Send the Ice Age

The good thing about insurance totaling your car is that it removes all inhibition from fully realizing the vehicle’s utility. You don't have to worry about wrecking it - it's already done! Gone are the days of coddling and pampering it. Empowered by this freedom from responsibility, the Escape and I went south to explore the mountains. After a couple hours’ drive I was in Healy, where I followed a road that led to the start of a gnarly trail system. Parking the compact vehicle just before the end of the paved road I got out and stood there, weighing my options. The sun was getting low in the sky and I didn’t have much time to figure out another place to shoot. But the sight of this trail made me take a deep breath and shift my weight uncomfortable from one leg to the other. Beyond the even-keeled slab of pavement I peered into the Ice Age - of permafrost-heaved trails and a graveyard of countless off-road vehicles. Excursions around Denali in anything less than Detroit’s most robust would fill the hearts of casual travelers with trepidation. But the sun was getting low, and I wasn’t about to waste the trip and have nothing to show for it. Would I cross over on to the trail?

Moments later the tires were crossing the liminal and onto the vanguard of glaciated rock. You’re damn right I’m gonna send it. The trail was straightforward at first, and I calmed into the back of my seat again. Dips and potholes, puddles and lakes passed harmlessly under the grocery-getting tires and life was good. But then… the trail narrowed. Feltleaf willow gently pawed at the Escape’s passing pillars and windows. Their shoots curved outwards against the windows as the tinted glass pushed into them. With the diminishing distance between the sun and the horizon a tide of voracity washed over me and propelled us up, up, upwards along the trail. And then the trail narrowed again. Hardened shrubs scraped and clawed and raked at the little car as it continued undeterred. The car was already ruined, and I figured that a couple more scrapes would only add additional character. And so we continued, and life was good. But then… mountains. While the trail widened, the incline had made the trail wretched with little streams that zigzagged across the trail. They trickled along and across the trail at different intervals, all along grades that changed from one dip to another. A clanking sound started. The muffler bracket a mechanic had fastened in Nevada months ago came loose, and now every time I passed over a pothole the muffler would dip low and then come shooting upwards. It was like the Ejection Seat ride at the fair, except as it bounded upwards towards the pinnacle of its undulating movements it would be stopped short by the undercarriage. And so it was that I would reach a pothole and a moment later there would be a ”thwack!” sound erupting from below. And at this point I thought of what I always think of during photography trips - that there must be better hobbies out there. And then I thought that perhaps one day they’d find my remains somewhere out here, accompanied by a rudimentary survival journal scrawled with charcoal onto birch bark that gives an accounting of my final days.

But we made it! After much uncomfortable shifting and nervous movements in my seat, the trail reached a clearing at a hill top where two other trucks had parked. This is the land of towering trucks and their robust cylinder banks that turn gnarly wheels. They both looked empty as I passed over a final crater of a pot hole. Thwack! A head popped up from the passenger seat of one of the trucks, and another figure stood up from behind the bed, both staring at us. Then the rear window of the extended cab rolled down, revealing another guy that watched slack-jawed as we rolled by. No doubt they were all impressed by the 3rd generation EcoBoost compact utility vehicle, and my superior driving skills for having navigated us there.

The Ford Escape EcoBoost probably wasn't engineered for this kind of thing.

We reached the hill top where lateral light felt onto the sides of autumn foliage as the sun neared the horizon. Creeping shadows stretched through chilled air. Though it was the hilltop, the surrounding trees and succeeding hills leading up to the bordering mountains obscured the view. We had reached the end of the Escape’s journey, but not the end of mine.

With the sun threatening to take my light away before finding some good pictures, I hastily left the Escape behind. The muffler was still swaying a bit when I slammed the door shut and started up a trail that led in the direction of a nearby hill top. Dense willows stood along the trail blocking out the surrounding landscape as I scurried upwards. After a few minutes of frenzied movement I made it to the top. Of a false summit. The hill top I had seen from where I parked was just one of a series of peaks leading up to the mountains. Snow blanketed the trail leading farther up it. In my haste to leave the car I had kept my sandals on, leaving the shoes in the back since I didn’t think I would need them. Looking farther up the trail of succeeding hilltops and beyond I saw gorgeous snow-crested mountain sides capturing the light while the bellies of clouds caught fire overhead. They were beautiful. If I didn’t photograph them, then it would be like it had never even happened. Fuck it, I’ve come this far and I wasn’t going to turn around just short of the amazing pictures that waited for me. So I continued. At first the snow was just a dusting , but then it got deeper. And deeper. And soon I was wading through ankle-deep and deeper snow in sandals.

So often the journey (and the vast majority of times) deviates from what was originally planned. In fact sometimes the plan only lasts as far as the end of the driveway. Everything can change along the way, and today followed that whimsical method. I didn’t think I would have freezing ice and snow sticking to me up to my shins as I entered into a wintry realm of true summits. Luckily it was only a quarter mile in the snow to the top of the hill at the mountain's base. Of course right before I made it to the top, clouds moved in on the horizon and the sun was blocked out from behind them. I snapped a few pictures and brushed my feet off in the howling wind at the summit. I was starting to lose feeling in them and knew the hike down would be harder than the one up because of it, so I didn’t linger at the top for too long. It was a struggle trying to wade back through snow down the slope with feet that didn't feel like part of my body. All sensation under my knees left me and it felt like I was walking on stilts. I made it back to the car though, and after a few minutes next to the heater vents I started to feel a painful sensation in my toes, which is great news because it means I'm keeping them. But worse then losing toes to frostbite would be the embarrassment of an Alaskan getting frost bite in mid-September.

So I emerged victorious, intact, and with more than what I had gone into the fray with. I had beaten common sense. And I’m happy with what I got. The light wasn’t dramatic, but I don’t want my photographs to be a homogenous catalog of sunsets. I want the moody, the graven, the tenuous. Surely scenes like this one would warrant a lost toe as the price of admission? Or maybe even a few?

And that is today’s story of just another day, from the world’s worst photographer, or at least adventurer.