CASSIAR

Yesterday I woke up in a six-bed room at a backpacker’s hostel in Whitehorse, Yukon. Everyone spoke English, but not their native tongue: very civilized but then it’s a big city as the Yukon Territory goes. By mid afternoon it was time to get off the AlCan Hwy. and head south on Route 37, the Cassiar Highway. If you want to get away from the hustle and shopping mall mentality, the Cassiar is where you go. Young people here remember when their first rate gravel road was paved over, not all that long ago. About 450 miles of highway were added to northern British Columbia’s remote, pristine wild country. 

Within a half hour, I drove into a burn area. Several years ago the fire took out vast region along the northern B.C. border, southwest of Watson Lake, Yukon. When I reached a high point where I could look out, especially to the east, the blackened trunks of spruce and cottonwood stretched for as far as I could see. New cottonwoods were waist to shoulder high along the roadside and in wetlands while fireweed created a visual blanket on the forest floor. I always liked fireweed but it was a neural, text book sensibility. Fireweed fixes nitrogen into the soil rather than taking it; making it a pioneer in the ecological succession of upended environments. On the outwash plains of glacial streams, fireweed is plentiful but this was different: about how it got its name. In the burn area there was a feel-good feeling, all about starting over; new beginnings, and I’m a sucker for “New Beginnings.”

It’s still the summer season and I”m far enough north that days are long and sunset really, doesn’t happen. The sun just gets lost, wandering around in the west and then you realize it’s gone. Still, it won’t be dark for several hours. I stopped in Dease Lake for gas and wasn’t impressed: not a friendly face or a kind word so I drove on. As I drove I noticed that the scenery was getting better, I was losing light and the sky turned wet. We were getting into taller, older forest and it was harder to see out so the frustration with not getting great photographs was just that. I did a little dance with a she-moose and her calf. Able to slow down and slip up on them, they were walking in the road and didn’t really want to go back up into the bush. When Mamma went for higher ground, the calf turned back to the middle of the road and moved away. We did that little 2-step for quite a while. Mamma kept up with us along the ridge line and finally coaxed the little one through some running water and away from the menacing man with a camera.

This morning I woke up at Bell 2 Resort. I got here just about the time I needed my headlights (11:00p.m.) Nobody up and everything dark so I pee’d in the bushes, brushed my teeth off the tailgate, rearranged the cab and tucked myself in for the rest of the night. My alarm went off at 7:00, same time the coffee shop and gas pump open. So both the truck and I are full and ready to go farther south. It’s sunny and I’m full of great anticipation for photographs today.

Bell 2 Resort is a world class resort, tucked away in a truly, get-away niche. Misty, my morning host, sells gasoline, brews coffee, deals in delicious cinnamon rolls and deals out information with a smile. Jillian, who covers the restaurant and their boss Sally were going over the grocery order when I came in. They get two deliveries a week, from hundreds of miles away. Sometimes they get what they order and sometimes it’s a surprise. The resort is booked ahead for over a year with most of the visitors coming in from Europe. They feature Steelhead fishing in the summer and in the cold season, skiing virgin, powder snow with a helicopter ride to the top of the mountain instead of chair lifts. The coffee and cinnamon roll were perfect and I didn’t have to dig too deep to cover that. I didn’t ask how much a room and skiing cost and I don’t think I will.