Meltdown in Wonderland
(Lou, Yukon)
We went to +5C this week (average temps should be around -20). A warm wind soared up the river and took the snow from our roof and yard. Yet again, the ice pans in the river shrank and softened.
The Yukon river usually freezes by mid-November. Not this year.
If the river does not freeze safely enough for us to travel on it we are completely cut off from the world until, maybe May when the river is ice-free again and we can get the boat back in.
We decided we will do an inventory of our food and supplies on 1st December, if the river has not stopped, and work out what we might need to ration.
It may be a lonely winter.
Oh well, time to do all the bottom of the list things like, learn to bake cakes (til we run out of ingredients), write that novel, learn to meditate and…well I don’t know, but I refuse to take up embroidery.
It was Neil’s birthday so we took a hike up the hill to catch a brief midday glimpse of the sun. Today it rose at 9.30 and will set at 4pm, but it hasn’t reached our property for weeks. We lose about 5 minutes of daylight each day currently, and that rate will increase. With poor light and no snow to reflect it, the woods felt gloomy and brittle.
Who’s been sleeping in my bed?
We were utterly dumbfounded to find we had a visitor waiting for us at the house on our return.
He had got a fire going, had a snooze in the armchair and really should have been sat there with a bowl of our porridge to complete the image.
Our amazing Alaskan friend and nearest neighbour had got his four-wheeler (quad bike) 20 miles up the mining road from his place and then 15 miles along an overgrown track to a disused asbestos mine in the mountains about 5 miles away. He hiked 3½ hours through the bush and along the creek to get to us. And all for a joke to scare the shit out of us.
Which he did. We haven’t seen anyone for over a month. With more snow on the ground he wouldn’t have made it, but global warming at least brought us a visitor for Neil’s birthday.
He was heading off to check his trap line the next day so we hiked back to the four-wheeler with him.
It was slow going through the brush, criss-crossing the creek where the ice looked safe, then a steep clamber up the mountain side.
We reached the old mine by traversing a tailings pile. Hundreds of feet in height and width it was a loose jumble of rocks and scree that might give way at any moment and sweep us back down the mountain in an avalanche. A single dislodged boulder would be enough to kill you as it bounced down the hill.
We moved as carefully as we could and stayed well-spaced from each other, rocks skittered away from our feet. I scampered ahead thinking about the fact that our friend had seen grizzly tracks up there yesterday and wondering if it’s possible to get asbestosis from raw tailings. There can’t be many hikes that encompass quite such a variety of ways to die. Or over such a wide timescale.
I’ve been assured that natural asbestos is not a danger, quite emphatically by people who have no expert knowledge of the stuff at all. As it occurs naturally here, and there’s a sheet on the floor of our cabin, I choose to believe them.
Why we don’t drink much
People often ask us why we don’t bring more booze with us into the bush. The main reason is we have so many supplies to get in life’s little luxuries, especially if they are bulky and heavy, are just too much. The other reason is this-
We had a pack of beers stashed to split between mine and Neil’s birthdays. We had also downloaded a film to watch on the computer so were looking forward to a movie night.
We don’t watch films often as the internet doesn’t always oblige, and it is just too fucking weird. The shift of gear is too extreme. To go from our turn of the century lifestyle in a dingy log cabin, barely lit by our 3 oil lamps and lost in the utter silence of the wilderness to the blaring electric cacophony of a movie and back again feels all too much for one evening.
Neil chose ‘Alice through the Looking Glass’.
We had settled down with our beers. We got about 10 minutes from the end when I heard a sound that could only have been a grizzly bear rolling one of our 50 gallon drums round the yard.
We grabbed a shotgun, a hunting rifle AND bear spray and burst out of the cabin with my extra powerful headlamp on full beam. This is the moment I’m glad we weren’t drunk.
What was it? Ah, just our dog, Homer- he knocked his house over. Phew! Then Neil pointed out- but why did he knock his house over? And quite right. Homer only gets agitated when something is wrong.
I swung the beam of my headlamp around hoping not to light up that 4th pair of eyes in the yard that I never want to see. Nothing.
We realised Homer had heard the ice sinking and cracking on the river and got spooked. Then his roof had fallen in, then the only people he has in the world ran at him with loaded guns, so it wasn’t the best evening for him.
