April 19, 2011 – Highway 16 & Highway 37 & 37A – BC & Hyder, AK

Highway 16
The Yellowhead Highway.
I never yet saw a blond up here.
I saw humor in advertising:
Last Spike Pub,
Cold Smoke Drags – car racing,
Give-‘Er-a-Yank Towing,
Gas Bars, for fuel.
Aggravation Acres.
I saw loneliness:
Old building shells left rotting,
Cars and parts, fortress walls around shacks,
Single houses in endless landscape,
A coyote, sniffing and pawing logged-over land.
I saw nature’s immensity:
Skies that never end,
Skies sculpted with clouds.
Sometimes I looked around
And saw five storms.
Big sky.
I saw history evolving:
Gold, silver, copper, molybdenum
Towns named for explorers, railroad men, priests,
Fraser, Smithers, Morice,
Logging, sawmills, OMB plants
Lumber industry supporting a whole province,
A nursery, “growing your future forests.”
I saw sorrow and shame:
Three girls’ photos on a billboard
Dark eyes, raven hair.
“Girls don’t hitchhike on the
Highway of Tears” it read.
Missing or murdered.
I never did see a blond on
The Yellowhead Highway.
Highway 16, British Columbia.

Signs on the Northern Highways
Watch for bears!
Watch for elk!
Watch for moose!
Watch for badgers
Watch for horseback riders!
But all we see
Is one lone eagle
And a toothless old Indian
Sitting on a scree slope
Smiling.


Les and I detoured off the Cassiar Highway to get gas and explore. Hyder, Alaska is only a few steps from Stewart, British Columbia. A Canadian customs and a small stone storage house are all that separate the two countries. This first masonry structure in Alaska was built in 1896 by explorer Captain D.D. Gaillard of the US Army Corps of Engineers when the USA was staking claim for Alaska. The ninety-mile fiord into Stewart and Hyder is the international dividing line. Four campgrounds in the area were buried in snow, but a nice couple let us pull up in front of their closed motel, plug in, and use the cold water washroom. We got to eat dinner in the Hyder pub. The walls were plastered with money, Canadian and US. It had just opened for the season. Everything else was shut up like a ghost town. We rode our bike down to the ocean pier and small boat harbor.

Geese on snow.
Country just out of bed,
Brown and frowsy,
No seagulls scream.

April 20, 2011 – Hyder, AK to Watson Lake, Yukon Territory
The drive in and out of Stewart and Hyder is a canyon between mountains, waterfalls and avalanches along the road. Bear Glacier (pictured) has receded enough to allow a new highway along the valley.
The Cassiar Highway was quiet and mostly good traveling. Toward the northern end there were frost heaves, curves, hills, and we lost the little wheel on the front of our trailer used when we unhitch. We aren’t unhitching…. We turned back down the Alcan for 14 miles to get gas in Watson Lake. Les and I took a partial tour of the sign forest. As the trees come down, we plant signs! We’re staying here tonight, a block from that forest.