Caitlin M.S. Buxbaum Glitter Gulch

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CIRQUE

Caitlin M.S. Buxbaum

Glitter Gulch

Certainly the Denali Borough and all the businesses around the Denali have been suffering from the COVID crisis, so local hire is certainly an option because what we wanna avoid is bringing in people from all over the United States or elsewhere into these smaller communities where healthcare isn’t so easy to get to. —Pete Christian, National Park Service Alaska spokesperson

Not all that glitters is gold, or even Fool’s Gold, though you’ll find some of that here, even now, in the shuttered gift shops shadowed by Denali, hushed in harsh winter, dulled by that corona we all know and [hate].

Drive that stretch of road claimed by the Park Service, today, and you might catch a ghostly local, hired last summer to trap the few tourists brave or dumb enough to travel to the town that’s not a town at all, but a makeshift village, a collection of cabins and eateries littering the highway like fungi, only worse — less natural — in a time of disease and turmoil.

There are assumptions that next season will be better. Until then, no souvenirs are sold, no feverish fingers point to the Great One, no mouths gasp in awe of it. Only the caretakers, minding locks and frozen pipes, say hello every morning, whisper, “goodnight.”

Hinged 2 Jill Johnson