Days before we left Minnesota we had our truck tuned up for the 2,500 mile trek back to the Yukon in northwest Canada. Such a trip requires a smooth running, dependable vehicle.Until we got to the Yukon, I did not realize how much of a tune-up I had needed.

It has been four years since intimately knowing this northern ground. I can barely hold in my joy at being back in the mountains tasting an air so pure that it intoxicates my senses.

My sub-arctic tune up requires moments of astonishment at the minutia and the endless. Here, I allow myself to wonder where we are in the context of being a human and to understand my relationship with the natural world. Here, in this vast wild country, I am a patriot of real, unfettered freedom. Here, I look beyond the familiar trappings of society.

Hiking up in the high alpine, I am mesmerized by grand vistas as well as the world underfoot. With patches of snow receding and days getting longer, plants are astir. I step delicately on this fragile landscape so as not to crush the season’s first party of flowers. Brilliant smudges of purple saxifrage attract my attention as well as that of the over-sized, slow flying bumblebees. Circular, mounded pink mats of moss campion seemingly call out for my attention. These stoic wee flowers tower millimeters off the ground and will get no taller. Here and there I reacquaint myself with wooly lousewort and mountain avens. These two species are taller but still measure in only inches.

My tune up requires that I gaze and wonder about tiny flowers but it also means that I embrace vigilance in a land where grizzly bears roam. Though not likely, I could become a part of the food chain. Having bears around awakens my ancient genetic code of wildness. I suspect the aliveness I feel here is due to the fact that I could have a physical encounter with a being far more powerful than me.

Given that it is early spring, I am not so concerned about bumping into a grizzly this high in the alpine. There is little food up here for the winter hungry bears. Foraging for plants is a grizzly’s primary activity at this time of year so they are more likely to be in the lower, lusher country.

Driving up on the Alaska Highway a few weeks ago, we saw more than 20 bears. All of them were feeding along the wide right-of-way, particularly where dandelions grew. Several times we saw bears stretched out, seemingly wallowing in thick patches of dandelions. Prostrate, the bruins plucked the yellow blooms and stems with their mouths.

A mile upriver from our Outpost, we found an open bench of ground grubbed by a grizzly. The torn earth resembled the workings of a drunken rototiller operator. The bear had been digging the starchy root of bear root (Hedysarum alpinum).

When I stroll through carpets of bright flowers, their tenacity to thrive in extremes combined with their beauty settles sputterings of my soul. And when I walk in bear country fear and humility play a duet in my heart.

Without the perpetual march of human progress and insatiable growth this wild landscape remains, for the time being, speckled with flowers, home to grizzly bears and awash in a sea of silence.

With the final adjustments made, I am nearing a complete tune up.

 

(Note the grizzly photo shows a bear feasting on dandelions, not bear root. He was feeding less than a mile upriver from the Outpost.)

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