Before being patched with thick black asphalt during recent weeks, the roads across Goldstream Creek’s swampy valley bucked my car like a whitewater raft in the Nenana River canyon. Before being patched with thick black asphalt during recent weeks, the roads across Goldstream Creek’s swampy valley bucked my car like a whitewater raft in the Nenana River canyon. I first felt them as a kid riding the original gravel roads in my parents’ dust-trap of a Land Rover. I understand how roads thaw the underlying permafrost, roiling the routes across Goldstream’s bottomland and the slopes that define the valley. A professional engineer, Connor has studied Alaska roads for almost 50 years.