Frozen Dreams

 “We have plenty of time,” Caroline told me as we were arriving at her remote cabin on the banks of the Fort Liard river in the Northwest Territories. Caroline is a 39-year-old indie filmmaker living part-time on a homestead founded by an 82-year-old woman whose name escapes me now. A gracious woman (the octogenarian, not Caroline) who lives in a roughly hewn, hand-made log cabin at the centre of the property. 

Caroline wants me to believe that her cozy cabin is located in a lively environment. 

“Maybe before the farm closed down, the fields grew over, and the local bison herd started wallowing in your allegedly once rich garden,” I mumbled to myself before smacking my head on her crooked doorway. 

Instant karma. I decided to keep any future opinions to myself lest the cabin roof cave in on me. 

Cozy, yes. Comfortable, no. Being from the city, I was not convinced that her water and electricity free lifestyle was the path for me. And frankly, I wasn’t so sure it was for her either. 

Either way, we stayed at her cabin for a few nights before commencing on our long road trip across Canada’s most northwestern edge.

Mapping our route with a paper map pulled from her dusty shelf, we used the light of her woodstove to trace our path along the one available highway. It was decided that we would leave the next morning for British Columbia, head up through the Yukon, and eventually circle back into the Northwest Territories, ending on the banks of the Arctic Ocean. All in all, we would be on the road for 10 days, culminating in a quick dip in the Beaufort Sea before turning around. 

“We have to go swimming in the Arctic,” I insisted before throwing the newly memorized paper map into the woodstove for warmth. 

“That was our only map!” Caroline feigned shock, looking around like this was the beginning of her own personal Blair Witch experience. 

“It’s one road!” I yelled back as the dusty map finally caught fire. Emitting the tiniest blast of heat, I dramatically warmed my hands while Caroline stared at me in disgust. 

The following day, our winding drive took us through mountainous valleys that bordered on placid, blue lakes that looked like glass. It was a cautious start as we meandered slowly through the narrow roads that barely seemed big enough for our car, let alone two-way traffic. With so much to look at, we were constantly pointing at the beauty that was enveloping us as we drove in awed silence.  

“I’ve seen better,” I joked. 

“Yeah, this sucks,” she lied. 

The road signs warned of wild life, loose gravel, avalanches, and falling rocks.

“Falling rocks!” Caroline cheered. 

“Falling does rock,” I agreed. 

After 12 hours of driving in the middle of the road –because we were the only car on the highway— we pulled into a free, and completely empty campground. 

“Just the way I like it,” Caroline said. 

I wasn’t sure if this was sincere, or if she was still being her sarcastic road character to cover for her fear of promised night dangers. 

“What if something happens to us and we can’t call for help?” I asked her. We had been out of range for cell reception the minute we left her cabin.

No response. This thought had crossed her mind previously only to be pushed aside for happier and less nihilistic ideas. I guess we would be safe here for a couple hours despite it being grizzly bear country, and season. Something she reminded me of as I wandered from our campsite to relieve my bladder. I stayed close. 

Passing a bottle of Canadian Club back and forth, we sat around the fire discussing our route up the Dempster Highway. We had successfully made it through the mountains and would be starting on the infamously harrowing road the following day. We made a very serious pact to drive slowly to watch the wildlife running in the tundra outside car windows, to pick berries in the ditch on the side of the road, and to stare pensively at the northern lights as they danced across the sky. 

The temperature began dropping as we got further and further north, and despite being mid-summer, the nights were getting colder and colder. And darker too. The midnight sun no longer hung in the sky at night, instead, it was replaced by a sea of shining stars. All of which were impossible to see from the city. Out here, they glowed so bright it was almost possible to imagine ancient people using them to guide their way.

As the road unfolded before us, it began to reveal an eerie, flat landscape where the trees started to get noticeably smaller until they disappeared altogether. It felt and looked like we had left planet Earth and entered into some strange place that was both beautiful to look at, and hard to understand. A place where moose and bears grazed lazily in the background, and herds of caribou rippled across the distance like a living, moving carpet. 

“A very different drive than through the mountains, eh?” I asked Caroline. 

“Looks the same to me,” she gaslighted me while braking and pointing at a black bear running across the road. 

An unpaved road 700 kilometers in length, the Dempster Highway is rough and known as a tire shredder. Covered in gravel, with shards of shale sticking up at every angle, we were warned by every gas station attendant peddling merchandise bearing the slogan, “I survived the Dempster Highway” that we may not make it to our final destination without a few spare tires, and a benevolent god smiling down upon us. 

“40 kilometers into the Arctic Circle and 441 kilometers from our final destination,” I celebrated early even without the tacky gas station merchandise.

“How can you possibly know that with no map, Rain Man!?” Caroline retorted, obviously still bitter about having lost her once dusty map to provide heat for the common good. 

I knew I was right though, I had been counting mile markers along the roadside, and with some light mental computing, was accurately tracking our path up to the ocean when we hit a patch of the loose gravel we had previously been warned about. The car started to fishtail. 

“AVALANCHE!” I screamed, trying to keep morale alive. Caroline just watched the dashboard as the tire pressure dropped from 230 kPa’s to 200, 150, 100, 50. And then 0. All within thirty seconds that felt like a lifetime. 

Stranded on the side of the road as the sun was finally setting. We hadn’t seen any other cars on the road for hours, if not days. We were not hopeful that any help would be passing by us until morning. 

“Not an avalanche. Loose gravel,” Caroline snickered to herself as she absently checked her cell phone that had been without a signal for days. 

“I have to pee!” she said, and started to leave the car. 

“Don’t forget this is grizzly bear country,” I teased. If I couldn’t pee in private, neither could she. 

She closed her door, and turned to me. The look she gave me made me laugh. It was apparently infectious because we giggled like stranded school.

Eventually when our laughter subsided, she threw her hands up. I copied her ridiculous gesture of resolve, “well, we tried” she said. 

“No ocean,” I faked upset sticking out my lower lip. I was only mildly disappointed but didn’t want her to feel badly. 

She laughed, “We were never going to make it!”