How many times do we have casual encounters with a stranger? We may exchange pleasantries in line at the grocery checkout, or acknowledge a stranger walking by on the opposite sidewalk. We presume that these brief encounters are not meaningful. However, two people who have had a profound influence on my life were strangers who I only met for a few minutes, several years ago.. If I could speak to them today, I would thank each of them for changing my life and motivating me to continue my pursuit of discovering far away special places in the world.
Anthropologists and Geographers have written tomes relating to this subject. Cultural Anthropologists describe how humans attach cultural meanings to specific locations. Therefore, it is no coincidence that the two life changing encounters both happened within a few days of each other, while hiking the Chilkoot Trail from Alaska to Canada, the same route that gold rush miners took to the Klondike in One old man inspired me to emulate him; the other profoundly influenced me to do the opposite, and avoid the mistakes that he had made with his life.
I suspect that neither of these men would remember even meeting meβ¦.. Was there something memorable for them in our brief rendezvous, or did the lasting impressions only go one way? The 33 mile long trail was the shortest route overland to gain access to the Yukon gold fields. Fortune seeking pioneers would sail all the way from San Francisco or Seattle to Skagway, which was as far as they could go on salt water. Then the perilous and arduous journey began.
The trail starts overland from the Ghost town of Dyea, about nine miles west of Skagway. The border was at the top of the Chilkoot Pass, where one had to navigate a steep mountain wall. Most miners did the pass in the Winter, as it was easier to drag the heavy gear over snow than carry it.
After clearing customs, they would continue to Bennett Lake and build boats and wait for Spring snow melt to make the mile trip to Dawson City, Yukon. We began the hike at Dyea, which is now a ghost town. We had an eerie feeling as we walked through the cemetery. All of the headstones showed the same day of death; April 3rd, The avalanche that wiped out this community was a factor of the geography of the area.
