The Yukon is slowly working its magic on me. Not in a flashy, abracadabra kind of way, but gently, like a skilled and unhurried lover. Two nights ago, I finally went to Tombstone Valley. It took my breath away. Even with a wall of smoke from fires still burning in Alaska obscuring the view to infinity, it was still mind-blowingly beautiful.

I made the acquaintance of local (by way of Slovenia) art photographer, Igor P, when he asked to take a photo of me and Henk. He’d overheard on the street a British motorcycle magazine journalist making an appointment with me for photos and just showed up with his camera at the agreed upon time and location like it was a public session. I’d seen him around town several times and thought I should probably know him. He looked about as authentic a local I’d find here in this John Wayne town with the shoot ‘em up façade: Long gray hair in a ponytail, ballcap, mustache, goatee, big chunky hand-made gold hoop earring in his left ear, thrift store overalls and shirt, and an attitude that says, “Don’t mess with me, I’ve been here since the gold rush days,” even though that would make him about 130 years old.

Igor told me he was going to try and get up to Tombstone to do some shooting, despite the smoke, and I imposed myself along. He’s an old biker who understands my concerns with taking Henk up the Dempster Highway, although he’s the one who suggested I could probably make it. (I met a rider from Toronto today who had a back flat on his FLJ or FJL or some other combination of letters Yamaha or Kawasaki or some other Japanese 1300 just south of the Arctic Circle due to all the gravel and sharp rocks. He advised that I carry one of those cans of inner tire sealant you can pick up at the hardware store for $9.95. Said he didn’t know how the hell he would’ve gotten out of that mess without it, but as it was, he was grinning from ear to ear, loving every minute of his adventure. “I was gonna go to Colorado but Toronto was so fuckin’ hot, I quit my job and said ‘I’m goin’ to Alaska!’”)

Igor wanted to catch sunset at Tombstone, so he picked me up around 4:30 in his van, which doubles as his accommodation and solar-powered photo print shop. The road was definitely rough, but definitely doable if you have good tires. We met an Enduro speeding along in the opposite direction seemingly doing just fine. It’s just over a hundred kms to the park, but because of the road, it took a couple of hours.

Igor seemed happy to have my company and talked nonstop the whole way there. I think he described in intimate detail every single photo he’d ever taken in Tombstone; and he’s taken tens of thousands. He talked about the light at different times of the day and different times of the year, the colors of the hundreds of different species of moss and flowering shrubs, the caribou run in the spring when hundreds of thousands of caribou are grazing in the valley, fireweed in early summer transforming the entire valley into a blazing pink carpet, sunset on the lakes, sunrise on the mountains, northern lights in the night sky, wildlife like grizzlies and black bears and moose and eagles and ravens and foxes and wolves, the snake road curling off into the valley between layers of mountains that go on forever, the Klondike River that starts as a trickle high up, then empties into the Yukon just south of Dawson City…

Suddenly we were there and all I could say was ‘Oh. My. God.’ We climbed a gravel road to a ridge and got out to take some photos, walking off in opposite directions. The moss underfoot was soft and spongy and my feet sunk in deep with each step. I squatted to get a shot of some red shrubs in the foreground with just the mystical smoky outline of jagged peaks in the background, and my nostrils were filled with the strong fragrance of Labrador tea and spruce moss and other unknown and wonderful smells. I got the sense that the valley was teeming with life, yet all I could hear was utter silence and all I could see in every direction was rolling red and green tundra dominated by the smoky sentinel peaks of the Tombstone range. It was achingly beautiful. And oddly apocalyptic. I have no reference point in my mind to accurately translate such incredible vast beauty.

I wanted to stay for a month and soak it all in. I wanted to watch the reds and greens get gradually gold, reflecting the midnight sun, magnetized and energized. I wanted to stay up late under the night sky and watch aurora borealis dance with bursting stars and flashing neon ribbons. I wanted to wake up at five to magnificent dawn and marvel all over again at god’s abstract masterpiece.

Ah, but I was with Igor, the talkative photographer from Slovenia, and instead, we went to the campground where he knew everyone, and pulled in for a short chat that turned into a four-hour visit. Another local photographer, Ed Vos, and his hiking-guide-book-writing brother, Curtis, were hunkered into a site with a roaring fire, an old sled dog, and their friend Anne, the hoola hoop girl from the funky jazz concert, who works at a fire lookout on a mountaintop in southeastern Yukon. They’d set up a sleeping tent, complete with a wood stove and a futon, and had a full kitchen going on. They welcomed us to their fire and took orders. I jokingly asked for a soy latte and was served Labrador tea and a toke.

Igor is quite the storyteller, and dominated the campfire conversation with his unique versions of Yukon mythology. I heard tales of “The Pit,” the Dawson City bar where locals start drinking at nine in the morning and a good night, in the day, used to be judged the next day by how many bullet holes were in the ceiling. I heard “Cave Man Bill” lives in his cave all winter long and it’s the warmest pad in Dawson in January. “But don’t get any ideas that it’s palatial or anything. It’s a hole in the side of the hill.” He also posed for a sexy “Men of Dawson” calendar that Ed was putting together—naked, frizzy-haired, bearded, wild-eyed, and holding a chicken by the neck over his privates. It didn’t make the calendar.

I know it’s sick, and he was only trying to inspire us, but Igor’s stories of the no-legged motorbiker from Quebec he’d met in Baja and the blind sheep farmer who rode his bicycle from Whitehorse to Dawson had us all in stitches.

Around three in the morning, Ed pointed to the darkened sky. It was faint, but unmistakable. The northern lights had begun. In a few weeks winter will arrive in the Yukon. Despite falling senselessly in love with this land, like Stockholm syndrome, Henk and I are ready to move on. It’s time to head south. But I’ll definitely be back. I'd love to make the trip with Henk's wild cousin, the new adventure Buell XB12X Ulysses.