I spent the day in the sub-arctic and arctic zones pierced by Dempster Highway. For most of the day, this was simply spectacular scenery and great dirt road driving.
Then…I was about to say ‘as the sun sets’….but the sun does not set here again until later in July….then, as the sun circled to a different part of the sky in its 360 degree traverse, I was simply struck dumb by a very simple insight….
….I was looking at the ‘original’ earth.
As ‘original’ as anything can be after 4 billion years of species-eliminating change…this was the real deal.
It may have been eaten by acid rain, had its glaciers melted a bit more quickly by CO2… and it has been explored and probed by geologists…..but this is pretty much untouched.
It is not like Yellowstone (where I swear the animals are secretly fed at night by their zookeepers.) It is certainly not like the main part of the Grand Canyon, or the edges of the Alaskan Highway or the many other places where admission gets you a glimpse of managed nature.
I had to stop on the road, and absorb this.
I realized that I was a hop skip and jump from ANWR where they want to dig for oil. I wanted to scream, ‘please don’t’ – but was held back by the reality that I had driven an oil burner 4,000 miles to get here.
I suddenly wanted to change all my ways, fabricate some little 4×4 that weighs 200 pounds and gets 200 miles per gallon when not running on its solar panel.
I have been all over the earth, and I have never been struck quite like this.
Now I ‘get’ the Arctic.
I get why people have wanted to live here for thousands of years and co-exist with the surroundings.
I get why people become alcoholic and diabetic when this life is taken from them, or replaced with the drug of TV and culture managed for you by loco parents governmentis
I tried photo and video to capture some of this experience.
But nothing can replace being there…..that is being there.
Here are some feeble attempts to convey the insight over very narrow bandwidth.
I sleep tonight in awe of larger things.
