The shop is largely un-illuminated and for a second I wonder if the place is closed but the middle-aged couple inside indicate that I can enter. In the gloomy light, I survey the produce available and select a Snickers and a couple of packets of Ramen noodles, more out of politeness than actual need. As I pay for the goods, the man asks me where I am intending to stay for the night.

“Oh, some place in the next ten miles or so,” I answer, noncommittally.
“We have a bus out the back where people can stay,” he volunteers.
“Hmmmm…,” I say.
“It’s free,” he adds and then elaborates, “There is a bed and a stove and a big steel door so that the bears can’t get in.”

I am intrigued now. He points out the back door to a beaten up old grey bus and tells me that it is nicer inside than it looks. If I stay, he will leave the back door of the shop open so that I can access toilets and water.

We go together to the bus, Jay accompanying me to make sure that the last people who stayed have left it clean and tidy, and I am instantly charmed by its interior. Beyond the basics of a comfortable bed (and it’s the first one I’ve slept in since Palmer) and cooking facilities, everything a travelling cyclist might need is provided – a first-aid kit for body maintenance, hand de-greaser for post-bike-maintenance, a tin of camp stove fuel for a top up, some magazines for entertainment. There is a table with bench seats inside the bus and folding lounge chairs to make the most of the evening sun. Electricity and gas are laid on.

I quickly realise that I am not the first person to have discovered this bus. Other cyclists have stuck their cards and written their web-blog addresses on the walls and I suddenly remember reading a post in another Pan-American cycle blog that must be about this place. Curious, I ask about the history of the bus and Jay tells me that some moose hunters used to have it in the woods but they didn’t need it any more so they towed it to the store. He and Debbie maintain it for passing travellers, with no thought, apparently, of recompense. I tell him that I think they are extremely generous and he merely replies that it was it was generous of the hunters to give it to them.

A chance to spread my things out and relax in the bus.

Interior of the bus.

The view from the bus.

My bike and the bus.

I spread out for the evening and make the most of the opportunity to download my photos, recharge my batteries, and read and write in comfort. I cook on the stove, unfortunately, still restricted to my ridiculously small saucepan which, although it fits neatly in my panniers, invariably leaves me hungry.

In the morning I go to the shop and chat for a while to Debbie about life in Slana. We talk of winter and bears. The subject of bears leads to a story about picking fireweed and I discover that you can make jelly from the blossom of this ubiquitous, but beautiful, flower. I wish that I was here long enough to do so – it must turn out the most amazing colour!*

Fireweed.

Debbie in the shop.

The shop is full of stuffed animals and photos of bears, moose and other beasts that have fallen victim to hunters adorn the walls. Hunting is very much part of Alaskan life.

*For those that find themselves with the opportunity, here is a recipe for fireweed jelly:

FIREWEED JELLY

8 cups fireweed blossoms
1/4 cup lemon juice
4 1/2 cups water
2 packets powdered pectin
5 cups suger

Pick, wash, and measure fireweed blossoms (flower part only, no stems). Add lemon juice and water. Boil 10 minutes and strain. Take the strained juice and heat to lukewarm. Add pectin all at once and bring to a boil. Add 5 cups sugar and return to full boil. Boil hard for 1 minute. Pour into hot clean jars and seal. Process in boiling water bath for 10 minutes.

It is also possible to make fireweed ‘honey’ and fireweed ice-cream and I am dying to try all three recipes!

The road out of Valdez rises steadily. The gradient is deceptively gently at first but it doesn’t relent for eight miles and gradually becomes increasingly severe. However, the views offer plenty of consolation. The weather is fine and sunny but as I continue to ascend, the air becomes chillier and above the tree-line patches of snow lie by the side of the road. Towards the summit clouds start to gather gloomily on the mountain tops.

A pair of trumpeter swans with a cygnet on a pond beside the road.

Waterfall by the roadside on the ascent out of Valdez.

