NO BRAND

KLUANE NATIONAL PARK AND RESERVE, YUKON-2026

Whitehorse, YT. Rolled in at 4pm looking like a better version of Bozeman before it got gentrified. Snow everywhere. Breath that froze immediately. Needing two things. Oil, and beer. Got both.

Pulled into a lube shop with ice frozen to my mud flaps that clunked off on the heated floor. The mechanic noticed the Montana plate first. Glanced at me. I told him I was driving the Alcan headed to Kluane. He peeled the duct taped cardboard off my grill, pulled the dipstick, shook his head, and said now why in the hell would you do that. A stock Frontier on the Alaska Highway in winter is either brave or stupid and I still haven't decided which. He didn't say anything else but his face had opinions. Got the oil changed. Got the tires rotated. Asked him where to grab a drink. He said the 98 Hotel bar without looking up.

The 98 bar was exactly what it needed to be. Truckers and off season workers huddled together for warmth in a small room that smelled like it had stories. Bills from every country pinned to the walls. Pelts hung up. I blended right in which told me something about how the trip had been going.

Bellied up at 6pm. The bartender was a portly shorter guy in a flannel and moccasin slippers with a shiny bald head and a bushy stache. The kind of man the Yukon produces. He didn't say anything at first. Then asked where I was from. I explained the Bozeman situation. He said oh like the show Yellowstone. I said unfortunately.

I'd run out of Zyns somewhere in northern BC and made the executive decision to pick up a tin of Copenhagen long cut because Canada had outlawed my preferred vice. Copenhagen long cut will humble you. I kept forgetting to spit and swallowing it every other sentence, which made everything that followed a more visceral experience than intended.

He talked at me for thirty minutes without asking about my life which was the right call. Grew up in Nova Scotia. Did his twenties journey across the country. Met his wife in Victoria. They decided the Yukon would be a fresh start. He ran out of money and started working lumber. Slowly she grew tired of the into the wild idealism the way people do when the romance of it wears off and the winters don't. Now she was leaving and he was still behind the bar and still in the Yukon and none of it made sense to him anymore.

His face was empty. But I could tell he was absolutely destroyed under the Yukon armor.

I said hell man I'm sorry that's gotta be rough. I had no frame of reference for this kind of situation. I was twenty years old slowly poisoning myself with long cut trying not to sweat through my shirt. He shrugged and asked if I was okay. I said yeah. He kept talking. I kept listening. Sometimes that's the whole job.

Left at 9pm into completely dark Whitehorse. Started driving toward Kluane when the northern lights came out in full force. Otherworldly. Like the sky was being cut open and bleeding green and purple across the whole horizon. The kind of thing that makes the bartender and the mechanic feel very small and very far away.

Pulled onto the road toward Haines and found Kathleen Lake campground. Decided to drive down the access road which was completely snowed over. Ended up sliding all the way to the bottom at -24F and decided I wasn't in the mood to figure out how to get out tonight so I set up my tent, put on Hangover Part Three, and fell asleep at the part where Chow says he feeds his chickens cocaine.

Woke up in the middle of the night to glacier winds screaming down out of the Elias range. Ripped out the guy lines I'd poured water on to freeze into the snow. Got up to fix them. Fixed them. Decided now was a reasonable time to figure out how to get back up the embankment.

Got to the top and my headlamps caught a horse.

How is there a horse in front of me right now. In the Yukon. I didn't believe it so I ran back down to grab my camera, slipped on my ass, hiked back up. He didn't acknowledge me. Then more came. A whole herd walking down the main road to Haines in the dark like they owned it. Which they did.

Turns out they're old work horses from back in the day left to go feral when the mines closed. Nobody owns them. Nobody branded them. Nobody told them where to go or what to be. They just stayed and went wild and have been here ever since.

The bartender from Nova Scotia lost in the Yukon. Me lost somewhere on the Alaska Highway. A herd of horses that never needed to know where they belonged in the first place.

Maybe there's a community in being lost.

Neither me nor that horse have brands.

But I'm working on it.