Curse of the bull moose

The Yukon River is usually full of silt, so much so, it brushes the shore and slips past the boat with a faint hiss. As winter approaches the water clears to thick, jade green.

The glaciers in the great mountains of British Columbia begin to re-freeze and no longer pour their flow of mud and ground rock into the valleys.

Homer listening to a lone wolf howling across river

The river is now clearer, and shallower, than I’ve ever seen it. Incredibly, there is no ice at the shore and we can gaze right down onto the muddy pebbles a few feet below. But still we can’t catch one damn fish.

Dead vole for bait. Bit optimistic

“There are no grayling, there can’t be!” Neil was convinced until a family of otters moved in this week. Unless they brought pizza from Dawson, they must be living off something.

Otter tracks

I patrol at dawn and dusk with the .22, hoping to shoot a grouse whilst our ‘gun dog’ directs me to every squirrel with a diligence bordering on mania.

Chicken (as they are called here) feed at twilight, just as the owls come off the night shift and before the falcons start their brutal work by day.

There is not one rabbit track anywhere nearby. Snowshoe hare have a boom and bust cycle that spans 8-11 years. There were plenty last winter but they’ve gone out of business and we’re into a rabbit recession. I blame Trump and his trade tariffs. Can that man cause any more chaos in the world?

Got plenty of voles in our bucket traps to snack on

So we have no fresh meat, but we canned enough moose last year (nearly 200 jars) that we decided not to hunt one.

There is a traditional Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in belief (excuse me for summarizing badly) that if an animal offers itself to you, you must take it or it will be offended and you will not be given the chance to hunt one again. Is this the cause of our hunting and fishing failures?

Here is the moose we offended.

We refused this beautiful fellow who stood across river from us for maybe 20 minutes, waiting. I fear he will not be back unless we can make amends somehow.

Our building work goes little better than our harvesting. Half-frozen snow, slippery logs, working at height and chainsawing is a bunch of things I prefer to experience one at a time, not in combination. We are often chased indoors by swirling snow and sleet.

We have both our purlin logs up, which will support the roof. In theory. Ours have managed to be not quite in the right place. They will either sit some way below the rafters, supporting thin air, or poke up too high.

Winching up a purlin log

Fuck it, doesn't quite fit

The scribing of the gable ends around the purlins is tricky and I’m cutting the notches by guesswork now.

It can get frustrating but the fun of creating something useful from local, natural, renewable materials and the sheer joy of working with one’s spouse keeps us going.

Kind of. Luckily, I’ve managed not to “accidentally” drop the 8lb maul axe on Neil’s head from the roof and he has managed not to “accidentally” take the ladder down whilst I’m working at the gables, and then forget about me all night so we’ve shown some restraint.

The $20 Timber Tuff Lumber Cutter we got on eBay worked surprisingly well. We trimmed our log ends and cut the slots for our window splines perfectly.

It’s only failing was that it broke after two days and so I will have to do the most difficult cut of the whole project (the angled gable tops) freehand.

Cutting window spline slots freehand with a piece of wood as a guide

Not bad...

If you’re thinking of buying one, you need to drill holes through your chainsaw bar and attach it with the bolts, not use the clamping screws as we did. The pressure will bust it.

The post sticking up in the air is a story pole. 2 strings attached to it mark the line of the roof, down to the walls.

We don’t have the means to drill through our bar but I am going to order another Timber Tuff. When it arrives I will stand outside the Post Office in Dawson waiving my chainsaw and ten bucks til I find someone with a machine drill (or I get arrested). I think it will be just dandy then.

We made our final boat trip to town last week on the only cold day of the year so far. It was -15C in the morning. We have not gone below -5C on any other day yet. We had to go in then and it immediately warmed up in the afternoon.

Bundled into our full winter gear, chemical handwarmers stuffed into our mitts, we found ourselves crunching and swishing through pans of slush ice. The first and only ice we’ve seen in the river.

Bad timing or the curse of a spurned bull moose?

Taken by Lou at Sister Island -check out her Facebook page-

https://www.facebook.com/SisterIslandyukon/

At one bend, we met a fleet of standing waves 4 foot high. As the river gets shallower it seems to get more turbulent, maybe because it now thumps over rocks and holes on the bed.

Ice building on the side of the boat- another of Lou's pics

I have no photo of the swell as I was clinging to the gunwales with both hands and wondering just how buoyant my little life vest would be against the multiple layers of wool and down.

But our ice-breaking, wave-riding journey was fun, of sorts. Our mate Lou at Sister Island gave us a chicken for Christmas, a real one not one of the elusive spruce chickens, and some homemade rhubarb gin. I would have happily surfed in at 30 below, just for booze.

Maybe our vengeful bull has let us off the hook. And so much for silly superstitions, I thought.

Trying to prod the heavy purlin log up and on with a pole. Didn't work. Much swearing.

We’ve got wonderful friends and our building rises slowly but surely. We even remembered to put blocks between the roofing tin so it doesn’t freeze together into an impenetrable lump. Funnily enough it didn’t seem like we had the 15 sheets we ordered.

Last night, I went back to the pile to double check. We don’t. Somehow we left the lumber yard 3 sheets shorts. We cannot now cover our building to keep the winter snows out.

We’ve pulled our boat out of the river and our truck is snowed in anyway. So, without an extremely awkward trip by snowmachine back to the lumber yard some 45 miles away this winter, and an impossible journey back with 3’ x 12’ tin sheets balanced on a 2’ x 8’ sled, we will not even be able to defend the building against the spring rains and snow melt.

Gathering moss for chinking before it freezes. Bit pointless with no roof

I spent sometime with my head on the table last night moaning, and wondering just how much the truth exists behind traditional beliefs.

I can’t give much of a hint as to my next blog. I’d expect to be writing about ice forming by now and frosts that leave the trees ghostly white. 

Ice sliding off the old cabin roof into clawed curls

Or moaning about having to work on the new cabin at sub-zero temps, but it is still wet and warm (-3C this morning). And I might just burn the bloody thing down now anyway.

Thanks for the pics too, Lou!