The temperature was dropping and the ice was indeed heaving and groaning so we abandoned the film and walked down to the river. Diamonds of hoar frost glistened on every branch. Each patch of snow danced with disco lights before our headlamps.
We’ve had the largest full moon in 86 years, apparently. Its reflection glittered a path between the flowing ice on the river and its wide face hung above us, outshining our headlamps. We turned them off and watched the river slide lazily, thick as oil in the cold, on to the ice shelf.
Creaks and groans echoed along the banks as it froze and the shelf ice bent with the weight.
I said, “Neil, we live in Wonderland. Why the hell are we sat in there watching a film about it?”
I think we’ll watch something set in suburbia next time.
(The film’s shit anyway, by the way.)
Wolf-proof
The wolves of last week have moved on. Most likely they killed a moose cross river as they hung around for a few days and the ravens were to and fro.
We have finished the wolf-proof pen for Homer. We’ll use it to store the snow machine over the summer too, to stop the bears munching on it again.
We ensured Homer’s approval by feeding him in the pen. Little does he know that one day he’ll be shut in it for 12 hours or more if we can ever try to make it to town on the snowmachine.
But Homer doesn’t worry about the future. And when we get home he will still love us, as we will be the people who let him out of the pen, just like we are the people who let him off his chain rather than those who clip him on to it. It’s all a matter of perspective. And dogs are smarter than people like that.
To end, a short story that explains why Homer may be smarter than my husband
We also finished sealing off our downstairs space in the house with plywood to stop the warm air from our barrel woodstove circulating up into the eaves and away out the roof. We made a trapdoor to lay over the top of the staircase.
As the light started to fade in the mid-afternoon, I thought to say to Neil,
“Oh make sure you don’t go upstairs in the dark and forget about the trapdoor and smack your head on it.”
I went outside briefly to take some moose scraps I’d cooked for Homer to cool.
By the time I got in, Neil was sitting in the armchair looking stunned.
“I just did that thing.”
“What thing?”
“The thing you just said about hitting my head.”
“But I only just said it?”
“No. It’s not funny. I hit my head really hard.”
This doesn’t exactly prove Homer’s intelligence, but I think it says a fair bit about Neil’s.
And we just had to…
So last week we just had to ask Homer who he thought would win. He is an American psychic dog after all.
I guess he thought that just because Clinton got more votes overall she would win. What kind of a dumb husky idea is that?
And anyway- more importantly, will the bloody river ever freeze up, Homer, or are we cut off all winter?
For the moment we watch and wait.
We went to +5C this week (average temps should be around -20). A warm wind soared up the river and took the snow from our roof and yard. Yet again, the ice pans in the river shrank and softened.
 |
| No change for weeks |
 |
| Snow melted on porch table |
 |
| Snow melting off roof |
We decided we will do an inventory of our food and supplies on 1st December, if the river has not stopped, and work out what we might need to ration.
It may be a lonely winter.
Oh well, time to do all the bottom of the list things like, learn to bake cakes (til we run out of ingredients), write that novel, learn to meditate and…well I don’t know, but I refuse to take up embroidery.
It was Neil’s birthday so we took a hike up the hill to catch a brief midday glimpse of the sun. Today it rose at 9.30 and will set at 4pm, but it hasn’t reached our property for weeks. We lose about 5 minutes of daylight each day currently, and that rate will increase. With poor light and no snow to reflect it, the woods felt gloomy and brittle.
 |
| Gloomy, scary things in the woods |
We were utterly dumbfounded to find we had a visitor waiting for us at the house on our return.
He had got a fire going, had a snooze in the armchair and really should have been sat there with a bowl of our porridge to complete the image.
Our amazing Alaskan friend and nearest neighbour had got his four-wheeler (quad bike) 20 miles up the mining road from his place and then 15 miles along an overgrown track to a disused asbestos mine in the mountains about 5 miles away. He hiked 3½ hours through the bush and along the creek to get to us. And all for a joke to scare the shit out of us.
Which he did. We haven’t seen anyone for over a month. With more snow on the ground he wouldn’t have made it, but global warming at least brought us a visitor for Neil’s birthday.
He was heading off to check his trap line the next day so we hiked back to the four-wheeler with him.
It was slow going through the brush, criss-crossing the creek where the ice looked safe, then a steep clamber up the mountain side.