I finally reach the crest of the pass at 2678 feet (806 metres) and a glacier looms into view on the other side close enough to the road for me to explore. Even better, the small visitor centre at the bottom of the glacier sells Snickers bars.* I find that glaciers, up close, are cold, wet and rather grubby and I am not sure if I am very impressed.

The summit of Thompson Pass at 2678 feet (806 metres).

The glacier just north of Thompson Pass.

A glacier, up close.

A glacier, up close.

Eight miles of climbing has its compensations beyond some nice scenery and a Snickers bar and I whizz effortlessly, out of the dank clouds, down the other side of the pass and into the evening sunshine on the lookout for a campsite.

The road downhill.

It proves to be one of those days, however, where the perfect place to rest is elusive. I eventually stop to cook some dinner at a roadside rest area with some picnic tables sheltering amongst trees which provide a screen from the road. I consider putting up my tent but a constant stream of traffic pulling into the area to use the public toilets makes me feel uneasy. The place is isolated but at the same time I feel exposed. It is late and so rather reluctantly I get back on my bike and continue. Several people have told me that there is an abandoned lodge down the road where I should be able to camp without problem but somehow I end up missing it.

Eventually I see a little cabin by a clear stream which I optimistically assume to be the lodge but on closer inspection it is evidently well used and clearly private property. I don’t have the will to go on so I put my tent up beside the cabin. I have lost track of the days of the week but I hope that it isn’t a weekend and that nobody arrives that evening or early the following morning.

The cabin is surrounded by a well cared for garden and chimes sound in the breeze. A porcupine ambles about on a small island on the stream. A small foot bridge over the stream is inviting bit a sign warns that the island is the home of honey-bees. A fragment of a dimly remembered poem about islands and bees drifts through my mind.**

The next morning I wake early and – regretfully, because the place is beautiful and I would like to linger on here – pack up quickly without cooking my morning porridge and ride on my way.

*In general, I am not a chocolate eater but eight miles of solid climbing on a bike makes me extremely hungry for Snickers.

** Google reveals the barely remembered poetry fragment to be from Lake Isle of Innisfree by William Yeats. What came to mind was a muddled part of the first line – I will rise now and go to Innisfree – and the fact that there was a mention of honeybees and an island. I have copied the poem in full below and I may attempt to memorise it just in case I have need of it again in the future.

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evenings full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear the lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

Valdez is where the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, that I followed for five hundred miles along the Dalton Highway from Deadhorse until Fairbanks, terminates. The pipeline carries millions and millions of gallons of crude oil each year over the eight hundred miles that lie between the oil fields of Prudhoe Bay and the port at Valdez. The pipeline’s existence, and all that it entails, has always been controversial in Alaska, constantly pitting committed environmentalists against equally dedicated pro-developmentalists. It was here, in Valdez, that the oil which caused the devastation on Prince William Sound was loaded onto the Exxon Valdez shortly before it ran aground on Bligh Reef.

The holding tanks at Valdez at the end of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline.

In July, Valdez is swarming with tourists who come to fish in waters that are positively seething with running salmon. Competing with the tourists are bears, seals, sea lions, bald headed eagles and a host of other wildlife. On my way out of town, I cycle ten miles off the highway to witness this feeding frenzy before tackling the Thompson Pass.

The scene is slightly bizarre – RV’s are lined up in parking bays along the road and their owners are lined up along the shore, in droves, hauling fish out of the water and then, for the most part, simply throwing them back.

Tourists fishing for salmon in Valdez.

There are bear crossing warning signs at strategic points on the road and large flashing illuminated signs implore people not to approach fishing bears. I didn’t, however, see any bears myself.

Traffic.

Bald-headed eagles perch on the tree tops, calming surveying the fishing prospects from the land, while sea-lions, seals and sea otters advance from the water. The sea is murky and so for the most part the fish are not clearly visible, only the occasional dorsal fin breaks the surface.

I chat for a while with a woman who is patiently waiting while her husband fishes. We share her binoculars to get a closer look at the animals while she tells me about the bear she saw playing on the shore yesterday evening. I wonder whether I should stay for a night in the hope of a repeat performance but I find the whole scene a little disconcerting and so eventually I decide to tackle the pass instead.

