Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road

by Neil Peart

  I rode down to the Yukon River and caught the ferry across, then headed up to the “Top of the World Highway.” I had been skeptical about that name, thinking maybe it was another northern exaggeration, like “highway” often was, and by “top of the world” they only meant so far north, but the hyperbole was justified.

  The narrow paved road twisted along the top of a high ridge with sweeping views on either side, looking down steep green mountain slopes and far off to distant ranges of purple and gray. It truly felt like the top of the world, and I decided it was one of the most spectacular roads I had ever travelled. Banking smoothly into the corners with the revs up high and the bike down low, looking ahead through the turn for the proper apex (and the occasional scattering of gravel), I reflected that this was more like the sport of motorcycling, as opposed to the “survival course” of something like the Dempster. (Though I must confess that having made it all the way to Inuvik and back, I felt a little proud. In a foolish sort of way.)

  The paving gave way to graded gravel near the Alaska border, where I stopped at a temporary-looking, prefab building (a seasonal, summer-only frontier) and switched off the engine to talk to the friendly officer. Riding away with a stamp in my passport reading “Poker Creek, Alaska,” I had finally managed to visit all 50 of the United States. During 23 years of touring, Rush had performed in the other 49; I’d even bicycled in about 40; and during the Test For Echo tour, Brutus and I had managed to ride our motorcycles through 47 of the lower 48. But up until then, I had never made it to Alaska, so this too made me a little proud. In a foolish sort of way.

  Now I was on the Taylor Highway (Jackie and Selena’s last name, alas), another overstated title for a winding gravel road leading down through forested mining country (including the tiny settlement of Chicken) and back to the Alaska Highway (which, after three days of dirt roads, I described as “plush”). On the last stretch I began to see big RVs parked at the roadside, often with a trailer of ATVs with rifle cases. The caribou migration was just beginning in this area, and the hunters could park their luxurious rigs nearby, climb on their ATVs, drive right to the migration route, and ready, aim, fire, all without even having to stand up, never mind the discomforts of stalking elusive prey through the bush. Personally, I’ve never been against the idea of hunting game that is plentiful and good to eat, especially when it is actually eaten, but I was a little disenchanted with these “sportsmen.”

  “That’s not hunting,” I wrote, “that’s just shooting.”

  In the hotel bar that night I heard a man say to his neighbor that hunting was “our national heritage,” and that hunters replaced the natural predators, like bears and wolves, that had been wiped out. Although it might be argued that those predators had been wiped out by hunters, there was some truth to that claim, but it still sounded like the sort of self-serving rationalization the lumber companies used in claiming that clear-cutting (sorry, “harvesting”) the forests offered the benefits of naturally occurring forest fires.

  In the little crossroads town of Tok (pronounced “toke,” with the “e” sometimes graffitied onto signs, presumably by superannuated pot-heads), the Westmark Motel ought to have been a quiet Wednesday-night destination, but once again I was in “bus-tour land,” and the bar and restaurant were packed with a nametag-wearing crowd of middle-aged, overweight, loud-voiced tourists. I squeezed into a stool at the bar for a quick dinner of margarita and enchiladas, then slipped off to my room for an early sleep, waking several times during the night with an upset stomach and troubled dreams.

  Sept 3 Tok — Fairbanks 66,627 (357 kms) [223 miles]

  Got to sleep for another hour, but I’m crabby. Restaurant crowded with bus tour people, Holland America sheep (hardly older than me, for Cri-yi), so service is glacial, buffet line backed up with browsing hippos. They wear fucking nametags, and clump together, as if for security. Kill them all. (I’m allowed to have feelings like that!)

  If I can get to Fairbanks and convince Mr. Dismal (no, not me!) to do the work on my bike today, then get my laundry done, that’ll do. I’ll have time to visit “Los Anchorage.” [As the locals call it.]

  Before leaving home I had committed myself to that one reservation, for a cabin on the ferry from Haines, Alaska, to Prince Rupert, British Columbia, on September 7th. Now that date was only four days away, so I wanted to see as much of Alaska as I could, then get to the port of Haines.

  I rode out of Tok very early on another cold morning, this one punctuated by intervals of sun, clouds, and spatters of rain. The highway to Fairbanks led me through green and yellow forest with snow-covered peaks, and once a cow moose trotted across the road ahead.

