rigs are hauling heaps of lumber. There are a fair amount of campers and RVs going in both directions. Some big pickups, pony-haulers and trailer-haulers and toy-haulers. And an awful lot of *really* dirty cars and pickups, covered with tawny crud from the bottom up. They've obviously been running on muddy tracks.
At VERY wide intervals I see roadside shrines, like maybe a few Mexicans made it this far north, only to die on the AlCan Highway.
More and more oil and gas facilities, half-hidden in the forest. I feel like I'm in Kuwait with trees. Here and there I see what looks like a promising forest road to drive up a little ways to park for the night, and then there'll be a sign: KEEP OUT - POISON GAS. It's mid-afternoon now, and we haven't seen any large animals for hours. Maybe they don't like the smell or the noise? Maybe they've all been gamed? (No, hunting season doesn't start for a few weeks yet.)
I was wrong. This isn't Kuwait, this is Nigeria with conifers. Nigeria is a major petroleum producer, and in-country, petrol is rare and expensive, all exported. Here we're rolling across major petroleum fields, and fuel is the most expensive I've ever seen. Of course, I haven't seen European oll and gas prices lately.
TEDIOUS: Touristically this route is pretty tedious so far. The forested terrain looks lush enough from the roadway, from which we don't dare depart, but here and there we can see that beyond the swathe of trees along the roadside lie big clear-cut areas. Every now and then are signs for FOREST RENEWAL BC or FORESTS FOREVER, indicating areas that have been clearcut and replanted and regrown for further harvesting, which process is trumpeted as an ecological move.
We climbed over Pink Mountain. Four gas stations, two of 'em are out of gas. We bought 37-odd liters for CA$50, that's 115.9¢ per liter or US$3.59 per gallon. On the north side is a sign announcing SUICIDE HILL, an (in)famous landmark of the old AlCan. The sign then read PREPARE TO MEET THY DOOM. Doesn't look to bad now, but I imagine that in winter, before the old gravel road was realigned and paved, it was kinda fearsome.
North of Suicide Hill we drop into a great valley, the Sikkani River. Now off to the west are the Rocky Mountains again, what's left of them. Just little stubs, compared to what they are further south, but they're still mightier than the Petaluma Hills, heh heh. And ruggeder. In fact, I can see some rugged features from here — looks like more glacial-scoured valleys and rock faces, out on the blue horizon with white clouds above. The sky is clear above us.
BUCKINGHORSE: And finally we pull into the provincial park on Buckinghorse River, to stay a night or two. It turns out we could have stayed back in Dawson Creek, but we miscommunicated. I thought she wanted to move on; she thought I wanted to move on; so we moved on, when each of us really wanted to rest and look around. Darn. No thought-reading yet. Here, can you read my thoughts NOW?!?!? (odd noise)
The river and forest are lovely, the water is polluted and/or infested, the bears are nearby. But where the hell are the moose? Ain't seen a moose for two days now. There's a lot of brown sediment in the water flowing by. It's the RootBeer River, sez Maureen.
We're north, where the days are longer, just 100 miles below the 60th parallel. Remember my earlier notes on latitude? From Honduras to here is 45° or halfway from the Equator to the North Pole, 1/8 of the way around the planet. Nice drive, eh?. But days are long; it's light out but we're tired, it's late. Rising and setting with the sun here means having just a 6-hour dark night for sleep. It's time for some right now.
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Thursday 18 August 2005 - BUCKINGHORSE RIVER!!
Go Nowhere, Do Nothing, Enjoy Life, Whatever
Lay around camp all day. Write some songs and some travel guides: The Trouble With Guidebooks and Travel Gear You Can Well Do Without. That's about all. Ain't that enough? Various families with noisy kids and vehicles come and go; some kids ride thru variously on ATVs and horses. Their parents are either rich or maximally indebted, eh? Life goes on here in the last throes of subarctic summer. Insects mate and devour and are devoured, trees ready for change, ATVs kick up dust instead of slush, and the waterfowl fly every which way.
