Do bears wear cardigans?

(Lou, Yukon)
At last, we have a few inches of dusty snow. We’ve got the snow shoes down from the cabin wall and trundled the snowmachine off its logs.

There’s not enough snow to run the machine far, but we were able to test out our new ramps on to the property.

First trip down the new ramp

And more importantly, up

There’s a big improvement in the plumbing system. No more Jack and Jill up the hill from the creek with heavy pales of water.

Ramp at waterhole bolstered with frozen in logs and snow

Buckets can be dumped in the back of the machine and whizzed home with a roar and a cloud of filthy 2-stroke engine fumes. Almost as easy as getting it from a tap.

Still trailing along

We’ve been out on snow shoes brushing out an old trail we found. We hope to bypass some of the jumbled river ice by cutting across the apron of land next to us.

Open lead in the river downstream from us

It’s about 3 miles long and hard work with chainsaw, loppers and brush axe, but at least it will be there next year and not get swept out with the ice in the spring.

The land here is a wilderness now, but it hasn’t always been so. The First Nation people walked this land for thousands of years before white people came for fur and later gold, during the gold rush at the turn of the last century.

A dog team mail service ran between Dawson City, here in the Yukon, and Eagle, Alaska until 1949. Even as late as the 70’s there were cabins along the river, no more than a day’s walk from each other, as “hippies” dropped out and took to the land.

Working with brush axe whilst balanced on branches. Don't try this at home

A few of the old trails have been kept open by trappers or dog mushers, but most have not and now only the rabbits, moose and wolves use them.

Dark things in the woods
The snow turns our world to a pillowy-soft monochrome of greys. We see few bright colours or straight man-made lines once out of our yard. Something as benign as an old red oil can poking out of the snow is momentarily heart stopping. The mind cannot place it. More frightening still is a large, black shape in the woods, and most especially if it is moving.

That’s when you’re glad you have a fierce sled dog, strong as a wolf, to defend you.

Snowshoeing back from a day’s trail clearing yesterday with Homer ahead of me and Neil behind, the light was fading fast and we were exhausted.

Neil forgot to pack the chocolate, (I took it very calmly- “oh noooooo!”) we were hungry, thirsty and cold. Temps were dropping to -30C and we had got drenched with sweat. (It wasn’t all Neil’s fault but the chocolate thing was a disaster.) On the rough trail there was at least an hour’s snow shoeing to go.

Suddenly Homer stopped still and stared. His hackles and tail rose. About 50 yards ahead of him a large, black, furry object swerved into the brush at the side of the trail. A jolt of primal fear ran through me. The shape waited, swaying maliciously. It was precisely the height of a small black bear.

Homer’s tail sunk. He appeared to curl into himself in fear and then dashed back to me for safety.

 He’s not dim and a better idea occurred to him.

“The other human is bigger, and has a chainsaw. Stand behind him.” Off scampered our loyal husky, leaving me to defend myself with a pair of loppers.

The terrifying foe was, in fact, a black fleece jacket I’d left hanging on a willow earlier which was now swaying gently in the breeze.

Homer crept behind us until we reached the fearsome cardigan. Not until I’d actually put it on was he convinced it wasn’t a bear. Or a bear’s cardigan, perhaps, you can never be too sure.

Black bear

Cardigan

He’s not had an easy week. With the snowmachine running we are dividing tasks. I may be out cutting trees down, whilst Neil hauls the wood back to the house. For Homer, it is not a division of labour but a disintegration of the pack and he’s not sure who will emerge as leader.

We both feed him so he hedges his bets, staying with one of us then the other and fretting constantly.

Anxious times, stick with the small female or follow the big male?

Though clearly he’d rather chance his arm on finding the kibble store and feeding himself, than defend either of us in the face of danger.

The Evil Dead
We had our own shock when we spotted the remains of an old cabin back in the woods. There is something horribly spooky about suddenly coming across a man-made construct, just ¼ mile from your “wilderness” home. Particularly if it looks like they filmed The Evil Dead there.

The sod roof of the cabin had collapsed leaving a bundle of logs surrounded by a teddy bear’s picnic (literally) of scattered museum-piece coke cans and Hellman’s mayonnaise jars.

We believe the cabin may have been built in the 40’s or 50’s by a wood cutter, according to records found by a friend. Steam paddle ships used to plough the Yukon River. They’d stop every 30 miles or so to refuel with wood and large areas along the bank were stripped of trees in a typically short-sighted human fashion. As poplar grow back faster than spruce, it is easy to see where from the types of trees present.

Why he chose to live so far from the bank, so secluded from human contact is a mystery I’d rather not contemplate. It is better not to dwell on these things as your mind will soon throw up something cheerful like a homicidal axeman living wild in the woods on squirrels and mayonnaise.

A crack of the ice will become the knock of a blood splattered axe as he approaches to murder us for our condiments. Before you know it, you’ve piled all your ketchup and barbeque sauce on the creek and have barricaded yourself into the cabin.

Yes, it all seems a bit silly now that I write it down. We’ll prize off the planks we’ve nailed across the door and go and retrieve the sauces later.

Obsessive behaviours
Living alone in the woods can send you a bit weird. Fortunately, there’s three of us here and we were all as mad as brushes before we came.

Looking mental after a fight with a willow

Neil is obsessed with our food supplies. He labels jars and cans with their year of purchase so they can be used in the correct order and has a system for circulating goods from their bulk storage sacks into containers for daily use.

I have not been inducted into the workings of the system, and there was once an upsetting incident where I put a bag of oats into the wrong plastic box. So, as I get no particular joy from moving dry goods between different containers, I leave all the fun to him.

I have my own obsession. Stacking wood. You can’t simply put it one log on top of the other. To make the pile even and safe, each log must be go in its right place. I can almost feel where a log needs to go simply by holding it and letting it tell me.

Lovely logs, cuddled up between trees and nestling under roof tin, safe from the elements

Neil cannot. Not even if the log were shouting at him, so he is not allowed to stack the wood. (See our How To on storing wood)

Of course, this guarding of our personal obsessions against each other makes us hideously co-dependant. If something happened to Neil, I would starve wondering why none of the food containers got refilled and what happened to the 2015 peanut butter supply. Neil’s ending would be swifter. He would be crushed under one of his teetering, ugly log piles.

The frozen poo mountain
Still there are worse things that can befall you here, and I thought it might be nice to end on one. It was time to topple the poo mountain this week.

Yes, you read that right. It sounds like a Highland Games speciality, and does involve logs of a sort.

We use a poo stick, not to be confused with “Pooh sticks” so delightfully described in A.A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh stories. This game is rather different.

When you sit down in the outhouse, your ass tends to fall in the same place, and so does the poo, where it freezes in an unpleasant little mountain. Unless you want a nasty surprise one day when you sit down, this mountain must be knocked over occasionally.

When I asked people about how to write a blog, everyone said, put lots of photos in! Get a GoPro and make videos! In the instance I have restrained myself from taking more pictures, and I bet you’re bloody pleased we don’t have a GoPro.

Mad as brushes