Road book: chap.3

White Yukon.

I leave Destruction Bay in a grey morning as the sun starts to rise. The water is not blue lagoon anymore, it is as grey as the sky and Alaskan rivers. The mountain in the far, towards my destination, that I couldn’t call Mount McCairnes or Mount Archibald, lost last night’s brightness when it was the only light in the twilight set. It is blue this morning, blended in the haze. Clouds in mountain regions definitely have their peculiar mystery, no one can tell if they were really born in the sky. This morning, I swear they got upside down and arise from white mountains.
What a magnificent view when I reach Kluane Lake’s heart in which some swans swim. Even if white takes the upper hand, some colors have resisted and give landscapes a special morning shade. Nothing has changed, I am still amazed by mountains falling into waters, especially when water’s talkative molecules start to freeze.
Then, sun gets lost in the fog, sometimes rainy, sometimes ethereal, and leads me to Haines Junction where I can learn more about my next hiking days. At noon, I am therefore ready for snowed Auriol Trail where wandering bears’ giant prints strike out. I only notice the entrance warning sign after my never ending walk, maybe it appeared after I began or I didn’t see it passing by, but I am lucky to come back alive! What a multitude of bear’s prints!

It is a long windy and sometimes frightening and often slippery hike, my whole body aches. A few landscapes are beautiful but no reason to make a fuss. Except maybe for the frozen lake whose process keeps fascinating me, maybe because it is totally foreign for me and I never got a chance to see it in full-scale… And the hike excitement wins over , creates new novels in my head. I start to dream of new stories I would like to tell; I haven’t forgotten Alistair, Brigid, Deirdre and William that I left unfinished in Ireland, they rest in my imagination, awaiting for the good time to arise again. I therefore dream of other intertwined fates throughout time and space that I will write one day, that I will write tomorrow… Yet, this creative fever fades away in the endless trail, I get tired and lost in some remaining bitterness. Bear’s prints are the only thing looking like a path and I can’t stand this snowed hike anymore, I sink and slip all the time, I fear that I am running into bears’ dens.
I reach the beginning of the loop safe and sound though, I realize I will have to dose my hikes in order to not lose my brain storm in some tired kilometers. I realize I might have to stop hiking period, because I create to many ideas for my short life.
I then hit the road again, shortly, in order to spend the night nearby tomorrow’s hike, I am absolutely stunned by Kathleen and her Dalton Brothers in the white moon.

After a long and temperamental wake up, windows are wet, snow thinly recovered the concrete around and I lounge in my blue sleeping bag, in the blue lake morning, enlightened by my blue words. Then, bored by the car atmosphere’s humidity, I get stronger than the cold and stretch my heart in the snow. Sun is rising and gives a magic color to the frost, I want’ to be part of this unreal landscape. I follow the cottonwood and go higher in order to see the lake from above. Frozen dewdrops and blue shining sun throughout the clouds on the lake – dedicated to life celebration and to death memory on this freezing October 11th – are absolutely sumptuous.
The higher I get, I bigger the view is, but the higher I get, the more treacherous the invisible path is. After a long struggle, I decide it is safer to go back. I can’t gaze closer at the King’s Throne, but what a magnificent lake!

Going back to my sleeping spot, I meet my franco-québécois neighbors and we talk about our life for a few hours, fleeting, nearby the fire in our glass shelter. It seems I am not the only one who wanders in order to understand the meaning of life.
I meet my lonely road again, meandering in between Yukon special mounts, sometimes tender and round like a sweet bread, sometimes sharp and shrill like a wolf’ tooth; yet always soften and drawn by some new snow. I reach Whitehorse in a cold sun, I take comfort in my yellow bee hostel, perfect shelter for my freezing soul, eating some Mac&Cheese and drinking local beer, awaiting for my encounter with a high school friend newly moved to Whitehorse.
Isn’t life absolutely unpredictable? Otto, whose path is perfectly independent from mine, always surprisingly comes back into my life. Always where I wouldn’t expect him. Tomorrow, it will be at the other end of the world, so far from our first home, lost in the middle of nowhere where we both decided to escape for completely different reasons…

Instead of exploring around like I planned, frozen in Whitehorse, I spend Canadian Thanksgiving weekend trying to understand my fleeting encounters’ meanings, I spend Canadian Thanksgiving weekend in frond of my screen at the snowy library. For an unclear reason, I am sure something big will happen to me in Whitehorse!
It is always the same, I feel this dazzle, I am sure of my instincts, of my adventures’ hidden secret and, when nothing happens like I planned, I collapse. I want to understand what went wrong, I listen to my heart even when I don’t understand it, even when I don’t hear it. I question my deep sadness, always unknown, this time born with my departure (and maybe before) from the blue house of the ridge, following me for a couple days on the road, disappeared in solitude, waken up again in my immobility, in my unknown and disappointed hopes’ fever. I sometimes would like a clearer path because I don’t understand why everything should be so painfully burning all the time, I don’t understand how simple, light and shinning promises can become such complicated, heavy and dark disappointments. And because all my black words don’t lead me anywhere without a proper hind sight, I give myself the opportunity to go back to my thoughts another day. In fact, there is not always answers to my questions; except maybe that, in this minute, I bitterly feel messy and fragile inside.

I celebrate my first Canadian Thanksgivings; first in my hostel’s warm atmosphere, then at Otto’s, my high school memory. I am told that, despite popular beliefs, Thanksgiving is not related to first settlers’ arrival, Thanksgiving is a rural celebration. They greet the farmer’s return at home, he has probably spent the last weeks in the fields, not showering, his wife meeting him there for lunch time. They celebrate the end of land’s work and winter supplies they have harvested.

I finally go back on the road, with a new Irish buddy, trying to travel through seasons, the weather changing from minus to 0 and even plus plus on my wandering thermostat. We take a detour to Carcross which strangely look like a western movie, meeting on our way the Yukon Emerald, and almost get to the other Alaska. Landscapes are so different all of a sudden. Round under their black trees, underlined by some snow, giving a way to incredible and unreal White Pass. We follow rivers and lakes’s currents, so peculiar blue, often called white though like everything in Yukon. White River. White Horse. White Pass.
My incomprehensible and misunderstood heart gets tired at the end of the day nearby Teslin Lake and we stop there for the night.