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Friday 19 August 2005 - THRU BRUTISH COLUMBIA!
Buckinghorse River to near Fort Nelson
MORNING: It's beautiful here at Camp Buckinghorse on the Alaska Highway. It's so gorgeous that it's time to piss on it and leave. We've run out of potable water. Maybe there's a sani (sanitary dump station) at the lodge across the highway.
Previous nights have been cold and dank. Last night and now this morning, very warm, pleasant. The next campground should see us right at the permafrost line. Is that a treeline, or a stunted treeline, or what? But here we have boreal conifer forest with some birch, no muskeg visible. Muskeg, by the way, is forest in wet swampy ground with stunted growth. Horrible stuff to try to make your way through, so I'm told. But moose love the swamps.
The nice folks at the Buckinghorse River Lodge let us tank up on water. We cruise north a little ways and see a major secondary (gravel) road, roughly paralleling the Alaska Highway. We head up there a bit and I log my first sasquatch sighting. Two of them on a road crest far ahead; they disappeared quickly. This looks like good country for bigfoots to be tromping around in. I'll have to try it myself.
We go a bit further but the scenic-camping prospects are slim. We can tell the road runs for quite a distance across the ridgetops but we have no idea where to — it's not marked on the maps we have. So we turn around, head back to the highway, and along the way we see a black bear in the middle of the road, quickly departing. Thus we also log our first first-hand bear sighting for the trip. My first, anyway.
MARGINS: A bit further, through forest both stunted muskeg and otherwise unstunted larch and lodgepole pine and birch and probably spruce and whatever. Trees are trimmed back from the roadway maybe 30 meters on each side, wide margins, plenty of room to see rushing, dashing, crashing, flashing big beasts, caribou and moose and bears and sasquatches. Off to the west, the Rocky Mountains are closer; great valleys between us and them, valleys drained by the Prophet River. Immense vistas; Maureen says, like the desert but with trees instead of sand. And plenty of big insects bouncing off us — great huge flies and beetles and bees and dragonflies. Pretty soon we'll be among mosquitoes the size of swallows.
Ah, it almost feels like we're back in Mexico. Here's a road sign that says OBEY THE SIGNS.
We follow another remote lead off to nowhere — a gravel road, after crossing a small river, a tributary of the Prophet. Off a few klicks, SLOWLY on this road, through rolling hills and intermittant muskeg, out to a hunters' or trappers' camp on a wooded ledge 30 meters above the river. The campsite is a couple A-frame lean-to's of poles or branches lashed together, over which to toss tarps. It's a good spot for lunch but it's HOT here, and buggy. So, we'll continue on to some campground we'll have to pay for.
The forest here is a dense mix of deciduous and conifer, a sub-sub-tropical jungle, with bears instead of jaguars and moose instead of tapirs and sloths. Aboriginal population densities were never as great here as further south, which is why not all the large northern animals were slaughtered and eaten thousands of years ago. MesoAmericans devoured all their large game millennia back, which is why they had to develop agriculture. And primordial Americans apparently harnessed no beasts of burden until horses were re-introduced by the Spanish. But I digress.
We pull into the next Provincial Park Wayside, the Prophet River Campground. We don't see any river. The WHAT TO DO sign says there's a spring here somewhere, but it doesn't say where. Looks like fall here; we're surrounded by tall deciduous trees, and their leaves are falling. Quite pretty. Otherwise it's a pretty sucky place. We're not tired and desperate enough to commit ourselves here for the night. It's too early, the campground is too boring and too close to the occasionally noisy highway and odiferous restrooms. This would probably seen nice under a thin layer of snow.
POCONOS: As we travel north, the highway-side forest shows fewer conifers and more hardwoods: birches and beeches and whatever. Mostly birches, sez Maureen. The road overall feels like we're on some parkway in the eastern US. Then we pass a great huge modern sign that says WELCOME TO NORTHERN ROCKIES. This might as well be the Poconos, except for far fewer resorts and gas stops here. Maureen has a story about the Poconos.
