“You’re doing what?!” – Canadian Cycling Magazine

One of the delights of a long tour like this are the chance encounters. Over the days and weeks your rides, with the intimacy that cycling engenders with landscape, and the conversations you have create a unique impression of a place, a country, and eventually, of this whole continent. I make an effort as much as possible to stop and talk to people. I mention that I am cycling from the Arctic to Panama. The first reaction is almost inevitably, “you’re doing what?!” The craziness and the wonder of it shifts the personal dynamics between two strangers. It opens a space of trust between us. The conversation may last five or ten minutes or forty minutes and more. We leave with a bond that is ephemeral yet the faint traces of it linger.

I think of Josh, an Inuvialuit from Tuktoyaktuk, whom I met on the gravel road from Tuk to Inuvik. He patrols the highway with Angus, part of a team managing the fishing and wildlife resources of the land to ensure its legacy for future generations. He is young and conscious of his role that is as much about preservation of culture and mode of living as it is technical.

It is the same with other First Nations people I meet. Jared in Tsiigehtchic is in his early twenties and left the south to return home and learn the old ways from his grandfather. He loves his small village, the land and how they live in relation to their land.

Lawrence is a Gwitchin who lives in a tepee he Gerry-rigged just off the Dempster Highway. He was diamond miner and now works as a mechanic. We spent seven hours with him as he drove us (me and fellow Covid positive cyclist, Cat)  from Eagle Plains to Dawson City where we were to hunker down for our week of isolation. Lawrence didn’t give a damn that we were positive; had had Covid twice himself. We wore masks and listened to his stories of his ancestral lands. He is pushing sixty and what impressed me most was the childlike wonder with which he pointed out the beauty of the land we were driving through.

Fran is a Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in who is immersing herself in ancient wisdom and modern science of plant lore. Hers is an ongoing quest to reconnect with so much that had been lost or buried with the advent of white settlers and the residential schools.

There are others. Their names and faces swirl around me. I meet Tom from Omaha, Nebraska. He’s 68, lean with a mobile, expressive face as if in constant audition for a comedy part. He’s repacking his gear outside the…