  Making Fairbanks by noon, I took a quick ride around the downtown area and pulled up at the Visitors’ Center beside the Chena River. After a scan of the brochures for local lodgings, I settled on another of the Westmark chain, this one a large, modern-looking place. Checked-in, bags dropped, I set off to get the bike looked after.

  Trail’s End BMW was on the farthest edge of town behind a grove of tall conifers, and at first it seemed the image of a trapper’s cabin, with an old house-trailer built onto it. Under the trees to one side, a rustic shelter covered a few new bikes and older sidecar bits and pieces. George, the owner, salesman, mechanic, parts manager, and gruff voice on the telephone, was a grizzled old prospector type, though with neatly trimmed beard and mustache, and he was friendly in his laconic, somewhat distracted manner. Though obviously very knowledgeable about all things BMW, he seemed scattered, so that I often had the disconcerting feeling he was chasing his own thoughts and hardly hearing what I said.

  When I pulled the luggage cases off the bike to make it easier to work on, and asked where I could put them, George pulled open the creaky door of a dilapidated pickup, shoved some stuff aside, and said, “They’ll be okay in here.” He offered me a ride back to the hotel in his vintage BMW sidecar outfit, which would have been a new experience for me, but the bike wouldn’t run. “Water in the carbs,” he said, and drove me in his old diesel Mercedes instead.

  Fairbanks seemed a pleasant little city, with about 30,000 friendly people, judging by the ones I met while walking the downtown streets and poking around the shops for stickers and postcards. When Brutus and I travelled together, we often sought out those colorful, and sometimes nostalgic, souvenir stickers as small and easily carried mementoes, and on this trip I was starting to use that quest as an excuse to go out and look around.

  Another mission on my past travels had been sending a postcard to my grandfather, who was in his 90s and confined to a “home.” After Selena’s funeral, Gramps had whispered in my mother’s ear, “Tell Neil to run for the woods,” and though I wasn’t able to follow that advice at the time, I was certainly running for the woods now.

  Back at the hotel, I did some laundry, sent off a few cards, and had an excellent meal downstairs at the Bear ’n’ Seal Grill. Despite the other scars that afflicted me, my enthusiasm for fine dining and drinking seemed to be intact.

  By the middle of the following morning, true to his word, George had the bike ready, and I set off for Anchorage with fresh oil and various parts adjusted or tightened. George had showed me the brake pads still had some life, and I was also reassured by the solid, resilient feel of new tires between me and the highway. Just outside Fairbanks, I stopped to look at huge flocks of sandhill cranes feeding in a stretch of open land, gathering for their southward migration, and just after that the bike’s odometer ticked off 10,000 kilometres of my own migration, 6,000 miles in two weeks.

  Continuing south along that final stretch of the Alaska Highway, the sky seemed full of mountains on every side, dominated by the white peak of Denali, formerly known as Mount McKinley (after a president who never set foot in Alaska). At 20,370 feet, Denali is the highest peak in North America, and the national park that surrounds it had taken a brave step into the future of America’s overcrowded parks by closing its roads to tourist traffic and offering shuttle b
uses to deliver campers and hikers to their trailheads. Compared with the noxious competition between parading vehicles and unspoiled nature in such American national parks as Yellowstone, Yosemite, or Grand Canyon, this was obviously a good thing, but it did mean that the entrance and parking areas were jammed with cars, trailers, sport-utes, minivans, campers, and RVs, so I gave up on the idea of making a spontaneous tour of the park.

  In any case, Anchorage lay ahead at the end of the Alaska Highway, and that destination had the lure of a name that seemed almost mythical. So I was content to escape the crowds and continue south toward the coast, riding down into a valley of farms and pasturelands, a rare part of Alaska with sufficiently fertile soil and mild weather to permit agriculture. Yet another facet of Alaska’s diversity, and while I rode that day I was thinking how diminished the United States would be without Alaska. In the same way the Canadian world-view is profoundly affected by the vast areas of the “True North” which are nearly unpopulated — our notion of “home” clearly molded by the places where we don’t live — most Americans seldom reflect that their mental image of their country includes the prairies, the Rockies, the desert Southwest, the stone-walled fields of New England, the Pacific Northwest, the distant islands of Hawaii, and the wilds of Alaska.