Maureen: When Sharon and Fred lived on the east coast, early in their life there, must have been 25 years ago, they took a holiday to the Pocono Mountains. And they drove and they drove and they drove and they drove and they drove and they drove and they drove some more, and they finally stopped at a gas station and asked the attendant, "Hey, where are the mountains?" And the attendant said, "Lady, you've been in them for the last couple of hours. Are you from California?"
For those who don't know, the Poconos are what passes for mountains in eastern Pennsylvania, a branch of the Appalachians. They've been a popular resort area for New York City folk for many decades, home of the famous Borscht Belt. We might as well be in Appalachia here — we just passed Lum'n'Abner's resort. But we can tell we're not in Pennsylvania. Here's a permafrost forest, all VERY stunted trees. What elsewhere would be 40-50 feet high, here are 10-12-15 at the most. The National Geographic map shows the southern limit of permafrost, and there it is!
BEAUTY: A bit further we pass a beautiful nameless pond. Alas, it's too close to the highway to park for the night. A few young fisherfolk there; their mother, an Alberta woman with a lilting Celtic accent, remarks on how warm and gorgeous the weather is.
Beyond that is an impromptu heliport. There's a road leading off into the forest, blocked just off the highway, the helicopter sitting unoccupied on the far side of the berm. On the highway side is the cleanest, brightest yellow pickup we've seen in weeks, also unoccupied. What's the story here? In the background, a rocky escarpment stretching for miles northward, a mesa rising a couple hundred meters above us.
The highway shifts to the west. We're heading towards Japan now! This reminds me of long ago when I was hitchhiking far north from San Francisco. My practice then was to display a sign for a distant destination, like PARIS or ROME or PERU. That day I held up a sign for TOKYO. A dusty pickup stopped. The driver said, "That's where I'm going." I hopped in back, lay down in the pickup bed, dozed off. I awoke after dark in the tiny dead-end coast range village of Tokyo, Oregon. I had to unroll my sleeping bag under a tree. I had a hell of a time the next day, catching a ride back down to the highway. I threw away the TOKYO sign.
Here we observe large black crows or ravens walking along the roadside with their mouths WIDE open. The first I saw, I thought, "Well, maybe he ate a hot pepper and he's airing out his tongue." But we've since seen several more acting the same. I doubt that so many jalapenos are tossed from cars around here. Is it spicy carrion? Are they tasting the air, hyperventilating, belching? Is there an ornithologist in the audience? We need answers!
As we roll further north I try to stay awake as I drive. I yawn obsessively, incessantly. It's not the boring road that's causing this. I've stayed awake on much more boring roads. Is the atmosphere thinner as we approach the North Pole? Should I blame oxygen-depleting moose farts? Or maybe somniferous byproducts of the local oil-and-gas industry? Or have the weevils in my brain drilled through the wakefulness center? Who knows?
LATE AFTERNOON: We pull into the Andy Bailey Provincial Park, 14 klicks south of Fort Nelson and then 12 klicks off the highway. A lovely forested lake. We roll up to the beach. A part-drunk part-Indian and his family (Ukranian wife, several kids) enjoy the shore. He's a muscular youngish guy with a terribly scarred neck. He talks and talks about how today's weather is the best in months, and he just returned from southern BC, and how Mars will be bright in the sky tonight (closest aphelion in 60,000 years), and his favorite UFOs, and how long his people have been in the area, and into which hot springs we should jump.
We sit inside the RV this warm muggy afternoon, herded by mosquitoes. We'll take our revenge later. We'll skip Fort Nelson's weekend offerings: the Oil-and-Gas Golf Tournament, the Rodeo and Fair, the Sasquatch Convention (relocated here from Sasquatch Crossing, a lodge back by Suicide Hill).
