On the Dalton Highway, most conversations concern the Dalton Highway. Though there aren’t many people on the road, they inevitably talk about the road. My first conversation, during a three-day drive along the isolated freeway in Alaska, was with a man named Steven Duffy who was working as a waiter at the Yukon River Camp, a lonesome rest stop marooned among the spruce trees four hours north of Fairbanks.

I had stopped for lunch and encountered Mr. Duffy — the first fellow human I had seen all day — while still becoming accustomed to the highway’s various perils. Those, I had found, included fog, fatigue, flat tires, facing traffic, passing traffic, potholes, gravel, grizzly bears, rain, snow, sleep-inducing silence, sudden engine failure, an abruptly shattered windshield and running out of gas.

“So how’s the road?” Mr. Duffy asked as I walked in, getting, in the spirit of the Dalton, straight to the heart of things. He was a big man with a beard and burly shoulders, and as he handed me a menu, it came with some advice. I should probably take it easy on the hills, he said, and be sure to clear my wheel wells out from time to time. It was also important to pay scrupulous attention to my mirrors and to always — always — drive slowly through the mud.

“This isn’t Anchorage,” he warned. “It’s the middle of freaking nowhere.” After he took my order — grilled cheese and a coffee — Mr. Duffy added, though it hardly needed saying, “It’s remote out here.”