Cycles are prohibited from entering the tunnel but the bored attendants collecting the toll are clearly intrigued and impressed by the idea of my journey. They direct me to sit prominently on a convenient rock next to the ‘restrooms’ while they solicit a lift for me with someone in a pick-up truck, the preferred vehicle of the majority in Alaska.

Before long I have a ride with a couple who have won a dinner on a cruise ship that will tour twenty-six glaciers on the Prince William Sound during the meal. They drop me at a fish and chip restaurant on the Whittier wharf and I indulge in fried halibut and chips while waiting for the 2.45 ferry. There are not many passengers travelling on the ferry and we are quickly loaded when the time comes.

The Aurora chugs effieciently out of Whittier as Jim, a US Fish and Wildlife Services officer, introduces himself and lists some of the marine animals we might expect to see in the waters of the Sound on the five hour trip to Valdez; humpback whales, minke and orca, seals, sea lions, a range of porpoises, sea otters. We head down the narrow Passage Canal and then enter broader waters and it is true – wildlife abounds.

Seals bob gently up and down, peeping shyly above the surface. A pod of unflamboyant porpoises appears as a briefly visible series of intermittent curved lines. A humpback whale also doesn’t give much away – a dark line above the surface, a gentle exhalation. Sea lions huff and puff more noisily like portly men unaccustomed to exercise, while sea otters loll indolently on their backs, grinning amiably as they watch the world go by.

Most things are happening underneath, unseen. The whale flips a tail fluke and slides under, into the depths. The calm surface is inscrutable and the scale of the invisible underwater realm hard to grasp. We pass a distant glacier and a mass of delicate blue ice floes float by, intricately carved by wind, water and sun.

A massive oil tanker sits on the horizon. Talk turns to the Exxon Valdez oil spill of 1989, probably still the worst environmental catastrophe to ever occur at sea, and I ask Jim whether he was involved in the clean up attempts after the disaster. He falls silent for a moment. “No,” he says, “I couldn’t face it.” He pauses again. “I could have tore my heart out,” he adds.

Later he tells me, grieving still, that his children will never see the Sound as he saw it. The herring, among other species, haven’t recovered, twenty years on, and they are the base of the food chain. Dig on the beaches and you will still find oil there – almost 11 million gallons of oil were spilt and only 3 million gallons removed.

Islands on Prince William Sound.

Floating ice floes.

Holy blue ice.

Sea lions on a marker buoy.

I started the journey as part a project that has since fallen through, for me, due to personal conflicts. It was somewhat sad and disheartening to have had eight months of planning and expectations disappear within four days of setting forth from Deadhorse and I am still reflecting on how the situation came about.

Riding out of Anchorage on the Seward Highway, the day is chilly and grey and a stiff headwind slows my progress. The mountains I flew over the day I arrived in Alaska are on my left as I cycle and I wonder, somewhat bleakly, what the future will bring but as I turn down the Portage Glacier Road down a narrow steep-sided valley the grandeur of the landscape clears my mind and lifts my spirits.

Looking down towards the Kenai Peninsula.

The scene is illuminated by a scattered chiaroscuro, pearly opalescent light flickers through the clouds and reflects off the water. Water is everywhere: mobile water – drifting mist in the air, swift flowing streams, waterfalls leaping down rock faces, deep, still pools and lakes; and captive water – frozen in the glaciers hanging high above the valley floor. Huge chunks of ice, a holy blue, float serenely in the lake.

Hanging glacier.

Floating ice forms.

My plan is to catch a ferry across Prince William Sound from Whittier to Valdez and ride across the Thompson Pass on the Richardson Highway and then turn towards Tok, on the Alaska-Canada Highway. However, I can’t catch a ferry from Whittier until the next day so I find a campsite before I reach the tunnel and set up my tent.

