Wolf Serenade

It’s hard to find ways to celebrate special occasions in the bush. You can’t go for a meal or buy some cheap prosecco and get shit faced. It was our wedding anniversary on Saturday.

Creek causing big puddles at the river's edge

We’d saved 4 cans of beer but what else to do? The best we came up with was finishing the scribed log kennel we are making for our dog. It didn’t promise to be very romantic but suddenly, between the chainsawing and the swearing, a wolf howled from across the valley.

Making notches in logs for our ungrateful dog

After each howl an echo rang from the hills and hung in the air. He was joined by his friend from the bottom of our ramp, and another on the creek behind us. They were so damn close, we ran over to try to record them, but as soon as I turned the Go-Pro on, they’d stop.

It was like playing grandmother’s footsteps. Every time I turned it off and walked back to work, they’d howl, we’d dash back and they’d stop again. Bastards. We ignored them in the end and went back to sawing logs until this-

This wolf was so close, my hair stood on end. It is the most terrifying and magical anniversary we’ll ever have, I’m sure. “How long have we been married,” I asked Neil, “Three years?”

“Six” he reminded me. I’m not very good with dates but I recovered quickly-

“I knew that. Anyhow it’s flown by. What’s six then? Paper? Wood? Asbestos? We’ve got all of that.”

It was wolf, and I’ll never forget it.

Tracks on our ramp

There were three probable reasons for their behaviour-

One, most likely, an anniversary serenade especially for me and Neil.

Two, possibly, they got a caribou across the creek and were calling the pack in. We saw ravens going to and fro, which will indicate a kill and found caribou tracks on the creek later.

Caribou on the river a couple of weeks ago

Three, the reason we told our dog, they came to get him. The day before, Homer had found a wolf kill and emerged from the woods, jubilant with a caribou leg. I wasn’t best pleased as we’ve just wormed him.

The wolves weren’t either and must have followed his track. That’ll teach him to go tea-leafing caribou legs that don’t belong to him. He was actually trembling Scooby Do-style at one point, poor thing.

Getting as close as he can to Mr Neil who is in the outhouse

There is worse to come for him. We’ve finished his house. Homer hates kennels, but we’ve got a sneaky plan. We’re going to re-construct it, log by log around him over the next few weeks and hope he doesn’t notice.

"You WILL go in."

We’ll finish it off with a traditional sod roof, to camouflage it.

Not as dumb as he looks

We built the kennel, not just to annoy Homer but to practise log scribing and I’m delighted to say our joints did actually get tighter and better. We got quite into using the scribe and almost built him a tower.

Homer blows a big rasberry at our creation

We’ve also started to insulate our floor. The house has very little insulation and the novelty of burning my fingers on the tea spoon because it’s 30 below indoors in the morning wore off this winter.

Weather on it's way up river

We insulated the roof this fall, and have started on the floor. In both cases we’ve worked below or on top of the existing structure and have laid the insulation on in a kind of ugly and lazy fashion so typical of Neil and me. However, I’m congratulating us on our accidental genius. By the time we’ve finished, we will have significantly reduced the internal space, so it’s a win-win. Less air to heat and less work to do. We could almost have planned it that way.

We’re getting better at this stuff, and would be able to work faster now if we didn’t continually lose every bloody tool. I bought a spare, luminous yellow tape measure because we lost the other one so frequently but we manage to lose both. With everything piled in one half of the house, even if I could see the bloody thing, I couldn’t always get to it. It got so frustrating we stopped for a coffee but quickly lost that too.

Cabin chaos. Neil's back there somewhere looking for the hammer

Work has stopped until it’s warm enough to remove the woodstove to work on the joists. We’re still going below freezing at night. The break is a blessed relief.

Homer finds a spot for a kip

So currently, we have a raised kitchen. It looks like a design feature and I think it’s rather smart.

Our trail now runs through a lake

The river has still not broken up, though it looks imminent. The ice is low, grey and crumbly-looking and there are dirty puddles of water along the edges.

We crossed a week ago, to try to hike up a ridge towards the Tintina Trench (see footnote). This time of year can be good for hiking as the vegetation is low, however the snow was still too deep.

The area had burned in a forest fire and was a tangle of fallen dead trees with willows and dwarf birch woven together as tight as a basket above them.

It was a real fight to make any head way, but luckily we’re Brits and we brought a true British spirit to the challenge.

We stopped for cups of tea from our flask and moaned about the snow being too deep and having wet feet and how steep it was. We reached an outcrop over a gorge eventually and heard the melancholy whistle of our first varied thrush as a pair of hawks soared below us.

That stopped us moaning for a bit. We got nowhere near the Tintina Trench and as we limped back down the river changed, almost before our eyes.

The snow had melted from the surface and we could see dark blue-black ice with the thick white pans and long fracture lines from when it froze in the fall. We drove back through deep puddles knowing that would be our last journey across river until we put the boat in.

Saxifrage

First mountain crocus on south facing slope

No one has been by in over a month, and now our internet is playing up. The world feels very distant. The long days, I don’t know how long but it’s light when I get up and go to bed, are bringing a lovely lazy quality to life.

Taking a cooler of blood and a bucket of bones to empty onto the river, such is life here

There is no rush. It won’t be dark at 4 and we can take all day on stuff if we want to. We’re battening down a few things for break up, but the river is so low I can’t see how it can possibly flood.

Best tie off the boat

Everyone’s told us it never floods here. However I don’t want to find myself rushing towards the Bering Sea in my pyjamas between huge chunks of ice thinking, “Everyone was wrong about that, then,” so we are making a few preparations. We’ve left a few essential tools, a sleeping bag and a tarp up on the hill as a just in case.

Reversing snowmachine into the old cabin for storage. We chainsawed a big hole in the cabin wall in the autumn

By the next time I write this blog, the river ice will have gone out. Hopefully none of us will have gone with it. Our creek is still frozen and glaciated in most places, but water is rushing out at the mouth and it rained today. It cannot hold much longer.

Creek still glaciated

Homer will be in his house, or at least the next couple of rounds. And if he balks, we have a very authentic recording of a big bad wolf to scare him into it.

"I'd rather sleep on this here axe than any house you can build me."

Last night, between my writing and publishing this blog, the wolves came back. They chased a moose behind the house, within about 10 feet of us. We heard it grunting and rushing through the snow, but were too slow out the door to see it. And we got within spitting distance of this beautiful animal on the creek-

So despite our triumph with the kennel (see the photographic evidence above!), Homer is temporarily relocated to his pen at night for his own safety, with a stern lecture on pilfering.  

Another extremely rare moment captured on film

Footnote: The Tintina Trench is a large valley that extends through the Yukon caused by a fault line. It looks very close on the map but I can assure you it’s bloody miles away.