With any luck we'll take a week or two to travel the 300-odd miles to Yukon. Yukon exists whether we see it or not, but we need to verify it. Fortunately we're in no rush to do so and our budget is creeping back up on us. Maureen calculates that if we spend 1/2 our daily allowance, we'll be even in about two months. That basically means, buy a tank of gas once a week, drive and stop, stay a week; live on the food we've brought along, and/or grub for mushrooms and roots and berries and nuts, and a little fish-tickling. Maureen may actually use her line and hook. Survival!
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Saturday 20 August 2005 - STOP AT ANOTHER LAKE!
Not Far Down The Highway From Yesterday
NOONISH, we crawl out of the Andy Bailey campground at whatever lake, unnamed by our maps or guides. It's a beautiful place and when we arrived yesterday we saw no signs about fees, so we planned to stay the weekend. BUT THEN late in the evening came a private security guy and a fee demand, more than we expected or felt comfortable with. So, we're on to whatever's next.
As we crawl towards Ft Nelson, all we have for radio listening is AMERICAN TOP 40. The #1 hit this week is YOU AND ME by Lighthouse. Sounds like Hootie and the Blowfish with two extra notes. Why not a CANADIAN TOP 40? Or maybe the YUKON TOP 40? Worthless minds want to know.
Just a few klicks north on the Alaska Highway we espy a little lake off to the west. We take the minimal road over and it is gorgeous, and nobody is here, and it's not a park and there's no fee; there's a pit toilet and firepits and a level area. So we have parked here. Who knows, we may stay a night or two. We might not actually go into Ft Nelson until Monday when the library (if any) is open and we can internet.
The lake waters here are placid and tree-lined but have a certain unpleasant tea-tone — muskeg color, Maureen calls it. Brownish muck. It seems cold but apparently not TOO cold. A couple families have pulled in and their 5 little girls are splashing around in tubes and floaters in the water, immersed a fair amount. So it can't be too cold, or they're really tough little BC vixens.
ADDENDUM: Camping at this nameless lake we are, at around 1950 feet elevation. As the girlful families left, up drove a small car that discharged a youngish couple and a small black-and-tan dog. We chatted at length. He's Justin (from Britain), she's Jen (from Saskatchewan), and Indy is from Taiwan. They've just moved to Ft Simpson NWT on the mighty MacKenzie River. He's been traveling constantly for six years. They met three years ago in Bali and have work-traveled together ever since, through Baja and Asia and especially India. They say they lived well in India on US$3.00 per day and that it's almost overwhelmingly fascinating. We MUST go, especially Kerala.
Jen has a new government job as a Counselor at remote Ft Simpson; they're down here for a last splash of sun before winter closes in. Hopefully they'll set up camp on this lake after dinner, and we can chat further over a spot of tea, about First Nations people and travel and whatever. Interesting folks.
And in the evening it's tea and chat, yes. Exchange of URLs etc. Travel and experiences. Then they're off, and we're staying. G'night.
RESERVE VILLAGE: Jen spoke of conditions in near-Reserve town Ft Simpson, the brutality (alcohol-fueled), the unwritten but strict separation of First Nations people and mostly government-employed outsiders. Much money pours in but goes where? I'm reading Hugh Brody's MAPS AND DREAM about First Nations folk in northeast BC (where we are now) circa 1980. He writes of a Reserve village:
"...homes crowd up to one another, clustered to ease the supply of municipal services; yet none has running water, drains, or electricity. There is no garbage collection nor are there any other amenities or services on the Reserve...
"There is a school. It stands to one side of the Indians' houses and is surrounded by a neat and brightly painted picket fence. Behind the school is a clinic, to which a federal nurse comes twice a week, and where there are facilities that can be used in emergencies. These buildings have electricity, supplied by a generator which also stands inside the fence. The teachers at the school, who spend the weekdays living on the Reserve, have a residence in the same complex.
"The high quality of services there is a small measure of the social chasm that prevents any everyday contact or understanding petween the personnel who maintain and use the facilities within the fenced compound and the Indians whom they seek to help. There is virtually no visiting, except by nurses who periodically make checks on people in their homes. Many Whites are unashamedly afraid of visiting Indians — there might be parties and the danger of drunkenness. Indians very rarely have either much wish or reason to visit the teachers."
