The Last Photographs
All Things Come To An End. The Last Shots from June/July 2024 Alaska Expedition.
Last Photos From the North
I don’t know where my notes went so I’m going off of memory. We drove through humbling acres of toasted land in northern British Columbia. More crispy trees. It’s unsettling to think about how much was already burned out over the last couple decades and how much more burned this summer. There, in Alaska and all across the northern forests.
Kurt and I stopped for lunch at a small convenience store after a break out hangry argument. (Pro travel tip: keep snacks in the car at all times). We sat in the parking lot watching people go about their lives while we ate fried chicken, which wasn’t too bad. I never did eat my apple from there and the oranges were awful. So awful, later, I’d shove them at the border agent in relief to get rid of them.
We watched an older woman make several lumbering trips into the store to purchase bottles of wine, one at a time, and shuffle her stock around her camper. Later, she’d be at the same campground as us. Where we watched our campground host scoop up a baby bunny her cat was playing with, then beg us not to rat her cat out. But that was later. Here there was also a young woman walking with a small herd of kids. She stood out because of her cow hide hip holster. (I assumed it was protection from bears. But later we’d be on the trans-Canada highway and see the missing people billboards). Then to elevate the image of the town more we also watched a First Nations man get hauled off for being drunk.
The campground stay was brief our destination was for another campground spot near the Alaska border. Before making the haul home, Kurt wanted to try seeing a glacier one more time. This one required us to cross from Canada to Alaska in a border town that only Canada cared to make an effort to keep a border guard, sometimes. The rest of the time you have to stop and call them or something. I mean, real hard border security you guys.
This was a mostly uneventful expedition. Except I drank a full dose of morning coffee and 3/4 the way up the mountain I was dying for a non-existent bathroom. We hadn’t seen any traffic after the mining operation so I took my shot at a squat. That was exactly when the only car came up on us.
Wouldn’t you know it.
Instead of stopping at the standard viewpoint with the audience to my embarrassment, Kurt and I found a way to get just a little closer to glacier.
The rest of the drive across Canada was mostly a blur with the exception of the crop dusting plane who had his fun buzzing us on the trans-Canada highway, I squealed. I made eye contact with pilot.
I was obsessed with the clouds and the canola fields. It hurt that we tasted the barest sliver of Jasper National Park driving through, especially when much of the area would burn within weeks.
It seems, we’ll watch it all burn in our lifetime at this rate. All our forests and all our most beloved of trees.
Don’t cross into the United States at International Falls, Minnesota. If you value yourself. It’s a narrow, one way path between buildings and much of it is shared with train tracks. They have a small warning sign. They don’t say Thomas the Tank Engine and friends took speeders and are aggressively running four tracks. No lights, bells or whistles▪️
