The North Klondike Highway runs 330 miles from Whitehorse to Dawson City. The road braids its way through the boreal to meet, greet, and at times, offer tender, temporary goodbye to the Yukon River, before reuniting again with an open-mouthed kiss upon your arrival.  You can’t travel this artery without a finger on the pulse of memory.  You remember his lazy, left-handed, two-fingered steer, windows open, his lower lip packed with Copenhagen Snuff, his right hand on your thigh, your hair blowing in the wind like a Bob Dylan song.  Eyes wild, kindled by cuss and spark, loonies and toonies clanking in the console, not jazz, but Tragically Hip cranked on the stereo: radio / cassette / CD / streamed.  This time, you trip this road like a missile, brake hard to watch Braeburn elk, iPhone photo-shoot a grizzly bear clawing through packed dirt and root for sun-worshipping ground squirrels.  Even a deer catches your eye, and you marvel at this unscreened wild; no filter.  Not even the acreage of still-smoking wildfire can slow you down.  You have a 3:30 appointment with Double Denim Tattoo; Bee is ready to ink Zhùr, a 57,000-year-old wolf pup on the arm of your writing hand.  A 57,000-year-old-wolf pup who still has stories to tell:  That her last meal was salmon, that she was crushed in her den, that she still travels north from a museum display to attend Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in First Nation gatherings, like Moosehide.  That she was found by miners in a goldfield outside of Dawson City.  That she first appeared in a poem of yours in 2016, a haibun quite like this.  And later, your finger traces this new art resting on a bed of flaming fireweed in your skin, you close your eyes and imagine the unruly nature of her copper pelt, that baby-soft animal fur of her.  And later, you check into the magenta-trimmed Bunkhouse, walk the muddy, pot-holed street in the rain to the Back Alley Pizza Window.  There, the old owner says to you in a thick, Italian accent, Where is your man and your daughter? as if no time had passed, as if seven years had not passed.

To answer, I grasp
at straws, the story too sad
for such fine pizza.

Kersten Christianson derives inspiration from wild, wanderings, and road trips. She has authored Curating the House ofNostalgia (Sheila-Na-Gig, 2020), What Caught Raven’s Eye (Petroglyph Press, 2018), and Something Yet to Be Named(Kelsay Books, 2017). Additionally, she is the poetry editor of the quarterly journal, Alaska Women Speak. Kersten lives in Sitka, Alaska where she keeps an eye on the tides, shops Old Harbor Books, and hoards smooth ink pens.