I should probably have been navigating. But this time luckily, we took the direct route and there was no detour to the Top of the World as we journeyed between Alaska and Canada. Instead, as we were driving along with nothing better to do than gaze in awe at the passing wilderness and try to capture a million videos of the long road ahead, I was inspired to write. Not my journal or something particularly useful for the blog. Oh no, I was inspired to write a short story from the perspective of an Aspen tree.
So instead of “we drove from here to here and stopped for lunch here and camped here blah blah blah, and then the next day we drove some more”, all you need to know is we got from Homer, Alaska back to Whitehorse, Yukon. And here’s the Aspen to give you her story.
In the undertones of the whispering wind, she thinks she hears an ominous warning “Winter is Coming”.
With the wind comes a drop in temperature. Her leaves are startled to realize that this is their time to shine. They give a confident show of glory, brazen with golden yellows and burnt ambers. What was once the sun’s rays morphs into the dazzling radiance of autumn leaves.
But their prime performance is fleeting. The chill inevitably takes a hold and each leaf shivers in the wind before parting ways with its umbilical branch. Freedom both engulfs and liberates. Emboldened by their new found, unrestricted maturity, they feel truly free for the first time.
Once they leave their mother tree’s embrace, their mood is subject to the wind’s follies. One leaf floats effortlessly to the frigid ground, awaiting the comforting blanket soon to be provided by its siblings. Another’s journey lasts for hours, blurring into days as it is blown frivolously to a new resting place far far away. Who knows what adventures it has on the way. Yet others dance jubilantly, swirling and whirling, enlivened by the wind’s frenzy. A sixth sense telling them to dance like there’s no tomorrow.
However they spend their final moments, sleep eventually overcomes them all. Today’s leaves destined to become tomorrow’s forgotten mulch.
Her job is done for another year. She feels naked and exposed without her cloak of leaves. And yet she knows they were not hers to keep; she had to let them go.
She reflects fondly on the brief time they spent together. Spring was characterized by their bursts of enthusiasm and sense of wonder as they emerged, aphid green and eager. The lazy, hazy, crazy days of Summer were spent basking in the gentle sunshine as the midnight sun merged day and night into one.
But that precious time is a fleeting memory. It is now time for her to be stoic and resolute. She may look pale, delicate and vulnerable, but as an Aspen, her core is strong. She is shielded from the elements by her faith in the seasons. She lapses into a dreamlike state, induced by the shorter days and longer nights. Her dreams are peppered with flashes of muted pinks and greens of the aurora across the night sky.
And through the haze, she feels the first snowflakes drifting around her and settling. Silent white above, below and all around. Again the whispering wind… “Winter is Here…”.
And now here’s the scenery and journey that inspired my little story.
Dawn of day two got a little hairy when we rocked up to the alleged petrol station with less than 50 miles of fuel to go, to find this.
Before you ask, we couldn’t just pump and pay. No credit card machine at the pump and the pump itself wasn’t switched on. We tried hollering at the lodge, but the posted opening hours of 11am were not promising. There was some vague sign of life at an outbuilding but turned out to be a (luckily friendly) guard dog. We hung around for a while, hoping someone would turn up.
They didn’t.
Well if you’re gonna break down, I guess there’s worse places.
With no cavalry to save us, we resorted to our phones and their frustrating now you see it, now you don’t bars of signal strength. Apple Maps, Google Maps and Yelp revealed not a petrol station in sight for 100 miles either way. But some of Darren’s advanced research, corroborated by a potential sighting on satellite map view and an online review from three years ago, yielded a potential thumbs up just 30 miles further on. With no other feasible option, we continued down the road.
Our journey continued less eventfully to Destruction Bay, where we saw the grizzly bear on our way out. No bears this time but we did have more time to stop and appreciate the view (what without that 600+ mile detour).
We found the most awesome place to boondock for the night.
And the trees.