We reached the old mine by traversing a tailings pile. Hundreds of feet in height and width it was a loose jumble of rocks and scree that might give way at any moment and sweep us back down the mountain in an avalanche. A single dislodged boulder would be enough to kill you as it bounced down the hill.
 |
| Boulder with asbestos, a beautiful seam of pre-jade material, with potential to kill right away or many years later by asbestosis. I didn't fancy brushing the snow off. |
 |
| “Neil, stay on the dangerous tailings pile while I get a good picture, will you?” |
 |
| Lovely day out- trying not to breathe too deeply at the old asbestos mine |
People often ask us why we don’t bring more booze with us into the bush. The main reason is we have so many supplies to get in life’s little luxuries, especially if they are bulky and heavy, are just too much. The other reason is this-
We had a pack of beers stashed to split between mine and Neil’s birthdays. We had also downloaded a film to watch on the computer so were looking forward to a movie night.
We don’t watch films often as the internet doesn’t always oblige, and it is just too fucking weird. The shift of gear is too extreme. To go from our turn of the century lifestyle in a dingy log cabin, barely lit by our 3 oil lamps and lost in the utter silence of the wilderness to the blaring electric cacophony of a movie and back again feels all too much for one evening.
Neil chose ‘Alice through the Looking Glass’.
We had settled down with our beers. We got about 10 minutes from the end when I heard a sound that could only have been a grizzly bear rolling one of our 50 gallon drums round the yard.
We grabbed a shotgun, a hunting rifle AND bear spray and burst out of the cabin with my extra powerful headlamp on full beam. This is the moment I’m glad we weren’t drunk.
What was it? Ah, just our dog, Homer- he knocked his house over. Phew! Then Neil pointed out- but why did he knock his house over? And quite right. Homer only gets agitated when something is wrong.
I swung the beam of my headlamp around hoping not to light up that 4th pair of eyes in the yard that I never want to see. Nothing.
We realised Homer had heard the ice sinking and cracking on the river and got spooked. Then his roof had fallen in, then the only people he has in the world ran at him with loaded guns, so it wasn’t the best evening for him.
The temperature was dropping and the ice was indeed heaving and groaning so we abandoned the film and walked down to the river. Diamonds of hoar frost glistened on every branch. Each patch of snow danced with disco lights before our headlamps.
We’ve had the largest full moon in 86 years, apparently. Its reflection glittered a path between the flowing ice on the river and its wide face hung above us, outshining our headlamps. We turned them off and watched the river slide lazily, thick as oil in the cold, on to the ice shelf.
Creaks and groans echoed along the banks as it froze and the shelf ice bent with the weight.
 |
| Water seeping onto the ice shelf |
I think we’ll watch something set in suburbia next time.
(The film’s shit anyway, by the way.)
Wolf-proof
The wolves of last week have moved on. Most likely they killed a moose cross river as they hung around for a few days and the ravens were to and fro.
We have finished the wolf-proof pen for Homer. We’ll use it to store the snow machine over the summer too, to stop the bears munching on it again.
 |
| I like it. I'll take it. How much is it? |
But Homer doesn’t worry about the future. And when we get home he will still love us, as we will be the people who let him out of the pen, just like we are the people who let him off his chain rather than those who clip him on to it. It’s all a matter of perspective. And dogs are smarter than people like that.
To end, a short story that explains why Homer may be smarter than my husband
We also finished sealing off our downstairs space in the house with plywood to stop the warm air from our barrel woodstove circulating up into the eaves and away out the roof. We made a trapdoor to lay over the top of the staircase.
As the light started to fade in the mid-afternoon, I thought to say to Neil,
“Oh make sure you don’t go upstairs in the dark and forget about the trapdoor and smack your head on it.”
I went outside briefly to take some moose scraps I’d cooked for Homer to cool.
By the time I got in, Neil was sitting in the armchair looking stunned.
“I just did that thing.”
“What thing?”
“The thing you just said about hitting my head.”
“But I only just said it?”
“No. It’s not funny. I hit my head really hard.”
This doesn’t exactly prove Homer’s intelligence, but I think it says a fair bit about Neil’s.
And we just had to…
So last week we just had to ask Homer who he thought would win. He is an American psychic dog after all.
 |
| Corner pawed from the bottom paper reveals his choice |
And anyway- more importantly, will the bloody river ever freeze up, Homer, or are we cut off all winter?
 |
| Not saying nothing |
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