I have at best (and they are the best) 1-2 regular dispatch readers. This is to a large part because I am a piss poor marketer. And I also lead a very boring life. My dispatches are like sleeping pills for the masses. One sentence into it and zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. My dispatches are also not timely. Pete posts them, and often waits until I have written several of them.

Pete, when I once said that dispatches need to be timely, said that they are more of a record than they are an everyday account. I cannot dispute this. I have been writing them on a daily basis since 2012. This was 11 years ago. Even when I have nothing to say, I have something to say. This is called writing for surprise. I, in thinking of this picture a ceiling hung with pinatas – as each new idea materializes; one bursts, and candy falls everywhere. Images like this keep the impulse to write alive.

I have often considered abandoning writing dispatches because I have so few readers and also because posting them seems like an onerous task for Pete. The phrase he often uses, and this holds true for doing this task, is, “your projects become my projects.” However, old habits are hard to break. And the older I get, the harder habits are to break.

So tonight, I’m sitting here in the Ford F-350, nicknamed “the man truck” at Mile 17 on the Dempster Highway. It’s warm in here, but I am keeping the door closed because it’s buggy. Unlike last night, the bugs in these parts aren’t going to go away, as did the bugs where we were camped last night, in Tok. These bugs are hovering, looking for a way to get in here, so that they can happily dine on my blood. I am not going to provide them with this option.

Today we mostly drove, left Tok, drove the Taylor and the Top of the World Highways. The sky was clear, we had views, views, views. Beautiful scenery all day. Shortly after crossing the Canadian border (uneventful) we stopped for lunch and hiked up a hill, one with yet another view. We did this last year; it was déjà vu all over again. We picked and ate blueberries, practically on the run. Stoop, pick, stand, eat, run, ad infinitum.

As we hiked, I thought about how little one experiences when in a car. Cars enclose you and distance you from the landscape. I would like to again bicycle the Dempster, Top of the World, and Taylor Highways. Maybe next year. The thought of doing this would provide me with incentive to get in shape.

Crossing the Yukon, at Dawson, inside the car it was warm, windless, stuff. Outside, there was a gentle breeze and the smell of moving fresh water. Becky and I speculated as to the route of the Yukon. We learned at the Dawson visitor’s center that it flows south west into the Bering Sea.

Next: 230. 8/22/23: Slow Down, You Move too Fast