Is this the situation at Ft Simpson too? It's too late now to ask Jen; they've retired to their camp.
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Sunday 21 August 2005 - STILL AT THAT LAKE!
Layover in Squat Camp at Nameless Lake
A fine day to do a scrub-out of the RV. Otherwise (yesterday and today) I write Praying and Cursing While Traveling and Skinny-Dipping & Total Sunbathing & Other Public Nudity and Travel Adventures to Avoid.
Meanwhile, various folks come to this lake. Some drained their dogs, and yesterday too. Different pairs of mean-looking bikers come and go. A car-and-truck set of young guys and one bored-looking girl arrive to entice a black lab into the water (not difficult), drink lots of beer (throw the cans down) and play loud smutty comedy (not funny). Everybody leaves except us. I pluck my dobro until a string breaks. Sunset looks like an old hand-tinted picture postcard. Waterfowl fly south.
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Monday 22 August 2005 - THRILLS IN FT NELSON!
Nameless Lake to Teepee Mountain
ROLLING: Late afternoon, we're north and/or west of Ft Nelson. We extracted ourselves from the free weekend squat camp on the nameless roadside lake, ventured into bustling (HA!) Ft Nelson, spent most of the day resupplying, refueling, reconnecting (internet-wise, first time in three weeks). But my laptop brain transplant left me unable to send email directly. Bother. And at $4.00 per 15 minutes online, I didn't really have time to debug the software.
Many accents are to be heard in town, many different faces and cultures. West and East and Middle European, local Indian and East Indian. Local Indian and Euro girls walking along the street together, so there isn't the near-total social separation here that I've read about. We load up with info at the Visitors Center (sandwiched in a foyer between a swim center and a curling rink) and eventually straggle out of town.
We read about the local Indian way of going to town from a Reserve, which usually includes partying, which usually means drinking. We entered no bars, not beer bars nor coffee bars nor gas bars (the name for gas pumps in front of a market).
ENTERING THE GREAT NORTH!
NORTHWARD: We roll out on the Old Alaska Highway, heading west on this point, through more-or-less settled areas, farmsteads, log cabins and modern modulars, tin houses, past land that looks as if it was cleared for agriculture but nothing ensued, nothing further has been done. And we get to the Liard Trail junction, the road up to Ft Liard and Ft Simpson and the MacKenzie River, NorthWest Territories. And we are terribly torn: west or north, west or north? And we have decided upon: NORTH!
Wait, belay that last. We took another look at the mileage chart and it's 300 miles over and 300 miles back, not 200 and 200. That's just a bit much. So, Ft Simpson and the MacKenzie will have to wait for next time.
WESTWARD: Did I mention that it's really gorgeous out here? The shimmering trees, beech-birch-poplar-aspen, the dark lodgepoles and spruce. And yet more huge ravens walking along the highway.
We take a little side road to a Beaver Lake Rec Area. Nice and muddy. Lots of low color-changing trees under the higher conifer canopy. At the lake are lilypads and cattails and monstrous mosquitoes and dragonflies, but no beavers to be seen. Why do they always do this to us?
Now we're on our way westward under a blue-gray meringue cloud sky, popped and puffy and downpouring in places (but not here). The sun, 30° above the horizon, provides the most picturesque illumination, like a Czech inspirational movie. Huge jesus-beams shooting through the clouds between shadow and shelter.
The highway is still a wide-cut corridor mowed thru the primeval forest, but no phone poles or powerline here, no petrol installations seen recently. We could be escaping beyond the warm grip of civilization, although I must admit that full-service Ft Nelson ("The Resource-Ful Community!") was certainly welcome. Beyond the Reserves, these are still First Nation hunting and trapping and gathering grounds, however much infringed by farmers, ranchers, drillers. Farming may have reached its fullest possible extent, until Global Warming thaws some more acreage.
