DENALI SPRING

Mount Healy 

watercolor sketch

The trip to town: 

The drive to Fairbanks starts at our home in the Boreal Forest, ascending to the subalpine of Broad Pass with its sweeping vistas and Denali looming in the distance. We stop to pick up mail at the Cantwell post office, a small, intimate and social environment where the events of the day are shared and passed along. From there the road follows the Nenana River as it courses ever northward challenging the breadth of the Alaska Range with its towering glaciated mountains and valleys, serrated ridgelines and peaks still caught in winter's snowy grasp.

The north side of the range becomes a cacophony of rugged volcanic and metamorphic rocks creating striking shapes with steep drainages.

The rolling hills beyond the Alaska Range are beginning to show signs of early Spring. Crimsons of the anthocyanin pigments awaiting the coming of Spring weather, create a backdrop of warmth against lighter cottonwood and white stands of birch that cover the interior landscape.

In Fairbanks birch limbs awaiting a few more days of warmer temps create intricate negative spaces against the blue sky.

On the return trip Mount Healy was clear and stunning in the afternoon light. This is from a quick stop at one of the pull outs south of Healy, Alaska.