Alaska, Yukon Territory, British Columbia. As we drive this land, mountains at times encircle us. Our road runs between ranges, or climbs among their ridges and peaks, or we see them as angled shadows in the distant haze. Still, the sky rising high above pushes them down. Every cloud cliche could have originated here: veils of clouds, clouds like gauze, puffs of clouds, trailing clouds, banks of threatening, angry, playful, soft, fluffy clouds.

Time refuses to be measured by the clock, or by miles. Although we're tethered by hunger and thirst, the Bounder's caprices and gasoline tank. Each day seems to hold many days, the sky above us an unpredictable and changing display of sun and clouds. Rain, sun and clouds. Rain, and clouds.

True, each day begins and ends in a campground. Or just off the road. We roll down the blinds and pull the curtains across the front window; in the morning we raise them, pull back the curtain to reveal a windshield wet with rain, or fogged from the heat inside.

Sometimes we have neighbors. The same people who pass us on the highway, or stopped where we did the night before. Their routine is like ours. We rest, we eat, we sleep, we tend to our vehicles, computers and pets, we rise and leave again.

Already this morning, we woke to rain, saw a sunrise in blue clouded skies which soon darkened to gray. A pale double rainbow surprised us, arching from the cafe near the road and ending behind us on the tree-covered hill overlooking the river. Now, the sun has turned the sky a gentle blue. I've begun breakfast.

Then, unplugged, unhooked, we'll attach ourselves to the yellow-lined strip through this wilderness and begin again. Headed south this time, and east.