  So much of the American character, or at least self-image, was built upon the reality and the ideal of “the frontier,” and even for the vast majority of Americans who might never visit “The Last Frontier” (as the licence-plate slogans tout it), the very idea of Alaska must shine as a part of their sense of possibility, and a remote outpost in their psychological geography. Just to know there’s still a part of their country that isn’t all filled up, or all used up — though maybe not for long. It should come as no surprise that a creeping industrialization is inexorably devouring that wilderness too, in the guise of oil exploration, drilling, mining, refining, and logging, and the center of that commercial vortex was Anchorage.

  With over 200,000 people, it was the metropolis of Alaska, seven or eight times larger than Fairbanks, which in turn is more populous than the state capital of Juneau. Though the “Los Anchorage” sobriquet might be exaggerated by a magnitude of about 15 (despite the “Drive-Thru Espresso” places I began to encounter), everything is relative; after two weeks of riding across the wide prairie, mountain ranges, and the open lands of the Arctic, Anchorage certainly felt like a city as I cruised the busy streets for an hour to get my bearings. However, like Vancouver or Seattle, the urban face of concrete, glass, and steel was softened by the frame of its natural setting: the sparkling blue of the Cook Inlet, and tall mountains all around.

  Continuing my inexplicable attraction to the Westmark chain (I think because it was a more-or-less local chain), this one a high-rise, I got in just ahead of the bus-tour groups. As I was unpacking in my room, the front-desk attendant called to warn me not to leave my camping gear and sleeping bag on the bike, as I usually did. I asked him, “Do you think anyone would bother stealing that?”

  “It’s Saturday night in Anchorage,” he said, “they’ll take everything.”

  Later that night I lay awake in my dark hotel room, listening to the hooting and braying of drunken revellers in the streets, and feeling low. In my journal I once again noted that my thoughts were drawn to Jackie and Selena so much.

  An innocent, smiling memory so often leads that way. Seeing a family travelling together, some old TV show, hearing an old song, or a flute piece that Selena used to play coming over the restaurant’s Muzak. So many connections.

  Sept 5 Anchorage — Tok 67,792 (550 kms) [344 miles]

  Another restless night, and crabby morning. One elevator working, I’m on 10th floor, everybody else here leaving at same time, back to their cruise-ship.

  [Later] Stopped for construction on Hwy. 1. Beautiful day, more majestic scenery, road an entertaining slalom course, except for RVs and trucks.

  If the word for yesterday was “majestic,” today would be “glorious.” Scenery, anyway, with the Wrangell Mountains straight ahead on the first stretch, and a winding road through bursts of yellow and orange foliage, snowy peaks almost ethereal, “oneiric,” high above. Second stretch, Tok cutoff, no less glorious; maybe more, with that shining glacier sloping down between the forested mountains, and much less traffic.

  I remained pretty low, though, never singing, just riding.

  [Later] Tok, Fast Eddy’s Restaurant, in front of Young’s Motel. (Just Say No To Westmark!) Fine, unpretentious place, bread served with plainly marked “margarine” pats, good salad bar, and yet the crab legs dinner was about $25, and many of the other dinners similarly priced; does that pass for margarine-level meal prices here?

  Big heavy mug of hot, colored water. Truly the only good coffee I’ve had was at Telegraph Creek, when I made it myself. Of course I haven’t tried the Drive-Thru Espresso places.

  Finished reading The Conservationist by Nadine Gordimer, [brother] Danny’s recommendation. Reference to the “man alone” perhaps apt, but plotline hardly uplifting. Man.

  Sept 6 Tok — Haines 68,583 (791 kms) [494 miles]

  Rainy this morning, but still looking forward to that moment of “setting off,” when the world both contracts and expands at the same time.

  There may be nice moments along the way, or periods of pleasant “zen-state,” but the best parts of the day are leaving and arriving.

  [Later] Lunch in Haines Junction, turnoff for ferry dock at Haines. Today’s magic word is “somber.” Not gloomy so much as melancholy, I guess. Rain most of the way, but that’s okay. Little traffic, and mainly good road. Sense of majestic scenery behind low drapes of cloud, and lovely along big lake in Burwash area. Yellow leaves brighten the roadside. Couple of coyotes crossing. Falcon chasing off raven, hawk with white band on upper tail. [Harrier, or marsh hawk.]

