MORNING GREETS US WITH FRESH BUGS SPLATTERED against our windshield. A rock, kicked out from under a hulking semi leaves a crack in the passenger's vantage.
Loose gravel sent us into fishtails on curved mountain roads without guardrails. Bison chomping on grass. A caribou's carcass against the side of the road. Blood pooled in the right lane. The early effects of rigor mortis.
We hurled forward. Because we had the day to chase. Because we had another town to make. Because we could not stop for death.
A LOG TRUCK, TWO CARGOES DEEP, ASSUMES THE RIGHT LANE, lollygagging at forty kilometers on a downward slope where we could be doing one-hundred or better. The ravines run deep. A car, we find, turned upside down, shards of glass strewn against an untamed lawn.
The sun bursts into our cabin. Dust seeps through the air vents.
No room to pass him on the winding roads through the Canadian Rockies. Finally, with a turnout appearing on the road, and an opportunity to let us pass, he kindly stopped for us.
FINALLY IN WATSON LAKE, WHERE WE WILL make camp for the night. Pitching the tent is our new virtuosity, completed with perfect coordination and tame silence. Stakes go in the ground, one by one, and then they are six.
Head out again for food. On the corner sits a young man. Beard either tamed or impotent. A pipe in his mouth. A dog by his side. He wears a green, wool sweater. The kind you where at holiday Christmas parties.
He holds his thumb in the air. No room in back for the hitchhiker, his pipe, or his dog. We rolled on dinner. The carriage held but ourselves.
WE ARE HERE RACING AGAINST TIME. Against the days getting shorter and colder. Against the winter. Against the limits of our bodies and our wills. Against the Yukon.
Against Alaska. It is almost freezing in Fairbanks. It will be freezing in Denali. Already the ferries are returning from Anchorage. Where is Juneau, but lost within the glaciers.
We are out here, with nothing but ourselves. A few sandwiches. A map. And a compass. And the road. And immortality.
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