Suddenly, Not Alone

It’s just as the path turns in toward jack pine forest that pinpricks plunge through my limbs. The heat in my cheeks and lungs is wild against the cool breeze. I’ve been walking a tawny line along a subalpine ridge. Silvery wolf willow pods, bearberry the ruddy shade behind closed lids, plump indigo gems at my feet. Aqua shimmer of lake far below. And before that, kilometers without cell service folding by the hundreds behind my tailpipe, the voice of the Canadian Rockies has mingled with my own thoughts for days. Now, a sudden fervor of blood and breath spells the foolhardiness of my feeling of kinship. Woosh, whoosh, the aria of my blood’s current. Someone else. Close. Probing.

What alerted me? I ask, trying to slow the river crashing over my eardrums. A movement? I peer into thick shrub. A sound? The wind, a master playing the bodies of her lovers since time began, picks up. Pine needles quake. The water below edges just over rocky shores and then slides back, released. A long branch lets out a whistling moan as it whips and then settles. I hear in the stillness the absence of caw, caw or chit-chit-chit or twee, twee, twee, twee, twirrrrr.

Images of foxes and snowshoe hare and hoary marmot quickly tumble from my mind. Whoever’s here is far larger. Wolverine, no. Lynx, surely not. Grizzly? Hold still, I command my legs. Breathe.

Wait. There beneath the tang of pine is something else. A hot muskiness. Like the final reward from one of those hidden image 3D paintings, there emerges from brush, a massive silky carob flank. Above it, a long neck of darker brown, a head tilted toward me, a coal pupil in chestnut iris, soft, considering. The elk cow’s ears are raised. From her position, it’s clear she was coming in my direction. The path won’t accommodate us both

We are two creatures melded. Each takes in air the other expels. A welling up of something like longing surges from belly to throat. Show me, it would say if it had voice, everything. As if she could transfer to me the feel of summer’s white rays caressing rump high above alpine treeline, the way spongy tundra floor becomes a memory when wind speaks of snow once more and presses the journey to forest below, the satisfaction of yanking a woody morsel lodged in frozen crystal. How long before the salt melts on the tongue does a mineral lick float up the nostrils like a tantalizing allure from faraway sea? Is it comfort, the chattering mew and bugle that whines and murmurs through a grazing a herd?

I want to give way to her, whose home I’m visiting. I falter but then step back. My only move away is toward the ridge’s edge. Her passing, if possible, would be precarious. She takes the lead. To change direction, she must turn her back to me. The move also brings her slightly closer before she is gone, and there is only forest once more. In that moment, I reach out before thought catches up and stops my hand from grazing her back.

Even so, hovering in the air between us, my fingers feel her heaving side, soft but thick, flesh and muscle, steam transferring her heat to my hand—like an imprint from the eons that pulse through our veins.

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Summit Lake, milepost 392, at the top of the Alaska Canada Highway. August 2021.

TRAVEL NOTES: Summit Lake, milepost 392, Alaska Hwy

The elk cow and I met above Summit Lake, 1,750 kilometers (1,087 miles) from the Peace Arch border between Washington, USA, and British Colombia, Canada. In the belly of Stone Mountain Provincial Park and the highest point of the Alcan (the Alaska Canada Highway), Summit Lake is breathtaking. After this hike up the western slope, before I’d even begun the descent toward Liard (worthy of its own post), a family of bighorn sheep plodded down from the sheer eastern slope and crossed the road slowly in front of me. While two lambs grazed, the ewe not too far away, the ram ascended the rock wall once more, his body only barely decipherable from the silver rock when he held still, to watch from above. It was one of the many times on this BC, Yukon, Alaska journey I lamented my lack of a really good camera. Guess I’ll have to return.

Where to stay

The campground has 28 well-kept sites right on the water, just $16/night. No hookups. Fire pits with grates. A well, whose water you need to boil. Picnic tables and pit toilets. (Hint: Don’t confuse this in your research with the campground and boat launch in Summit Lake, a city, BC, 10 hours south.)

I didn’t stay, as I’m primarily a boondocker. This means I stay at wild sites, often on public lands or tucked off in some tiny little pocket of the woods or a road. Boondocking spots, if this is your bent, are abundant along the Alcan. If you prefer to find spots using online resources like maps and apps like iOverlander, though (as opposed to just searching as you go), do this ahead of time. Coverage along this road is sparse.

What to do

Float. Kayaks or canoes would be fantastic here.

Hike either the western or the eastern slope. My hike was to the west of the lake. Another, just across the highway, climbs the eastern slope, which gets less precipitation, so is cooler and darker, home to vegetation like hemlock not found on the western slope. It looked like a terrific challenge. Pressed for time (the Canadian border guards had given me seven days to leave Canada; yes, I’ll tell that story soon), I neither pulled out my inflatable kayak nor hiked the other side. But on a return with oodles of time, I might spend a night or even two.

Where next

Just a couple hours north, Liard River Hot Springs is a do not miss. Stay for a night or two if you can and in the park for sure. (I made an exception to my boon docking rule and was very glad. The park has 21 front-country sites and 53 vehicle sites. Reserve through BC Parks. Or, if you’re like me and prefer to wing it, arrive early to secure a spot. Winter camping must be stupendous there.

Who else roams these parts

The Canadian Rockies’ 11,000 feet and 50 plus peaks are teeming with life. The lower montane zone is the realm of wolf, coyote, and mountain lion. Moose feast on the branches of aspen and willow, black bears use dexterous tongues to strip entire vines of seemingly endless berry varieties. Here are beavers and red-tailed chipmunk; Douglas fir, lodgepole pines, red cedar, and cottonwood; and water birds, bald eagles, and a chorus of songbirds.

Many who live higher up in the cooler subalpine zone, home of fir and spruce—like mule deer, woodland caribou, elk, bighorn sheep, and bison—travel to lower ground in fall and winter. The round, ambling hoary marmot, who loves to bask in the sun and tamarack, a pine that turns briefly golden in fall, are among my favorites here. Other residents include pine martens and owls and wolverine and grizzly bears.

Above the treeline (around 7,500 feet) is the alpine zone. Vast tundra and meadows are home to tiny, brilliant wildflowers, miniature, intricate versions of shrubs and flowers that cling to the ground. The least weasel and pika thrive here. And many of the subalpine inhabitants venture up in warmer seasons. Even then, it’s cold and windy with craggy cliffs, sheer rock faces, and lingering snowfields.

I saw this cow elk a day or so later just off the side of the road, quite different from the close encounter in the woods but enchanting in its own right, especially because I captured this video of her high-pitched bugle before carrying on, not to disturb her for too long.