Phones, Flush Toilets and Faucets: The End

Beaver pond from Nolan Road, looking across valley of the Middle Fork of the Koyokuk

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.

From road home to my cabin

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.

Lynx rear

On my last Arctic Circle run to welcome folks to the 66^th 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.

One of the few views from the top:  beaver at Grayling Lake

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.

Fireweed gone to seed

Alaska Cottongrass

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. 

Last little flower on Marion Peak the day it started to snow.