At The Free Press, we firmly believe that everyone, for a few days each year, needs to slow down, switch off, and hit the road—and what better time to do it than the last week of August? So this week, instead of The Front Page, we’re running Journeys, a new series about the trips that change us. Yesterday, Norman Podhoretz lifted the veil on his famous journey from Brooklyn to Manhattan. Today, Paul Kingsnorth shares a tale from the back roads of the Alaska Highway. Enjoy! —The Editors
The good things happen on the margins. At the edges. This is hardly an original observation, but originality is overrated. If something has survived a long time, there’s likely to be something in it.
I’m on a five-day road trip from Montana, through British Columbia, and into Alaska, accompanied by my family and my friend Paul, who is from Alaska. It is day four, and we are on the Canadian part of the Alaska Highway. As we drive along, Paul explains that the road used to be much rougher and the cars much slower. As a result, the journey took longer, and plenty of resorts, motels, cafés, and bars sprang up along the road to cater to the need to stop for rest and refreshment.
Now, the journey is shorter, thanks to faster cars and a smoother road. Good news for drivers in a hurry, but bad news for those people who ran the resorts and cafés. As we continue to head north, we see the consequences: shuttered shops, silent restaurants, and entirely empty holiday resorts.
