Dempster Highway, Yukon Territory, Canada
August 26, 2001

I was a bit anxious to take this road, hearing from so many how bad the conditions are and that I should take two spare tires but having only one. However, I've gone slowly, at perhaps half the speed limit, keeping it down to only 45 kilometers, or about 30 miles an hour and it's been fine.

Sometime this afternoon I expect to cross the Arctic Circle. I can hardly wait to get there, though the scenery is so incredible, it makes the anticipation bearable. I'll have lots more pictures to post when I get home.

Speaking of bearable, I stopped yesterday to do some fishing in a pond off the road. I suppose I just didn't notice the piles of dried bear shit near the truck where I parked. It was windy and a bit cold as I took my fly rod through a line of bushes then down a hill to the water. Standing there, trying to cast the fly into the wind, I noticed a pile of black rocks at the water's edge. The rocks had strange little red dots in them. I nudged the top stone with the toe of my boot but the entire pile wobbled. Horrified, I realized that these weren't rocks, it was a pile of fresh bear shit with berry seeds in it. I looked up and around at the line of bushes bordering the pond. I had to pass through them again to get back to the truck.

Singing out loud so as to not startle any bears I might encounter, I slowly pushed through the wall of bushes, looking everywhere as I walked. "There's a story," I crooned nervously, "about a lovely ladyyyyy," no bears, "who was busy with three girls of her ownnn." Still no bears and the Pathfinder was in sight. "Something something and I forget the worrrrrdddds and they were on their own." Reaching the truck, I got the camera, swapped the fly rod for the spinning rod with a heavy lure to cast into the wind, and went back toward the bushes. "There's a storrrry," I started again as I went through the bushes and back to the pond. I took a close up of the bear shit, cast the lure into the pond several times, grabbed the camera, the fishing rod, got the hell out.

I need to learn some new songs.