Courtesy Photo Mountains are seen from William Kelley’s plane on his trip to Alaska in July 1971.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is the 21st in a series of stories adapted from William Kelley’s book, “Wind Socks, Grass Strips, and Tail-Draggers.” Last week, Kelley landed in Whitehorse, that famed Yukon gold rush town.

The customs official checked the seal on the bag around the revolver.

Once in Alaska, he told me, I could unseal it, but, upon returning, I would have to reseal it to pass through Canada.

From the Canadian customs official, I learned there would be no charge by U.S. customs to pass into Alaska, as long as it wasn’t Sunday, a holiday, or before or after regular hours. That was good news. It was a question I had, as some stories I had heard made customs seem like ripoffs.

As it turned out, it was Saturday, and I had plenty of time to reach Northway, Alaska, by midafternoon.

The next item on the agenda was food. For the past two days, since I left Carragana, I hadn’t eaten much. In the restaurant of the terminal building, I ordered a couple hamburgers and tea.

As I fueled the plane, I remembered a concern of some old-time pilots.

Clean fuel was a concern.

It was recommended that I carry a chamois in the event I had to acquire fuel from a barrel parked beside an old hangar in the woods. Even the materials from the Canadian Department of Transportation warned me to make sure the fuel I burned was clean, and, if in doubt, run it through a chamois, which would absorb water and filter out dirt.

Airports were spaced close enough together along the Alcan Highway and any place I traveled in Alaska, so clean fuel was no big concern. It wasn’t necessary for me to use fuel from suspect containers.

Flowers and shrubs around the terminal building caught my eye when I went to pay for the fuel and eat. They seem more prominent in the north. Possibly because of the harsh conditions.

Maybe it was the contrast. It seemed there were either plants or there were no plants. In my home area of the Midwest, plants of all kinds are taken for granted.

There were patches of trees interspersed throughout the grasslands all along the route until I started to get into higher terrain, north of Fort St. John.

In the northern regions of Saskatchewan and Alberta, the majority of trees were aspen, alder, and birch. Those are intermediate species of trees in forest succession across the Midwest, but, in the cooler climate, they are climax species.

The change in elevation — rolling hills at first, then the foothills of the Rockies near Fort St. John — led to more spruce and pine. The hills were tree-covered. Their luscious green mass carpeted the countryside. Grass grew along the banks of streams and rivers, where trees had probably been washed away with spring rains. Back from the banks, shrubs began, and trees took over where banks turned to hills.

Streams and rivers twisted through the countryside. Between Fort St. John and Fort Nelson, the hills turned to mountains, but were still tree-covered. That continued west of Fort Nelson into the country where the forest fire had ravaged so many acres of mature timber.

Mountains became more rugged in the Liard River area. Some had grasses, but few — if any — trees.

The treeline was between 7,000 and 8,000 feet in that area. North of Watson Lake, mountains appeared that had no trees, then no grass. Some of the mountains had no visible vegetation on them, unless lichen grew there, which I couldn’t see from where I sat.

Bold, raw-boned faces of rock, shoulder to shoulder for miles, guarded the higher mountains, with their snow drifts. Glaciers melted into valleys. Their thickened flow muddied the runoff.

Rugged mountains dominated the terrain the rest of the way into Alaska.

Pink stone, brown stone, shades ranging from pale yellow to black, resembled an artist’s palette, with the colors dumped in piles.

Check The News next week for the next installment. William Kelley was a teacher for 32 years and has been a pilot since 1966. He lives in Herron on the family farm where he was born and raised.