Alaska VII
I meet Alaska’s giant mutant mosquitos and satans’s microscopic mosquitos.
I am missing the haunting calls of coyotes in the night (what night). The yips and howls, when they start, make you reach for your pets, to be sure they aren’t on the menu. The night is noticeably devoid of their calls.
I can’t say I’ve heard from wolves either. I did see a nice wolf pelt (and black bear and beaver fur lined gloves) at a lonely diner, The Maclaren Lodge on the Denali Highway.
That's it?
I think we drove all five, maybe four, accessible roads (“highways” if you must) except-
Kurt had a conversation with a local about the road to Prudoe Bay*** and that sounded detrimental for our truck. After the incident in Death Valley that got us this truck, I’m inclined to pass, when advised to.
Denali National Park is a tease. There’s campgrounds, full. But you have to take a bus to see the park. Only part of it is accessible currently. The next dissappointment about Denali National Park and Denali State Park is the trees are dying from an invasive beetle. Great swaths of forest stand dry and ready to burn. And Alaska is burning as I write this. This carnage happened in the last five years according to a local source. In other areas the trees are still healthy as of 2024, but the local source described seeing swarms leaving for new trees all at once on his own property. (Could fire be a good thing in the long run?)
Our tentative plans were shot down by nature. Maybe Fairbanks. Maybe head home. There’s no backroads here. There’s no way to get anywhere else without a boat or a plane. I knew this in theory, but not the extent of it.
Alaska sometimes feels like the Upper Peninsula. With less population density and bigger mountains. Serious mountains. The upper peninsula has 300,000 people. The entire state of Alaska has 750,000. Sometimes I zone out and forget where I am. And then the illusion breaks when night never comes. Here’s a sentence I never imagined putting together: I miss the stars, the moon and the darkness of night. Experiencing a 24 hour day was something I thought I wanted. I’m homesick now. I want a sunrise separated from the sunset by hours of night. I may find myself missing Alaska’s hours long sunsets- but only a little.
Nightmare on Denali Highway
West of center on the Denali Highway (that’s a misnomer, it’s a maintained gravel road). Kurt and I were enchanted by a view and camped for the night. We had a view of a glacial runoff with the glacier, mountains, and carpet of verdant green shrubs and billowing storm clouds.
Then Kurt said “Doesn’t seem to be any bugs.”
Then it rained.
We watch a four hour sunset that didn’t exactly end at midnight, I think the final colors blended with a four hour sunrise.
Then we both started noticing an abnormal number of mosquitoes inside the camper.
Kurt cleared the air of the intruders, waving a plastic electrified tennis racket around (an Alaska invention?) then we tried to sleep. Within minutes the ominous buzzing was back.
Kurt shut the windows.
I got up and stuffed the camper’s slide out gaps with pillow cases. I cleared the camper corner by corner, swinging away, zapping mosquitos. The full ones pop. →The rest died in a sizzle of burnt hair smell.
Kurt took a turn clearing the camper.
I got up and shut the vents.
Kurt cleared the air around us.
This blood meal finally slept.
In the morning the outside was cool, without bugs. Inside dozens of mosquitoes were bobbing around hanging low and heavy with blood. My blood.
Heat & Wildfires
The Richardson highway drive to Fairbanks was nice until plumes of smoke appeared on the horizon. That evening’s entertainment was spent camping riverside watching the smoke. We had drama when a helicopter landed behind us and did things with firefighters. Much talking, hip holding and pensive looks off into the distance. They were not shirtless, holding kittens. They looked exhausted.
I theorized I could exchange smoke inhalation for being ravaged by bugs. I received both. This cruel world▪️
***A couple days later a trucker pulled up alongside us at a turnout and made idle chitchat, about forest fires. Some visible to us. Here we learned the road to Prudoe Bay was closed due to forest fires.
The electrified tennis bat is not an Alaskan invention btw. We have it here in India too.