Coming from the Whitehorse airport in January last year, Erling Friis-Baastad watched the dark bulk of Grey Mountain out the frosty car window. "I feel the past settling comfortably around my shoulders like a familiar sweater," he said. It would be the award-winning poet's last trip north, to the landscapes that inspired his writing and freed his spirit.

Friis-Baastad died this spring from Lewy body dementia, a particularly vicious form of loss that pushes reality toward the monstrous. "There are various creatures inhabiting my waking hours," Friis-Baastad said as his illness took hold. "My neurons and electrons are battling against cement walls."

Friis-Baastad always saw the world through poetry, even as its reality left him.

Born in Norway, Friis-Baastad emigrated to the United States

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