These are the Chronicles of Famous Surf Writer Ben Marcus and his trip into the Wilds of the Alaskan Frontier.
Latest Update: October 16, 2000

00:16 YUKON TIME ROOM 210, DOWNTOWN HOTEL, DAWSON, YUKON.

Yes, I go where the Four Winds take me. Yesterday, they blew me north, instead of south, on a big detour up the Klondike Highway to Dawson City and then as far up the Dempster Highway as weather and tires will allow.

When I left Haines Junction yesterday I had the vague idea that I would drop Frank The East German Hitchhiker off in White Horse, and I would continue on to Watson Lake, and either take the Cassiar Highway back down, or maybe go farther east and come down through Idaho or Montana, or maybe Georgia.

But as we were approaching White Horse, the scenery was so good, the weather was perfect and the highway was ice-free and safe, I figured there was no reason to head south so soon. The Dempster Highway looked good on the map, so I agreed to take Frank as far north as I could, until the roads got too sketchy.

Das ist Frank Hoppe, ein smoke between rounds.

He was fine with that, so we turned off just before White Horse, and headed north, along Highway Two, the Klondike Highway, toward Dawson.

What did we see? So much, it's hard to remember. A lot of empty, open, quiet land. Rivers and creeks, some of them iced over, some of them free-flowing. Again, the terrain and weather changed every five miles or so. Sometimes there was snow, sometimes it looked like summer.

This was another day for me to have a 16 mm camera on top of the car, time-lapsing the whole thing. The Yukon Valley and the Klondike Higway are pretty spectacular, as good as anything in Alaska, but not as severe. The Yukon was even better this time of year, with melancholy fall light and clouds on top of snow-covered mountains, rivers and creeks and history.

I found my Best of The Moody Blues CD and put it on.

"Yah, I like," Frank said.

"This is the sound of melancholy," I said to Frank.

"Vas ise die melancholy?" he asked, and dug for his German/English dictionary.

"Yah, yah. Melancolisch. Yah," he agreed.

We also played Buffalo Springfield again, in honor of Neil Young, Canadian.

You know the line from Four Strong Winds?

"Think I'll go up to Alberta. Weather's good there, in the fall."

This weather is what he was talking about. But good is an understatement.

Along the way there were big burned areas that were still recovering from forest fires, as long ago as 1958 and as recently as last year.

Every once in a while we would stop for a water or tobacco break or something, or to read one of the history signs along the way. There was so much to see, we stopped every half an hour or so, just to get away from the noise and sweat of the van, and soak up the silence.

The thing you really notice about the Yukon this time of year is how quiet it is. When you step outside and get away from the creaking, clunking van, you hear absolutely nothing. The air temperature has something to do with it, but with no wind, there is no sound at all. Nothing. A sonic white out.

It's unusual, when you think about it. Total silence. You can hear a car or a truck coming from miles away.

If a bear shit in the woods, we would have heard it.

It was all cool and soothing and nice, until Frank and I were inspired to break the silence. With a bang.

You know how when you're in rural areas and you see highway signs and road signs all shot up with bulletholes? I now understand the temptation. And, yes, I succumbed to that temptation.

Frank didn't seem too worried about Mr. Walther, even though I have a habit of driving with it in one hand (clip out, empty chamber, trigger lock in) and pointing at highway signs.

During one of our stops, I couldn't resist. We saw a wood sign behind us, listened for cars (none for miles), then popped a cap in that sucker.

Not a thousand points of light. Just two.

"Ach du lieber, dat gun is LOUD," Frank said.

I offered it to him. He fumlbed with it, figured out how to pull back the action, and blasted away.

"Ach du lieber, that gun is powerful too, yah?" Frank said, as the sound of it echoed off into the Northern Territory.

I said, "That's good German engineering there, you should be proud. Deutschland, Deutschland uber alles!"

Frank looked stricken. "Yah, yah, very funny. I don't like..," Frank said, and handed back Mr. Walther. So we packed it up and drove on.

Rest easy. When it's not being fired, the clip is out of Mr. Walther and the trigger lock is in. At all times. I'm a responsible irresponsible gun owner.

We drove on and on. At one point we saw a sign for the Campbell Highway, an alternate route down to Watson Lake. The Klondike Highway is hardly the New Jersey turnpike, but this Campbell Highway really goes back into the nether regions of the Yukon.

I'll probably take it on the way back, whenever that is, if the weather is clear.

Along the Klondike Highway we would occasionally bump into the Yukon River, which is no less than God's Rapid Transit System. As hard as it probably was to get up to Skagway, over the Chilkoot Pass and to the headwaters of the Yukon to build a boat, once you got on the Yukon, you were flowing. The Yukon that we see could hardly be a more convenient river for getting around, except when it freezes from the bottom up in the winter.

In October, the Yukon is flowing along nicely, not too fast, not too slow. We got a good look at it at Five Fingers, a place in the river where some giant, non-eroding rocks divide the rivers into five channels. The water was flowing through strong and thick, and as it came around the rocks it looked like the ocean. On one of the history plaques there was a photo of a stern-wheeler moving through the channels way back when, and it would be a little sketchy in a canoe or a small boat. But doable. Just current, not rapids.

I'm gonna have to read some Jack London and get the inside on what it took to navigate the Yukon. Seems like a good river to me. One of these days it would be fun to take a small motorboat from White Horse to Dawson City, or maybe all the way to the mouth. Do it in a comfortable boat, with a Humvee in support.

Next summer. Anyone? Anyone?

There are other rivers that flow into the Yukon. We passed the Pelly and the Stewart and the Klondike, and they're all as open and flat and navigable as the Yukon.

The Pelly River Crossing.

It was dark as we passed Pelly Crossing and Stewart Crossing and pushed on to Dawson.

Frank had spent time here earlier in the summer and knew where he was going. The plan was to stay in Dawson, get a weather report and then push up the Dempster Highway on the morrow.

We pulled into Dawson in a thick fog. At night the town was kind of Skagwayish. A historical town dressed up for the tourists. But a bit ghostly in October. A lot of things were shut. Not many lights on.

A while back, Frank had asked me what the word "quaint" meant. He looked it up in his German/English dictionary. As we were pulling into Dawson, Frank said it was quaint.

It was also mostly closed. We checked into this hotel, then found a pub serving lasagna. It was good.

Now it's 13:26 Yukon time on Tuesday. We're going to stay in Dawson today, organize the van, watch the presidential debates tonight, then head into trapper country tomorrow, up the Dempster Highway.

That road goes all the way to the ocean, to the MacKenzie River delta. I might just go for it, if weather permits.

The History Channel is on and I'm taping away.

Frank has suggested I actually leave the hotel room today, and maybe walk around a little bit.

Perhaps he is right.

I go.