Tag: yukon

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The Weather Outside: Frightful and Delightful

Dear Vi,

While my friends on the west coast are enjoying a bit of a cool and rainy summer, here in Dawson City, Yukon things have been quite delightful. Well, for the most part, anyway.We did go through a couple of weeks of being choked by smoke from forest fires, but thankfully no longer. Now we are enjoying cool mornings, blazing hot afternoons, and evening thunderstorms.There’s something shivery and delightful about being cozy inside while the storm rages at your door. Especially when you’re living in a tin can (er…travel trailer) as we are.Thunderstorms also make for great photography.Unfortunately, they also make more forest fires.Have you enjoyed a good crack and boom thunderstorm lately?

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Back in Dawson City

Dear Vi,

We’ve been back in Dawson City for just over a week, and I’ll tell ya, it feels good.

This morning as I was walking Samson on the trail beside the highway, his inspection of a clump of grass was interrupted by the sound of an ATV approaching from behind. We stepped to the side as a child rode past. Miniature vehicle, tiny helmet, pink Disney princess backpack bouncing between her shoulder blades. Because someone has taught her good off-road manners, she slowed as she passed. Two eyes on the road, two hands on the handlebars, focussed and full of the responsibility she’d been given.

Dawson City is a place where elementary school kids can drive their own selves to town.

Dawson City is also a place where the young men who serve you in the restaurant are as likely to wear skinny pants and man-buns as not. They’re in Dawson for the summer, earning their university money or else some extra credit in the school of life experience. One or two have beads and strips of leather braided into their long beards.

The other young men you’ll see are wearing ball caps and driving big trucks, loaders, and backhoes. Or flying helicopters or bush planes, or driving flat-bottomed boats into town from Moosehide or West Dawson.

Well, so are the old men, for that matter.

They all gather together in the bars after hours to slouch in their chairs, fingers tapping the tops of beer bottles, laughing out of wide mouths and red faces, legs spread, the fronts of their bodies concave because they’re sitting in the shape of the letter C.

The dance teacher in me wants to tell them to sit up straight.

When you look at these young men, you understand how the old men got that way.

Dawson City is a place where a beer costs only six bucks on tap, but a pound of butter costs eight. And a pound of bacon? Thirteen-fifty.

Hey there, Dawson City. It’s good to be back. I missed you.

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Good Bye, Dawson City (until next year)

Dear Vi,

Our Yukon summer sojourn is over. We drove away from Dawson City two days ago.

Tomorrow will see the Yukon behind us for another winter.

I took a lot of walks, saw two parades, read a lot of books, made my 60,000 word goal on the next novel, made some new friends, and learned some interesting things this summer. And I still haven’t told you what brought us up here in the first place.

It would be so easy to stay and make a home here…so easy to knit myself into the community.

We’ll be back next summer, for four months this time. Four!I’ve got some planning to do! Maybe I’ll teach a dance class, see if any local writers want to get together, join the fitness club, make a quilt by hand, start another novel…

Life is grand and full of possibilities!

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Dawson City, Yukon: old and new, side-by-side

Dear Vi,

Dawson City sits at the place where the Klondike and Yukon Rivers merge.

The Klondike River is on the left, the much larger Yukon River on the right

In many ways, the town itself mirrors this merging. The rivers flow side-by-side for a ways, the line between the muddy Yukon and the (slightly) clearer Klondike easy to discern. And the city flows side-by-side, too. Old and new holding hands the way you did with your best friend back in kindergarten. Yes, Dawson City is a historic gold rush town, fun to visit.

The community library is located within Robert Service School. How cool is that?

But it’s also a town where people live and work and raise their kids. Old and new are side by side everywhere you look.This is where I buy my groceries:And the liquor store (in the old harness shop!):My favourite restaurant:The local community radio station (with proud show hosts):The Gold Rush, past and present, all coming together where the rivers meet. And the First Nations…don’t assume I’ve forgotten them. Their story is the oldest of all. But I’ll save that for another time, another letter.

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Cabin contentment

Dear Vi,

I’ve turned my chair to look North, where a thunderstorm is slowly working its way down the lake. I sat knitting for an hour or so while Kelly napped in the cabin and listened to thunder rumbling in the distance, wind in the trees, the snick of my knitting needles, the pair of baby ravens learning how to talk as they danced in the sky around their mother.

We have been in the Yukon about five weeks now, ensconced in our cabin at Fox Lake, totally off the grid and being quite antisocial, to tell you the truth.
But I shouldn’t say we. I spent more than three weeks of that time here completely on my own while Kelly was away having an adventure of his own.
He was hired to ferry this beautiful vintage airplane to the Yukon from Sault Ste Marie, Ontario. I’ll tell you more about that in the next letter, I promise.
As consolation for not being allowed to go, too, the day he left, I stopped into The Itsy Bitsy Yarn Shop  (yes, that is really their name) in downtown Whitehorse and treated myself to enough wool to knit myself a sweater in Heritage, from the Briggs & Little Wool Mill in Harvey, New Brunswick. The colour is called Fawn.
The pattern is called Mandolin from the latest issue (Fall 2018) of Knitty Magazine.
It’s coming along well, considering the only thing I really know how to knit is socks. In fact, it’s coming along so fast, I might just have to go buy more yarn and make it a two-sweater summer!
What are you working on this summer?
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Off line & off grid in the Yukon

Have we been here nearly a month already? Hard to believe!

This morning I’m sitting up in bed at my in-law’s house in Carcross where we spent the night after celebrating Mr. C’s birthday. Happy Birthday, my beloved!

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We’ll get back to the cabin sometime this afternoon, not too late. So far, my trips to town have been few and far between. And thats okay. Town trips are mainly to run errands and grab a few minutes of internet. I mean it about the few minutes, too…only one hour per day is allowed at the library.  And so, I haven’t opened Facebook in a couple of weeks, nor answered very many email notes. My online life totally neglected at the moment, but honestly, not really missed.

 

imageI’ve been writing (almost) every day for a couple of hours. I’m thick in the middle of novel rewrites. I’ve also been doing a lot of critiquing & beta reading for the writing groups I belong to. I feel as though the learning curve has steepened again, and it’s really wonderful. Writing is something of an emotional roller coaster … One thing I can say, now, is that I’m finally starting to feel like a writer. If that makes any sense. Maybe someday I’ll also be an author, lol!

imageI’ve also been out on the deck nearly every day doing an hour of yoga in the sunshine. And managing to keep up with the Splendid Sampler quilt blocks, for the most part, too. Now that’s a miracle, to be sure!

imageDont be shy…drop on by. There’s beer in the fridge and the kettle’s always on! Thanks to Bill and Heather for the visit the other day and these wonderful photos.