We drove from Dawson City, Yukon, this morning, and we are now standing in an expanse of fireweed. It’s a balmy 12 degrees, wet and gloomy, and the leaves of the brush are the season’s colour of its namesake. Try to imagine something as immense as Monument Valley covered in rose petals and you get the idea. The vast landscape appears Photoshopped, unearthly and distracting enough that I’ve nearly driven off the Dempster Highway twice. Midway up the slope we are climbing, I notice the silhouettes of two people on a high ridge. They, apparently, see us as well, because one of them makes a bee-line down through the fireweed straight for us. At about a hundred metres, I can see the man approaching is covered in camouflage and is very much armed.

The Dempster Highway is a gravel road running 740 kilometres from outside Dawson City into the Arctic landscape to Inuvik, NWT. My wife and I have done our homework for the trip. We’ve scoured all the travel sites for advice. We’ve packed an extra twenty-four hours´ worth of food in the car in case we get stuck on the sparsely travelled road. We spent two days wandering around Whitehorse looking for a full-sized spare tire to fit my Cadillac. Having failed to find one, I’ve personally come to terms with the chance that I might have to abandon the car rather than take out a mortgage to tow it from the wilderness. I know what you’re thinking: why would anyone bring a Cadillac into the Arctic? The answer is that our old Subaru’s power steering gave out a week before the 6,700-km trip out from Toronto. The question will be asked by many along the Dempster, including ferry attendants at the Peel and Mackenzie River who can’t help but poke their heads in our mud-caked Eldorado to ask it.

As a Torontonian, this isn’t what I’m used to. It’s no weekend trip to the Muskokas. There are no telephone lines, power lines or street lights here. There are no roadside gas stations, save one. Our cellphones grope in vain for a signal. A few days back, and hundreds of kilometres south of Dawson City, we passed a sign informing drivers that 911 services were no longer available. Now, midway up the remote slope, my ears ring, hungry for city noise. As the armed man approaches I can hear the swish of his heavy pants. At about 10 metres, he beckons me with his hand. I walk over, very much aware of the 20-dollar Canadian Tire buck knife strapped to my side.

"Listen," he whispers. "There’s a wounded grizzly over the ridge. It’s not safe."

I suppose if I were from anywhere else in Canada, I would believe him, return to the car and continue on. As a Torontonian however, I think the moustached man is full of it, probably dealing drugs up there or, at the very least, illegally poaching. Not that I tell the armed fellow to his face, but after thanking him and returning to our car, I write down the licence plate of his truck, peer in the back for any cocaine-filled suitcases, inform some other hikers that there are shady, armed guys up on the ridge, and drive to the nearest ranger’s office. The group of young rangers listen to my story, and then inform me that the hunter is probably telling the truth and it’s perfectly legal for him to hunt in the park.

"In a conservation area?" I ask.

They tell me a hunting allowance was written into the agreement with the First Nations in the area. For a moment, I am crestfallen, like I’ve just been called a tattletale by my kindergarten teacher. I put on my best face, shake everyone’s hand and finally, go on my merry way.

As a city dweller, my idea of “wilderness” is whatever groomed hiking trails lay within a two-hour Sunday drive of my home. So, when a hunter prevents my wife and me from stumbling into the path of a wounded grizzly, you can imagine the sudden feeling of incongruence, like arriving in Cancun with a set of skis. We spend the remainder of our journey enjoying the breathtaking scenery from the close proximity of our Cadillac. When we camp at Eagle Plains, the midway point, I continually peer over my shoulder while cooking dinner, my East End ears switched to a seldom-used prey mode.

Despite the rumours, the Dempster Highway doesn’t consist of steep hills of tire-devouring shale and isn’t littered with abandoned cars (we saw one). Such stories confuse the landscape with the laneway. The real danger lies beyond, in an environment that is the majority of Canada’s territory; a realm where the average person is three days from death by exposure or, if they aren’t as lucky as we are, less than that.

Rocco de Giacomo is a widely published poet and essayist whose work has recently appeared in The Antigonish Review and Tower Poetry. A full-length collection of his poetry is expected out in the fall of 2009, through Quattro Books. To see more of his work, visit www.roccodg.com.