The Hindcast: the Journey North

By Jessica Cherry

On and on with the cold. My hands are cracked, skin catching on cloth. I’m going north, I tell my husband, up the frozen rivers to the heart of the darkness. I need to wrap up some business, where Ivory is an empty promise. I leave at 5am and stop for coffee in Wasilla; the wind is blowing like hell. I think every Alaskan knows that hell is cold. A few miles further north and the road gets very dark. I snake slowly around the corners in Willow and Trapper Creek. Here, the temperatures swing wildly between -10 F and +20 F. I refuel at Talkeetna Junction and leave my dog sleeping in the dark. Never let the tanks get low in winter; the pumps could be out at Cantwell, you never know. From Talkeetna, I work my way up into Broad Pass, the landscape left behind by glaciers. The aperture of day opens now in black and white, mountains backlit and blue-lit. Feeling sleepy, I put down the window and stick my head out into the -20 F air. At Windy Pass, the sun cracks in the East and garnet rays explode across the Denali Highway. The Park’s mountains look like a white marble museum holding antiquities, stones, and tourist kitsch in equal measure. Denali is its Hope Diamond. By Healy, the sky in front of me is deep amethyst and the sky behind me is clear serpentine. I refuel again, this time at -25 F, and urge the dog to execute his mission swiftly. Our last push to Fairbanks is through the wind-ripped Nenana Basin and the gold sun is up in earnest. I should feel sad here, I thought, but my sanity is at stake. Diplomacy is crumbling. Closure is Buddha’s empty fullness. I think how tonight my dog will wrestle with his friend Marlow, two black animals joyfully tumbling in stiff white snow.

Jessica Cherry, PhD is a scientist, writer, and commercial pilot living in Anchorage and Fairbanks.