Time is an odd thing in the Yukon. It may feel like you have an endless supply, a regular drive daiming eight to nine hours (not factoring in the frequent pauses taken to document the ever-changing light), yet it is not something you willingly waste. “When the road re-opened we started driving towards Fort McPherson and reached the pass where they had closed the road the day before. We made it through within half an hour. If we had been half an hour later we would have been stuck on that road, unable to go forward or back. You see a lot of lorry drivers sleeping in their cabins and they have no idea how long they will be stuck for. Your entire journey depends on the weather.” It was this part of the trip, the uncertainty, the potentially missed flight, that Bunning found most gripping. “You feel like you’re actually achieving something, there is this sense of excitement, and all the while you are seeing things you’ve never seen before. On the road from Eagje Hams to Aklavik there is only this beautiful white land and burnt forest from the tree fires. You can’t quite explain it, it’s almost science fiction at times. You don’t expect to see what you see, to do what you do.”
“The further north you go the more you forget that you’re on ice because everything is so white. All the roads are maintained because they are the connections between towns so when these ice roads go, getting from A to B is extremely difficult. When the roads start to crack they’re compacted with snow to try and keep them going a little bit longer. But you definitely know you’re travelling on ice because it’s so bloody cold outside and all you can see is blue ice under your feet.”
It’s important to remember that these roads are not without their dangers and require real skill to navigate. Robert never seemed to use the brake, instead relying on the momentum of the car as he made slight turns, the road following the natural path of the river. At one point they passed a car with a mother and her two children that had slid into a drift. As a local she seemed completely calm, waiting patiently for a truck large enough to tow them out, shovelling snow to pass the time while her children were absorbed in a snowball fight. But Bunning wasn’t worried, never pictured the ice cracking beneath him and didn’t fear the drifts. Instead he was scouring the horizon, waiting for the next photo opportunity. “I’d heard how vast it can be out there so I wanted to show the space, the wilderness. The thing that got to me most was the drive from Aklavik to Tuktoyaktuk where suddenly all the trees disappear and there is just stark white from sea to sky. It was an overcast day so there was this beautiful soft light and then the sun would break through and there v/as a pink cast to the horizon. We’d left Aklavik before the sun had come out and to see the sun rise on an ice road, there is nothing quite so magical. The colour of the ice changes to a deep blue and you get this beautiful red sky and all of a sudden everything changes. But it was like that every five, ten minutes. The light was constantly changing.”
Bunning travelled in February, long after the far north bid farewell to the near endless night. But although he had eight hours of light a day, the sun was never high in the sky. It would be just about to break and then set again, a unique, transformative light that is almost impossible to encounter. As a result, the landscape seems limitless, with the soft light reflected by the snow and the horizon almost nonexistent. It would be hard to imagine such terrain in the summer but Robert, a keen camper and kayaker, excelled at regaling his passengers with accounts of the warmer months. “We pulled over at one point and I was eating a sandwich and these birds, whiskey jacks, landed at my feet and started eating from my hand. They’re renowned for being quite cheeky and helping themselves to whatever they want but it was lovely to sit in peace on the side of a river and feed birds out of your hand. Seeing the Yukon in the summer, you can only imagine what sort of wildlife there would be. There’s such a big difference in weather, winter to summer, they’re polar opposites. It’s something to return for.”
