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| Beaver pond from Nolan Road, looking across valley of the Middle Fork of the Koyokuk |
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Being naturally lazy when I have to work at a task, I’ve postponed this last blog entry
until well past it’s expiry date. I apologize
but I feel the need to put some
closure on the summer.
After the float trip to Bettles, the twelve minutes of daylight we were
losing each day began to be noticeable. Nights were clear and all my co-workers were turning
into zombies as they kept trying for the perfect aurora photograph. I rose at 1 am a couple of nights but
went right back to bed and missed the best of the aurora colors.
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| From road home to my cabin |
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But the colors I saw during the day were sending my psyche
into similar raptures. My evening
rides were incredibly beautiful with the reds of the dwarf birch, blueberry and bearberry
and the golds and oranges of the birch and willow.
These were holy moments for me.
I recommend the last two weeks in August for being the best time to
visit Coldfoot. I’d forgotten
mosquitoes and fires and squabbles at work and just inhaled the beauty.
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| Lynx rear |
On my last Arctic Circle run to welcome folks to the 66th
parallel (66 degrees, 33 minutes) I encountered a lynx traveling my way. He moved off the road but didn’t
realize his bum was still showing.
I’d waited three seasons in Alaska to see him. Once I was past him, he came back onto the road and
continued. I parked the car and
followed him some distance on foot.
I only got shots of his butt. I now have photos of the rear ends of nearly all the
Alaska’s megafauna.
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| One of the few views from the top: beaver at Grayling Lake |
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I miss Coldfoot.
I was ready to go but I’d come to really like the people and the
countryside. I liked having familiar faces around me and the quiet and the absence
of stores, traffic and need for money. I liked leashing up Chinook and walking the dirt road over to
get the mail at Coldfoot Camp and seeing White-winged Crossbills in the willows. I loved every mile of the over seven hundred
miles that I biked along the Dalton to and from work. I liked feeling safe and friendly with the visitors and truckers coming up the road and liked having to make few choices in
my life.
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| Fireweed gone to seed |
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| Alaska Cottongrass |
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Returning to Fairbanks I did find some luxuries that I appreciate: cell service, a toilet mere feet from my bed, water flowing from the faucet, the absence of the slop bucket. Still, I will go back to the Arctic and
the vast expanses of quiet land. I'll bring my Deet and when I need to rest my eyes from all that space, I'll look for the tiny flowers.
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| Last little flower on Marion Peak the day it started to snow. |