  Border-crossing number one, Alaska to Yukon, easy enough: “purchase or receive anything?” “Gas, oil, and tires.” Officer a rider himself, and after a bit of “biker chat,” he waves me through. Note swans in one of lakes, up in “alpine tundra” area. Then down into coastal rainforest, still green. Little corner of British Columbia, weather so typical: wearing sunglasses and rainsuit.

  Another motorcyclist officer at Canada-U.S. border, R100 GS BMW, another breeze-through. Down past famous Chilkat River Bald Eagle Preserve, only one immature there today.

  Still thinking so much of the “lost ones,” and often talking to myself.

  At least realizing what I’m doing sometimes makes me laugh, and that’s okay.

  The little port of Haines would prove to be my definitive Alaskan experience. I stopped at a small liquor store to look for a bottle of single-malt whisky, and I overheard a fisherman telling the owner about the 49-pound halibut he’d just caught. On his way out the door he pointed down toward Main Street, a few blocks away, where a black bear was loping across the road.

  With a few hours to kill until the ferry sailed, I went to the Lighthouse Restaurant and caught my own halibut — from the menu. A few other travellers seemed to be biding their time there too, mostly older retired couples, and they soon began talking among themselves from table to table, comfortable among strangers so like themselves, from the same generation of friendly, open Americans. I overheard one of the men trying to remember the name of a small town away up north in the Northwest Territories, right on the Arctic Ocean, and I offered, “Tuktoyaktuk?” and soon everyone was exchanging travellers’ tales. One younger couple was moving from Anchorage to Reno, and one lady recalled how she and her husband had last been to Las Vegas in 1958, and she imagined it was a lot different now.

  One of the men asked the waitress about the local salmon fishing, and she told how she had won the salmon derby the previous year, catching a 44-pounder which had “netted” her $1,600, a three-day trip to Juneau, a $350 fishing rod, and a free dinner in Whitehorse.

  After dinner, I took a slow ride around the inlet, and at the top, where the Chilkoot River flowed in, I
saw a few people standing on a small bridge. I slowed to see what they were looking at, then stopped and switched off the engine. Straddling the bike, I watched five grizzly bears at the river’s edge: a sow with three cubs, and one half-grown — not as big as they get, but big. A young Australian passed me his binoculars, and I got a close-up view of them feeding on the dead salmon. These coastal grizzlies were referred to as brown bears, and as a result of this bountiful diet of salmon, they were considerably larger than their mountain-dwelling cousins.

  At the ferry dock I pulled the bike onto the centerstand in the line of waiting vehicles, took out Jack London’s The Sea Wolf, and relaxed in the saddle, leaning back against my duffel with my legs up on the cylinder heads (a useful feature of the opposed-twin engine design). As darkness fell, the smell of the sea seemed to grow stronger, and a brief glimpse of full moon was overtaken by clouds. Rain began to fall with growing intensity, so I took shelter under the terminal overhang for awhile, or walked around in my rainsuit.

  I passed a young woman out walking her little dog, and she looked pretty under the lights of the rain-washed parking lot. She gave me a smile that seemed to go right through me, the way that girls can sometimes do, and I felt suddenly galvanized — dumb, nervous, and afraid. Pretty girls have always tended to have that effect on me, on the rare occasions when I was confronted by one, but I hadn’t felt any of those kinds of feelings for a long time.

  Perhaps in line with an earlier soliloquy about “unimagined affection,” I had never felt I was particularly attractive to women, but something seemed different now. Later, when I was around friends, they would confirm that I seemed suddenly to attract a certain attentiveness from women. Even though I still wore my wedding ring (as Jackie and I both had, despite being unsanctioned by church and state), and sure wasn’t sending out any conscious “signals,” waitresses rested their fingers lightly on my arm, cashiers gave me sympathetic smiles, women on the street sometimes poured their eyes into mine. Taking the Romantic View, I liked to imagine their feminine radar could detect the Air of Tragedy which must surely surround me like an aura. Maybe it was just the more prosaic Air of Availability. Or the line that Tom Robbins translates from Baudelaire as, “Women love these fierce invalids home from hot climates.”