It was thus that I spent my second sojourn in Anchorage in a strange magical garden where time, unaccountably, moves differently to the outside world. Johanna, clearly a fairy queen, rules over an enchanted kingdom; a tiny log cabin in an ancient forest in the middle of Anchorage. It doesn’t seem possible, but it is true.

Johanna tending the garden.

The cabin, probably one of the older buildings in Anchorage, is exquisite – tiny and perfect. The two small rooms are furnished with loving care, nothing is out of place. Paintings by local artists hang on the walls; a forest fire, a seascape, a winter scene, each a distinctive and beautiful work of art. A formally posed photographic portrait of Johanna and Steven hangs by the front door, in the fittingly tiny entrance vestibule. It is reversible: on one side they are pictured clothed, on the other they appear naked.

Steven and cat.

Four cats with remarkable histories and personalities lounge with indolent feline assurance in the tiny space.  Sonny is a big, ugly, black and white cat, born right there in cabin and sure of his place in it – he is undisputed leader of the pride; Jack is a rescued feral cat, a small, wary tabby, incongruously run to fat; Adie is named Adolf for his neat, black moustache; and the fourth is a pretty silly ginger, whose name I have forgotton, that is so empty headed he forgets to eat.

The day I arrive Johanna, still busy with her film job in Talkeetna, appears in Anchorage for brief visit. She invites me to dinner with Steven, her husband, at the best restaurant in Anchorage, lending me an elegant dress and shoes which all fit perfectly and we dine on oysters, fresh Alaskan fish and lemon verbena sorbet.

After dinner, I am ensconced in Angela’s house, a larger, rambling, disintegrating structure next to the cabin. Angela can be described, for simplicity’s sake, as a tenant but the relationship is obviously far deeper. She accepts my presence without obvious discomfiture, merely asking how long I thought I might stay.

Angela is an artist and therefore lives in artistic disarray. Mexican inspired sculptures fill the living space and the kitchen is given over to the demands of print-making. The other rooms are store all sorts of things that may come in useful one day and I sleep in one of them on my camping map.

Angela working on a lino block.

Angela sits between two small tables, carving printing blocks on one and following the affairs of the world on her laptop on the other. We talk of racism, poverty, homelessness and the structures that produce them.  The back veranda proves to offer an unexpected internet connection and I re-affirm all my previous connections to the world.

Johanna reappears in Anchorage a day or two later with three Polish mountaineers. They are two priests and a policeman who have just made an ascent of Mt McKinley. The priests were expecting hospitality at one of Anchorage’s local Catholic churches but have been turned away so they put up their tent under the birch trees behind the house. The priests say Mass for the policeman, morning and evening, no doubt to protect themselves from the magic in the air. Johanna turns the portrait of her and her husband so that they appear clothed and the photo of them naked faces the wall.

Johanna tends to the garden and people’s needs. She offers food, cuts flowers, weeds the garden. Baskets of hothouse fuchsias hang, bright and luscious, and as incongruous as tropical fruits in this sub-Arctic climate. A sizeable vegetable garden, doggedly grown in the ground from seed, provides fresh spinach, herbs, salad vegetables.

I find myself lingering some days here, unable to escape this enchanted realm.

Johanna.

Steven.

Tropical flowers in the Arctic.

White fuschias.

The next night, however, I was camping by a river 60 miles down the road and, at 12 o’clock, I left my tent where I was sheltering from clouds of mosquitoes, to salute the midnight sun in its revolution above the Pole.* I stood on a bridge above a fast flowing river with swallows circling my head as the sun shone through a gap in the mountains.

It had been some time now since I had seen the sun set.

The midnight sun on the day after the summer solstice.

Swallows circling at midnight.

There is something immensely exhilarating about existing in an environment of constant sunlight. I would find myself cycling at one o’clock in the morning without feeling in the slightest bit tired. The strangest thing I discovered is that it is impossible to be scared somewhere it doesn’t get dark – but one has to wonder what that bodes for winter.

* Speaking from the perspective of a ‘flat-earther’, it seems as though the sun is circling the sky – I do understand that astronomically that is not exactly what is happening.