Jehovah's revenge

(Yukon)

Our house on arrival, bear boards still up

You couldn’t make it up. Not one hour after I first set foot on our remote wilderness property, with no road access, no trail access and no airstrip, the bloody Jehovah’s Witnesses were knocking on the door. Or not quite at the door, but getting out of a jet boat onto my beach, with a glossy pamphlet to show me the error of my ways.

Against all the odds our cache is still standing

I’m using the first person singular here as Neil wasn’t with me. He took one look at the list of everything we have to do, thought fuck this, and high-tailed it back to England to escape to his comfy office job with the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority.

The drive from Whitehorse. Neil not looking particularly happy to be back

No not really, bless him, but we managed to hitch a ride with two separate friends who were heading upriver for a wedding in town. I went in the first boat with our dog, a gun and random other things, and Neil followed in the second boat, a few hours later with a load of other stuff.

In my pal’s boat. Our dog, Homer, peaking nervously round a tote

In the meantime, Jehovah called.

In there somewhere, the trail to the creek

They didn’t make it as far as the front door, possibly because I was wielding a sharp brush axe (my first job was to cut out our trail to the creek to get water) or maybe because Homer, our very large husky was bounding around them looking all spooked and atheistic. Or maybe because, after some polite conversation, I refused their pamphlet.

Fall colours on the drive in with Homer

“So,” asked the elder of the pair, a friendly fellow and the first person I’ve ever seen wearing a tie on the Yukon, “how do you explain all this beauty? Chance? Nature? Science!?” (in a tone that implied these were a completely insane ideas).

“Er… Yes.”

I thought I’d get straight to the point-

“And I don’t feel the need to impose a narrative on the world. I’m happy to enjoy it as it is.”

My stuff on the beach

He put the pamphlet away. I made excuses for not being able to offer coffee, quite genuine, like I have no water, no fire, no cups, no coffee, my possessions are piled on the beach in front of you and my house is still boarded up with nailed bear boards, and we said a friendly cheerio. Off they powered with big jet engine to spread the good word into Alaska and I cleared my water trail feeling smug.

Getting water

More fool me. My faith in science and man-made technology was to be sorely tested over the next week.

Neil’s arrival in our pals, Norm and Aedes’ boat 

A lot of things since our arrival have gone really well.

We managed to prize Homer from his happy life at B-Line Race Kennels where he was boarded with the lovely Brian Wilmshurst.

“Who the hell are you?”

He was scared of us at first then decided that, whoever we were, a day trip in our truck might be fun, so came with us willingly. It was later that he realised who we were and his mistake. It wasn’t a day trip.

Uh-oh

He’s coping and seems not completely averse to being home.

Standing in the pouring rain rather than enter the dog box or lean-to shelter we made for him

As I mentioned, our very kind friends were able to give us a lift upriver in their boats. We met them in the bush at Forty Mile, about 16 river miles downstream of our property.

Norm and Aedes pulling away on a gorgeous day

One of them, Aedes, gave us a marvellous “care package.” In Britain, “Care Package” is usually something arranged with the NHS and Local Council for people with dementia or mental illness, but here it has much happier meaning- a box of marvellous things! Home-made edible goodies so we have been living like kings the past week.

We got the outboard on our boat and got our boat in the water in 3 afternoons of pushing, tugging, hoisting and swearing.

Getting the outboard out of the house

Pushing it on rollers

Clearing a path

Hoisting it onto the boat

Winching the boat

Pushing it down the bank. Yes, pushing it, nothing is easy here

And finally across the beach

We have fitted a fish finder and so can travel the river without the thrill of expecting to lose a propeller at any moment. The Yukon is very shallow in places. I can now bore you with the exact depth- between 27’ and 3’ over our journeys back to Forty Mile to collect the rest of our supplies.

Fishfinding technical wizardry from Garmin

We have been moose calling in earnest since discovering a moose wandered through the yard yesterday night.

Moose print at the bottom of our trail

As temps drop, hunting is foremost on the agenda. We won’t hunt too early as we have no freezer to keep the meat and so are hoping temps will get below freezing at night soon.

Moose hunting

Other wildlife sightings include a wolverine shuffling along the beach, a beautiful cerise pink grosbeak, and lots of damn squirrels. They moved into the old cabin over the summer and partied like it was 1999. I’ve literally been shovelling pine cones out of there.

Squirrel hunting

As we are storing our brand new bales of fibreglass insulation in that cabin, and as insulation is a squirrel’s favourite thing after pine cones, they have to go. I’ve shot two, we’ve eaten one and I am back to Elmer Fudd-mode, patrolling the yard with a .22 muttering “I’ll get that squiwel”.

Squirrel for tea

So what has gone not so well?

The internet, for one. We cannot get it on and after taking all our equipment to a dear pal at Forty Mile, we have deduced it’s the modem.

We took the modem apart to see if we can fix it. If anyone can spot the problem can you send us a message? By pigeon

We will have to get into town to get a new one, and the guy who has them isn’t back until the 22^nd Sept, so I have no idea when or how I will post this blog, currently. Perhaps I’ll hand write it as a pamphlet and drift along the Yukon handing it out to people like our God bothering friends.

Drifting down the Yukon with bales of insulation for the squirrels

The other problem is actually far more serious. We have just broken the only working snowmachine we have here. Both our new Skidoo and our Widetrak Polaris (still broken from last winter) are stored at our Alaskan pal’s yard downriver. We did not want to attempt to get them into our boat and so possibly lose the machine, the boat and our lives getting one here.

Delighted we got the 340 started. Just prior to breaking it.

And there was no need as we had Piccolo, our handy Polaris 340, safely stored here out of the reach of curious bears in the dog pen. We thought we’d give it a bit of TLC and change the chaincase oil. We couldn’t spot the drain plug and so diligently, checked the manual. Only, not so diligently we looked at a diagram for a different model and undid something that wasn’t the drain plug, which we now can’t get back in. Which means we can’t refill the chaincase with oil and so can’t drive it.

Potentially we could open up the chaincase and fix it from inside, but we have no idea how complicated that might get. I envisage that the case is full of springs that will pop out madly in all directions as soon as we open it, never to be fixed again. Or something like that.

And of course we have no access to the internet to check one of the many snowmachine forums that might help us.

So much for relying on science and technology.

Low tech machinery to get our supplies up the bank

As we poured over the machine, both knelt in praying positon and, with no other options, both close to doing so we heard the distinctive roar of a jet boat heading upriver from Alaska. It went at high speed, spitefully close to the bank sending brutish waves against our beach and our boat rocking and shaking. It was the Jehovah’s Witnesses, jubilant I expect. Mission accomplished.

Praise be