Yukon bush life

(Lou, Yukon) We’ve drilled holes in the bottom of our boat. Why not? A few holes in the transom can only improve things. The weather warmed up to -7c yesterday, time to get the power tools and get a few jobs done. The Garmin Fish Finder instructions told us to drill two holes in the boat. It suggested not to do this whilst afloat. Can’t think why? Good job they pointed that out. I was a bit nervous so we spent ages fiddling with the bracket and screws to make sure it was absolutely in the right place before drilling. It wasn’t, so we now have extra holes that we’ll have to fill or spend a lot of time bailing. Why fit a fish finder in March? We’ve heard about ice fishing so thought it might be fun to winch the boat across the river and look for grayling through 10 foot of ice. Let’s see how well this baby works. No, even we’re not that mad. We will use the device in the summer as a depth sounder to stop us hitting gravel bars and tearing chunks out of another $200 propel...

We’ve few ingredients to choose from, so when our friends came to stay last week I thought I might liven things up with a fried oriental squirrel starter. (S ee footnote ) Norm and Aedes live in the bush too so we hoped they’d be OK with it. Unless they had squirrel for lunch, perhaps. Our friends and their fearsome dog Chewie between Norm's legs Turns out I should have boiled up the anuses that I cut out when I skinned them and made an exotic soup. The oriental ‘wings’ went down a storm. Then Aedes informed us that, when working with hunters and elders in the territory, she’s been presented with live warble grubs (larvae of the warble fly that exists in the hides of living caribou) and a delicacy called Bum Soup. Warble fly larvae Bum Soup is made from the anus and lower intestine (and contents) of a moose, all boiled up into a hearty stew. Wow. What will I have to do to impress these folk? Our poor guests helping us move logs. Traditionally, just about ever...