Driving due south on back roads, the sun a full-on bastard above, watching the Rockies dissolve into scrub-encrusted hills, I found a great hair band station. From a young age I’ve loved hair bands. As a fourth grader two friends and I created a club called The Clan – to this day I cannot imagine why we weren’t shut down, as we were fairly public about our name, maybe it’s because we had a fellow of color among us – how is that that Caucasians have no color ? – anyways we’d hang out on South Street, around Zipperhead, buying Poison and Guns ‘N Roses T-shirts whenever we could afford it. I saw Def Leppard, Poison, Tesla, Queensryche – and many others.

The following morning Deb and I broke a wishbone out on the verandah that she had been saving. We pulled on our respective ends, sending the apex into the air like a champagne cork, leaving us each with nearly identical shards of bone.

Woke in Crested Butte to a series of emails from high school friends playing quite cleverly on the name of the town – Crusted Butt, so forth and so on – can you believe one is the father of two ? – and a hot air balloon out front. Cal occupied his spot in the sun. I followed him – and just smiled. The valley created by the mountains felt like one huge hammock – it all had a quality of home.

I had expected the drop down into the storied haze of pollution hovering in the South Platte River Valley where Denver lies sprawled to parallel my own downward trajectory into early memories. But quite the contrary. The day was clear, the pollution having been blown eastward by the same winds I supposed were blowing the Arizona forest fire haze out of our way – and the trip to 7041 Richtofen Place was uncomplicated.

As I left the museum there in Deadwood – cardboard cut-outs of Seth Bullock and Al Swearengen staring life-size from the coffee shop across the street – I considered the pros and cons of heading south down to see those rolling hills of Custer’s last stand – and his well-deserved ass-kicking at the arrow-tips of Crazy Horse. I read some about the Battle at Little Bighorn – turns out the Native Americans know it as the Battle of the Greasy Grass. Whatever anyone chooses to call it, the Lakota, Northern Cheyenne and Arapaho teamed up June 25-26 in 1876 and gave that blond-locked narcissist and the 700 men of the U.S. Seventh Cavalry the licking of his life. Including his two brothers, a nephew, and a brother-in-law.

With all due respect to the east and midwest – now that we were in an interesting part of the country I did my best to stick to the back roads. Attractive as 90 might be, with its decaying billboards for Wall Drug, you can go just as fast and cruise through small towns on the county roads. So that’s what we did – the contrast between the green grass and churned earth almost deafening.

Fortified by corned beef hash and 40-weight oily coffee we hit the road once more. Needed to do some work so found a Starbucks in Eau Claire and sat down to it. The road and all those hours staring at flat land has a way of creating a silence hospitable to both demons and angels alike. Being on the road perhaps the greatest form of western meditation, aside from the action movie.

It was a fairly straight shot from Eau Claire to Saint Paul. The truck was surely looking worse for the wear – and so was I – so it made a certain amount of sense when, searching for my buddy’s house in the nicer and apparently private suburb of North Oaks, some young guy who looked like he had just finished basic training on a mountain bike gave me an unwelcoming glare. I glared right back – and continued to cruise the roads looking for the right number. Probably at about the speed a robber would use to case the joint. I pulled into a driveway to turn around and he rode in behind me, and knocked on the window.

So dog and I had the honor of a cop escort out of Fergus Ontario – upon exit we duly pointed Mathilda west on 6. Reached the plains of Ontario and had an uneventful crossing, over the unexpected azure-colored water with the Canadian and American flag flying high at Sarnia and had a brief debate whether to head due west to Flint, honor Michael Moore and cross Lake Michigan on the ferry or wrangle with memories in Ann Arbor and run the gauntlet of Chicago.

A hot hot day with the sunroof open – cutting through western New York through those small towns which seem depressed even on a sunny day. Farmland for sale, developments springing up in pastures. I got a good sunburn on my shoulders and back, and the dog curled up in his furniture blanket – don’t worry I told him, Alaska will make up for it.

May 27th we pulled out. Boxes filled with clothes, shoes, camping equipment, books, and tools. I get no small pleasure at seeing Atget’s Visions of Paris beneath a Hilti drill and Porter Cable 6″ orbital. And, now that I look at the photo, a watercolor of the statue in front of the Pioneer Home in Sitka, Alaska – the final destination.

In the form of a ’93 Toyota Forerunner. Imagine my surprise when I got an email saying “You won your Ebay item!” I bid I more or less forgot about, or didn’t expect to get – I put in 1750 for a truck that bluebooks for around 3500. Turns out I got it for 1575. Not bad. Except sold “as is.” Headed up to Elverson Pennsylvania, “The Jeep Shop,” to find the old girl sitting in the rain, off to the side like a red-headed stepchild. Equipped with Mickey Thompson 16″ mud tires, rust over the wheel wells, banged up pretty good, but supposedly she drove. She did.

Loose cobblestones. A yellowing Christmas tree. An upturned Jack-o-Lantern candy-carrier. The wrought-iron remnants of a fire-escape, doors and windows sheet-metaled or plyed over, a blue tarp breathing with the wind. And the dog oh the dog, taking stock of it all.

I first saw Pieter from the deck of the Heron, as we passed by in the no-wake zone, on the way back from dropping off sea cukes in Juneau. A cloudless morning, Pieter welding on the stateroom to the Adak, periodically raising his mask for a drink of water.

His boat tied up in Juneau on Stephen’s Passage just in front of where the cruise ships dock, down the gangway protected from the light rain. Arrive at 7:54 pm – long dark, the sulfur lights coloring everything purple.

Flying in the fog 6:34 am, somewhere over Peril Strait, or perhaps crossing Chatham, hooking over Stephen’s Passage. The fuselage bounces in the turbulence outside the windows, lasers of rain illuminated to look like snow. Wisps of cloud vapor curl over the wing.

The wind has died down. Stars tonight. I’d like to stand on the small deck off the stateroom but the door has been screwed shut.

Old planks need to be replaced, the hull painted. Maybe it could go up on the grid in Kake, pressure-wash as the tide goes out? Or down to Wrangell, about 35 miles farther than Petersburg?

Flew into Sitka at 5:44 last evening. Snow on the rim of the volcano, the tips of the dwarf pine branches, dusting the muskegs on Kruzoff Island. Sun clinking off the Three Sisters.