The road from Tok in Alaska to Dawson City in the Yukon is called the “Top of the World Highway” with good reason. The road, mostly gravel, climbs up and along a ridge for 66 miles to reach the gold panning hamlet of Chicken, population 17 in summer and just 3 in winter. One of the three is Martha, the postmistress, who actually lives even further into the wild, up her own 20 mile track. Until the late 1940s, Chicken was only accessible from Canada. The views from the road are of spruce tree lined valleys beyond which tower huge snowy mountains. It is a vast landscape with nothing man-made except the narrow strip of our dirt road – no houses, no huts, not even other tracks. 43 miles past Chicken we reach the border and
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