Her body grew lean and strong that spring, and while she was planting peach trees or burning ditches, she imagined driving somewhere as remote as Deadhorse, Alaska, a place she’d only heard about from a man in passing who’d worked in the oil field there. So when the ditches were burned and the trees had all been planted, she gathered the rest of her pay, and she and Saddle packed up and headed north.
After more than three days of driving, and spending two days in Helena, Montana, to have a faulty fuel line on her truck repaired, she and Saddle made it to Tok, the first town in Alaska after leaving Yukon territory. She stopped for fuel and then parked at the Border City Café to get something to eat. It was the middle of May, and there was a migratory bird festival going on, she was told by the couple sitting at the table beside her. They looked to be in their midforties. The woman wore a brim cap that read Birdwatching Chick. A pair of camouflage earmuffs hung around her neck.
“Where are you headed?” the man asked Amy Raye.
Amy Raye’s hands were red from the spring cold. She wrapped them around a ceramic coffee mug for warmth. “I’m heading up to Deadhorse,” Amy Raye told them.
“Up at Prudhoe Bay,” the woman said.
“That’s right.”
“You got work in the oil field?” the man asked.
“No.”
The couple had mostly empty plates in front of them—a few French fries on one, a slice of tomato on another. Amy Raye had just ordered a cheeseburger and potato salad.
“That’s a good two-day drive from here, and not a whole lot of anything between. You ever been up that way before?”
“No. Never been to Alaska before either.”
“Well, there’s a lot of places to see other than Prudhoe Bay. All the docks and roads up there are restricted to oil field workers,” the man said.
“I didn’t know that,” Amy Raye told him.
“My name’s Ian, by the way.”
Amy Raye shook the man’s hand and introduced herself.
“And I’m Gina,” the woman said. “We’ve just come back from the Arctic Preserve. A group of us were up there watching the loons and Arctic terns. Are you interested in birds?” she asked.
“No,” Amy Raye said.
The man and the woman exchanged glances. “Where are you from?” Gina asked.
“Colorado. While I was working down there I met a man who’d just spent the winter at Deadhorse.”
“Was probably exploring drill sites,” Ian said.
“I think so. He said it was the farthest place in the United States. I thought I’d like to know what it was like to be at the farthest place in the United States.”
“I guess that all depends on how you look at it. Farthest from what? You see what I’m saying?”
“I think so,” Amy Raye said.
“If you were working in Deadhorse, you might say Key West, Florida, was the farthest place in the United States,” Ian went on.
Gina leaned over the table. She pushed her plate away and folded her arms in front of her. “Why not drive down a little ways to some place like McCarthy or Kennecott? If I was from Colorado, I might think one of those towns was the farthest place.”
“Gina’s got a point,” Ian said. “We stayed in McCarthy a couple of years back. It’s remote, hardly populated at all. And Kennecott’s a ghost town. But you can at least get food and supplies. And you can buy yourself a drink.”
“How far is McCarthy from here?” Amy Raye asked.
“Not nearly as far as Deadhorse,” Gina said.
“It’s probably about seven hours from here. Some of the driving will be on unpaved roads, but it shouldn’t be too bad. Just make sure you have a spare tire,” Ian said. Gina smiled when Ian said this, and the two of them chuckled lightly. Then Ian looked away as if remembering, and laughed a little more. Ian laid his hand on Gina’s back and rubbed her shoulders, and when he did, Gina leaned her body toward his.
They went on to tell Amy Raye about McCarthy, how it was situated in the heart of the Wrangell Mountains. They told her the town was surrounded by the largest protected wilderness on earth.
And as they talked, as Amy Raye watched the easiness pass between them, she decided she’d check out McCarthy. The area was considered endangered. Amy Raye wanted to know what that meant. She wanted to experience it herself. She decided that being in the largest protected wilderness on earth was more alluring to her than being in the farthest place in the United States.