Been there, done that

Provincial Park Land, Somewhere near the Yukon/BC border. Or is that the BC/Yukon border?
We are gentle with each other today, incredibly gentle, absorbed in the continually amazing scenery, glacial lakes spread blue and gleaming before us, rivers rushing and tumbling white water over heavy stones, winding roads full of Caribou, Mountain Sheep, Bison, and Black Bears. The heat has finally broken and the cool air welcomes the wildlife closer to the highway. We're back in BC now, and when the signs say watch out for Caribou, they mean it. We see a dozen, darker than the Denali Bous, chocolate with white markings, smaller horns, closer to the car. We listen to Jethro Tull's Thick as a Brick and dissect it, analyze it, pausing the music to pull the van over and take wildlife pics.

This land is amazing, again and always, and it always seems that on the prettiest of days we didn't get many pictures. I know, we have hundreds that were good enough to make it to the website, hundreds more that didn't, don't I always live with the camera around my neck? No. There are days when I just want to sit back in the seat and see, when I can't bear the thought of picking up a camera, documenting, when I don't feel the guilt of this leisure and have to overcome it by building something. I know I'll regret it later when I can't quite remember the shade of blue of those glacial streams, or how the rocks were just-so arranged by avalanche. There are too many things for a sane person to remember on this trip, much less someone like me whose brain is...pliable now.

About thirty kliks before we stop for the night we see a family of Black Bears, a mom and three cubs, stripping berries by the side of the road. The cubs are ambling and tumbling through the underbrush at the edge of the forest, chasing each other, little mouths open. I wish we could hear them. The dogs are so good, never bark at mothers and cubs (they do bark at the single, adolescent males we meet), just dance excitedly at the windows of the van, whining their desire to get out and play.

Today we've seen free-range Bison, two herds in two seperate areas. Someone imported them long ago and in this particular area they thrive, eating by the side of the road, crossing the road, swinging their heavy brown heads towards us, staring with their big, black, blank eyes.

We stop in Provincial forest land, just off the big highway far enough to not hear cars, and we continue to be gentle, oh so gentle, and I know that when we stop that we'll be over this particular conflict, will have convinced ourselves that we didn't really mean the deeply hurtful things we've said. Sometimes I feel like I want to examine, phrase by phrase, what we've said and figure out why, what the kernel of truth is in the fiery desire to hurt.

In less than a month Alaska and these parts of Canada will have their first freeze, probably while we are playing in the 110 degree desert, where we won't be fighting, but healing all and everything. Yup, we are already focused south towards Burning Man.