Patches of muskeg along the highway but we're heading away from the great morass that lies around and east of Ft Nelson.
STEAMBOAT: We pull in for the night past Steamboat resort, on the side of Steamboat Mountain or Teepee Mountain, I'm not sure. We're in a small hillcut apart from the highway — looks like a small quarry here, sufficiently sequestered from traffic, all to the north and east. To the south and west we overlook a HUGE HUGE vista of the great valley of the Muskwa ('Bear') River and the Northern Rockies beyond. Maureen notes that this is the first really big vista since our second night out.
So we're parked by this little quarry; a portion of the hillside has been cut away, and there are three holes, the biggest only 10-12 meters across and a bit less deep, the others even smaller. Largish piles of excavated rock are laying about. This is all a brittle grey sandstone, not metamorphosed into anything strong or interesting. There's hardly enough taken from here for muskeg- or road-fill; whole hillsides cut away for the highway surely provided that. I wonder: Such little holes, why did they stop? Maureen suggests they're facing cutthroat competition from cheap Chinese imports. Or possibly, the alien space capsule was recovered and they just left. Or if work crews show up sometime after dawn tomorrow morning, we can just ask them, can't we?
LOW & HIGH: The bridge across the Muskwa River back before Ft Nelson is the lowest spot on the Alaska Highway. We're climbing up from there towards Summit Pass, the highest spot, just a dozen or so miles ahead. These are just the fringes. We'll be going through and around the north end of the Rockies as we advance towards Yukon. The muskeg and permafrost are far below us here but we'll likely encounter them again, right?
The roadsides have been festooned with colorful blossoms, red-blue-yellow-orange-white, in this brief, compressed spring-summer season, with fall about to collapse on us at any moment. The blossoms are intensely sweet-smell, sez Maureen — my nose is about shot. I look down steep heavily-mixed-forested slopes, and off on the horizons the blue outlines of snowy glaciated peaks under ice-frothy clouds.
Back at Ft Nelson, just before the highway crossing, the Muskwa River is joined by the Prophet River. Just beyond, it flows into the Ft Nelson River which then flows north into the Liard River, which runs further north to Ft Simpson where it joins the MacKenzie River at a great confluence, as described by Jen and Justin. Back south of Pink Mountain, waters flow to the Peace River which describes an arc across Alberta and into Great Slave Lake, emerging as the great MacKenzie. Thus every raindrop falling here is destined for the MacKenzie, the Beaufort Sea, the Arctic Ocean, and a slow freeze. We'll be a ways into Yukon before we gain the Pacific drainage.
HUNTERS: These mountains and valleys are in overlapping hunting-trapping-fishing-berrying ranges of the various Dineh Athapaskan peoples, except down below in the swamps and muskeg where hunting is pretty much confined to the river corridors themselves — too mucky beyond that, too treacherous. The hunting cultures have been fairly prosperous (for their small populations) in this country for what? 10,000 years? 20,000 years?
Members of hunting cultures positively confound Westerners coming in with ideas and practices of land ownership and development and static exploitation, primarily because as a hunter (ie nomad) you have very little concern for lasting material possessions. Yes, you possess necessary tools of hunt and home, but those may be left behind when you must go somewhere, to be picked up again on your return. Accumulating material wealth is totally off the radar.
Hunting cultures, not just here but worldwide, undergo similar fates when pressed by industrial societies, whether capitalist or socialist or whatever. Hunters and trappers occupy (or range over) vast tracts of land but have few skills demanded by cash-based society. Hunters are lured into cash-ism by the introduction of alcohol and its attendant addiction, which leads to brutal and self-destructive behaviour. The hunting ranges are compressed, hunters forced to live in small reserves; the culture appears to implode, yet somehow drag on.
Hugh Brody says in MAPS AND DREAMS that hunting cultures of the world have been issued a death sentence by the global-industrial meta-culture. But remember that the hunters have been around for tens of thousands of years, and the globalizers haven't. So who will last? These are 'poor' people whose tables are always loaded with meat — as long as there's something to hunt.
