As you can probably see from the featured image, not a human visible from horizon to horizon. No cell service, either. It took me 10 weeks to prepare enough to try this again, as I worked to eliminate the pain points I identified from my first trip:
Problem: I forgot to bring a long lighter, and the wind made using a shorter lighter a… non-starter. Solution: the most wind-proof stove with a piezo-electric igniter. Worked perfectly! (Also got the 5-lb propane tank so I don’t have to keep using disposable one-pounders)
Problem: cheap cooler filled with ice still had ice, but everything had thawed. Solution: dry ice.
Problem: when packing up to leave, rolling the tent and sleeping bag back into their stuff-sacks was an exhausting pain-in-the-ass. Solution: a few large gym-ball-bags, mesh.
Birds flying high, you know how I feelSun in the sky, you know how I feelThis rainbow was short but brightMaking his burrow deeperDon’t camp near these mile markers, that’s where folks don’t clean up their trash like they shouldThis fella kept coming back to the shade under my truckA few miles further south than last time
Oh, looks like that panorama above isn’t showing the edges. So, here it is again:
Saturday morning, headed to breakfast. Tooling down the road in the right lane, taking it easy with radar cruise on, passing a bunch of pickups towing empty trailers in the left lane. Grey GMC SUV was obviously getting frustrated and passed one of them using the suicide lane – almost living up to the name while swerving in to my immediate left yet still stuck behind another in the same apparent caravan. Truckavan? Nah. My passenger said “Whoa!” I, while gesturing at the model of Yukon on the side replied: “They think they’re going to get ahead of these trucks before the light, but they’re in Denali.” I apologize, and you’re welcome.
Truckaflatbed? Hell no, that’s worse, almost obscenely specific. What is the collective noun here? A clot sounds aggressively judgy. A queue implies less motion than there was.
I am SHOCKED that google returns nothing for this search. Literally unbelievable that in the course of human civilization (yes, yes, such as it is) this word has not been created, to describe two snakes eating each other’s tails, in an infinity symbol.
If anyone wants to make me an animation showing that, I’ll pay for it.
One hand clasped futilely to a wrist As the familiar below fades Into the icy deep black of aging memory
Let go, turn back from the dark The journey has only begun, but already I dream of breaking the surace, breath deep the salt To watch a decade of fury set behind
The briny waves which push the tears back in as I continue to exist This is what I get to do
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