Road book: chap.2

Border.

I wake up way to early in Delta, night is still pretty dark but cold numbs my sleep. I survived the night and my anxiety slowly goes away. Writing down my last adventures before hitting the road again, few surrounding mountains, invisible last night, progressively shines in the morning light. It is then time to keep going, I cross dozen of snowed filaments only remains of overflowing rivers, blazing in the open space they give towards landscapes. Mountains’ shining white explodes hundreds of fireworks in my eyes to Midway Lake’s frozen Christmas trees island, that my camera can’t immortalize because North American has this strange habit to put view points stops when you can’t actually see the view because of trees; but my retina remembers. My numb heart takes the excuse of Hidden Lake to stretch my legs and follow bears’ prints. The landscape melts after that, it is autumn dead without winter unreal colors; and I think about Chena River’s two solitary golden trees, odd and late in the frozen wilderness, they didn’t get the memo: snow and winter are here.

Then, already, finally, here comes the border

Once I have passed the American border and before 20 kilometers no man’s land to the Canadian one, I feel my heart so heavy to leave Alaska. Only Ireland ever shed this kind of departure pain in my soul. It is such a strange thing… Why this salty river? Why this peculiar bond? Is it Hannah? Is it all lives I invented for me here. Why this salty river when I am so thrilled with my new explorations?
My heavy heart intertwines with my anxious throat, what is awaiting for me in 20 kilometers? Will they let me enter the country or will I forever stay on this nobody’s land? EU didn’t teach me well, I am not used to borders and I always feel this tiny tiny anxiety, when I haven’t done anything wrong, when I don’t need to be saved, when I am fleeing from any misery nor war. What a world it would be if we abolished flags and passable countries, if we erased those invisible lines on maps, if we dismissed obscure pieces of papers that define pieces of lands where we can root down our heat. What a world it would be if we were utterly free without compromise…

I am allowed to enter though, I can breathe but not my heart just yet. Canada here I come! I follow the only road in this part of Yukon under my Alaskan wheels, endless Alaskan mountains ranges still grow towards this new Northern territory, drawn under the same winter blue sky. Blue as a summer sky and yet… You can almost taste the ice sometimes. This blue is often transformed by a snowy cloud, you could almost think it is an ordinary cloud but the texture is different, it is only a grey veil giving a new shade of blue.
After the border, fall is forgotten again. Burnt grounds is not only a word anymore, I am passing by last summer forest fires’ remains, striking in this winter landscape. Now I can make the difference between last summer’s and five years ago’s fires: grounds’ colors. Here, it is dark; so dark next no immaculate snow.

I then have a glimpse on small surprising cotonwoods fields along the road, in the same time I have read about them in my Alaskan novel. They lead me to the final partially frozen lake, sublimation of all those I fleetingly gaze at on my journey. This one stops me and coldly cradle me with its breaking noise in between still and moving water. And I follow White River’s current not whiter than any other. All absolutely mesmerizing. Unreal.

Those long miles turned into kilometers at the border, those cotonwoods in sync with what I read, this tiny different feeling because the landscape is the same but has another breath, all those small details build and shape my thought towards a revelation about who I am. History is my common factor between theater and travel. They both help to recreate (or at least feel like I recreate) the past; they are like a time machine for my dreaming soul. Therefore, against all odds, against all assumptions, my life’s pattern would be history and not theater. Both theater and travel would actually be a mean and not an end? Changing my perspective on those three essential elements in my life suddenly brings upside down my whole idea of the future, it draws a new tomorrow.

My space and thoughts wandering end in the blue almost lagoon of Destruction Bay – destruction, what a strange name for such an unreal almost magic blue – when night turns to twilight….