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Tuesday 23 August 2005 - WHERE'S THE BEARS?
Teepee Mtn to Tetsa River squat-camp.
MORNING: Between Steamboat Mtn and Summit Pass is the Tetsa River Regional Park. We drive a couple klicks off the Alaska Highway past some working gravel pits into the campground. Lots of fall color to and around the adequate if uninspiring campsites, some of which have occluded views of the river, which might be accessible somewhere. What those sites actually have is a view of the floodplain, a nice expanse of gravel, the river 'way over there somewhere, posted DANGEROUS CLIFFS between here and there. We figure that if there was a great view and lots of fish for Maureen to catch, it might be worth the $14.00. But no.
Driving along through steeper scarred hillsides, more color on the roadside trees, snowy mountains visible ahead, and a whole passel of grouse standing on or beside the road. They didn't jump aside as we drove up. I could have squashed the whole lot of'em. Maureen yells, "DINNER!" I say, it'd be hard to pick'em out from the tire treads. And they'd be hard to clean.
Oh, I didn't mention the beaver dams. There are beaver dams along, right along the narrow but braided Tetsa River and tributary streams, right next to the highway. We're still looking for a beaver house, er lodge. We need coats... Aha, now we'll log Maureen's sighting of our first beaver house. Let's invite ourselves in.
NOONISH: We haven't gone far, just a few klicks past the park and THE CINNAMON BUN CENTER OF THE GALACTIC CLUSTER (a funky resort-bakery) and Tetsa River Bridges #1 and #2, and we spot a turnoff to a riverside retreat. We're parked three meters from the rushing water, amidst a colorful forest of poplars and willows and spruce, the ground lined with sphagnum moss ("Indian HandiWipes," sez Maureen). We'll stay the night, a free squat-camp.
The new RV batteries suck, won't hold a charge. A running board is falling off, on the passenger side, as is the armrest. We plugged the front leak but not the overhead; it's OK if we don't park level. Time for a new RV? Right. Then there's the camera problems, and my reporter-dictation cassette recorder starting to wear out, and no battery for my wristwatch since around Taxco, yada yada. Yet we survive.
EVENING: Maureen slept the day off (I guess she needed it) while I wandered around the sub-sub-tropical jungle, a Bigfoot on the loose. Small creatures ran before me. I crouched in the trees and brush as thundering beasts with hu-mans inside roared by. Sphagnum moss is so handy and useful. We could live here, except for the oncoming blizzards.
Yesterday's internal theme song: No Doubt's SPIDERWEBS. The day before: Harry Nilsson's 10 LITTLE INDIANS, especially the Yardbirds version. The day before that: South Pacific's HAPPY TALK ("You've got to have a dream / If you don't have a dream / How you gonna have a dream come true?")
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Wednesday 24 August 2005 - TO RACING RIVER!
Tetsa River to Racing River, BC
MORNING: We just pulled out of our Tetsa River camp and immediately we log our first caribou sighting — a youngish male sorta staggering around the road, a dizzy or disoriented beast, stopping traffic in both directions — yes, he DOES own the whole damn place. But where's his herd?
The snowy peak we thought we saw as we drove this way yesterday is revealed to be just a great rounded rocky peak, bare, mostly above treeline. Nearly white. It could be Stone Mountain, since we're now in Stone Mountain Provincial Park. That peak is buck naked, sez Maureen. This leads us into a discussion of that fine country band, Buck Naked and the Bare-Bottom Boys. Can I mention their big hit?
SUMMIT PASS: We're at longish and thin Summit Lake, immediately surrounded by low thinly-treed hills, and there's not just one bare stony mountain up here, but several, great globs of limestone. We're surrounded by bare-ass mountains. An informative sign tells us that at this elevation (1300 meters) and this latitude (over 58° north) the alpine zone is only a short distance from the roadside. And it certainly is. Maureen says this area looks a lot like Switzerland, or at least one pass anyway (she doesn't remember which) but with less snow. None is visible here. Anything is more, eh?
The color of Summit Lake is an intense dark aquamarine; we haven't quite seen its like in a lake. And this puts us directly into the north end of the Northern Rockies. Of course, the cordillera continues on into Yukon and Alaska, as shall we.
Just beyond are two freshly dead large antelope whatevers — caribou, elk, deer, we can't tell. Hit, shot? We can't tell. I can imagine then standing in the road and some large vehicle scoring a two-fer.
Now we descend a steep, sharp, rocky canyon through bare limestone layers, down into the MacDonald River valley. Maureen says this reminds her of the McGillicuddy Reeks in southwest Ireland, which she and Sharon nicknames the Khyber Pass, except that road was narrower and unpaved, and had live sheep all over it instead of dead caribou or whatever.
We encounter more Rocky Mountain Sheep on the road, mama and baby — mama is wearing an electronic tracking collar. Then more sheep pairs and now three female caribou licking salt off the highway surface. Another driver is sort of herding them with his dirty Cadillac. And now he's talking to them. I'm not sure they're listening. We pull out cameras, take many photos of caribou butts. Maureen dreams of rump roast. A live mule deer just ran across the road. The dead moose lying there didn't; or he tried,. but failed. Too bad.
Now down in the States there are reported problems with cattle mutilations. I wonder if up here, do they have elk-caribou-moose-deer-antelope-mountaingoat-mountainsheep mutilations? And if so, are the mutilations due to aliens, Satanists, or just white hunters who don't know any better? I'm sure this is worthy of a research study. Can we get a grant? I ask these questions as we wind along a braided river in a shallow valley, both colors and conifers by the road — the landscape here is neither as steep nor as lush as Chiapas or Guatemala. No chicken buses here either. But it's not bad.
We stop by and walk along the wide, rushing Racing River. The cold water is a very pale blue from fine rock flour. The beaches are very sandy, more of a rock meal or rock harina, like ocean shore dunes covered with dandelions gone to puff, sheepy herds, wooly flocks of asteraceae (sunflower family) fuzz.
ALERT: A certain situation is critical. The new RV coach batteries, replaced back in Dawson Creek BC, just are not sufficient. (We have no generator. This vehicle has an engine battery under the hood, for starting and to power the cab electrical system, and two coach batteries under the back step, to power the household electric stuff.) They don't hold a charge, and trying to keep them charged by running the RV engine burns lots of expensive petrol. Without those batteries being operational, we have no houselights (but we can use flashlights), no water pump, no LPG/propane (thus no heater, no stove, no refrigerator), and no way to recharge cameras and computers.
The nearest replacements are probably in Watson Lake, Yukon, which we'd hoped not to reach for several days. Between here and there are several parks and sights at which we wish to linger. We must adopt a low-power strategy: Drive a bit each morning. Deep the fridge door shut. Wash in the river. Run the RV engine briefly in the evening for cooking and cleaning. Whenever the engine runs, recharge the electronic devices. Read-write-draw-hike during daylight. Stargaze. We'll survive.
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Another travel guide: ALASKA HIGHWAY ROADKILL AND OTHER HAZARDS: How to Identify the Ungulates and Other Large Animals that Leap Out in Front of Your Car as You Drive Through the Mountainous North.
AND: How to Extract Said Beasts From Your Windshield, Grille, Wheel Wells, Passenger Seat, Teeth, etc.
AND: How to Identify the Tree That Just Fell on Your Tent, Car, Camper, RV, or Passenger.
AND: How to Tell Which Kind of Bear is About to Devour You.
AND: How to Tell Whether You're Being Swept Away by Flash Flood, Seasonal Flood, 100-Year Flood, Damburst, Glacial Melt, Mudslide, Avalanche, Tsunami Wave, Tidal Surge, or What.
AND: How to Tell Whether You're Being Blown Away by Tornado, Cyclone, Typhoon, Hurricane, Monsoon, Waterspout, Dust-Devil, Chinook, Scirocco, or What.
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