Self Isolation - Tips from the bush

Can’t go to work? Not able to see friends or family, or get to the shops? Add in some sub-arctic scenery and you’re living our life. Welcome! So, what do you do when modern life is suddenly upended?

Made this scary-looking chair cover out of caribou hide scraps

How about tanning that caribou hide that’s been sitting there since January? Weather’s warming so you’ll be pleased if you butcher the rest of your meat now and get it in the canner before it thaws.

Spring-time "freezer." Digging a crate of caribou meat out of a snow bank.

Got a pile of logs sitting in the yard? Don’t wait til you need more firewood. Buck and split them now. Make a neat stack for next winter. Write a blog about it!

Remote living. Our house is in the middle of this picture

Most people live in a little house or flat somewhere urban or semi-urban, just like we used to, and so any advice I can give you is just plain fucking weird.

Weird dinners. Caribou tongue

But we are used to being alone. We go weeks without seeing anyone. The river is our only means of transport so during freeze up, when it fills with ice, and break up, when the ice busts and washes out, we can go months without seeing another human being. We are heading towards spring break up now and preparing to spend some length of time alone. Like you, we don’t know how long that will last.

Complete isolation is not a sudden or dramatic change to our daily routine. We rarely get visitors. I like to think that’s because we live so far from the road system, but maybe people just don’t like us. (Here’s a useful tip- occupy your mind with an interesting problem. Ask yourself, “Does everyone hate me?” at the start of every day and you’ll be absorbed in thought until noon!)

Trip to the high country up the Chanindu river

The reality of life here is, we do not have much time on our hands because most things we use we make from scratch or get from source. “What do you do all day?” people ask me. Often, they answer for me, “I suppose you read a lot.” Nope. We get water from the creek. We put in trails, fell trees, haul them home then buck, split and stack the wood.

Getting firewood in deep snow

We handwash laundry, bake bread, make every meal and snack, mend clothes, equipment, machines. We sharpen things, process meat, can stuff, dry stuff, pickle stuff. That’s just the daily chores not the projects or money work.

Fixing stuff with a hacksaw

So, what advice can I give you? How about bulk buying?

Toilet roll. This is all we have left so don't ask

You’ll need about 150 pounds of flour to get two people through a winter. We buy 2 x 50 pound sacks of rice for a full year. A 90 pound husky eats about a 40-pound sack of kibble a month, depending on whether you have moose scraps, so get 12 and you’re sorted for the year. Do that and your living room will look like a warehouse and everyone in your area will hate you for being so selfish.

Do get some flour. Baking takes time.

Getting our sourdough down from above the stove

Mixing flour, baking soda and sourdough

Bake bread in a dutch oven on the wood stove, warm lid separately first to get a more even heat

(Insider tip- never expect your bread to rise then you can be pleasantly surprised if it does!) You’ll do the kneading and knocking it back thing for a week, until you realise why commercial bakers are so successful. Then you’ll just make a squat bannock or fry bread thing, like we do. But that’s ok.

Cutting chamfers for window frames

Have a project. (Quick tip- buy the wrong materials then project will take loads longer than you think.) We are fitting windows into our new cabin. I spent yesterday chainsawing grooves into the framing wood as the 2 x 6 planks I bought were too thick to fit in the gap and hold the window. We are double-glazing so it’s quite fiddly and will add hours to the job.

Once you have the wrong materials for your Pandemic Project, you’ll be able to experience an interesting aspect of bush life. You can’t get any more, so make it work.

Gap at top of window will allow logs to settle

If you want the full bush experience, carry all your materials up and down the stairs 20 times to replicate getting them in and out of trucks and boats then carrying them up a 100’ bank.

(Quick tip- Don’t buy enough nails and only just enough lumber. Then cut the lumber too short a couple of times. Both good exercises in problem solving! Steal the nails from other things and watch your home fall down around you!)  

Homer's project. Guarding his caribou head from ravens

There is one real tip I can offer if you’re at home, bored and feeling lonely. Be kind to yourself. In all our failures and minor successes is an acceptance that we can only do things as best we can. And as well as we want to. There are no “Joneses” for us to keep up with here. The best thing about wilderness living is, if we’re happy with it, whatever it is, then that’s fine. And, as long as you’re not hurting anyone else, that will be fine where you are too.

The view from here. First glimpse of sun in the yard, 25th Feb

That’s not to say I didn’t spend an hour screaming my head off about the windows not fitting. We don’t drift around the bush in a state of faux-Buddhism accepting everything that befalls us with grace and smiling benignly at the trees like fucking cretins. But that’s OK too. The feeling passes. We have a cup of tea and a slice of our rock-solid sourdough bread, with our always too-runny cranberry jam, and realise that we can make it work somehow, or just live with it.

A small victory- fixed our little 340 snow machine! 

When you do not have any of the usual interactions with other humans that change your mood, then you are left with yourself. All the damn time. If you don’t live alone, you’ll have your partner/ family/ flatmates, who are even more annoying, to put up with too. Before you reach for the axe or the kitchen knives just remind yourself that feelings pass. Always.

And that’s what pets are for. To absorb your deepest fears, your darkest secrets and sharpest regrets. To stare back at you blankly, then wander away, lick their genitals and remind you that nothing you think or say is important anyway and it will probably be forgotten by teatime. 

For us, day to day life during the pandemic is much the same as it would be any spring and we are getting ready for break up, for the great lurch from winter to summer. We’ve had record snow falls which may cause a violent one. All that water has to go somewhere and, even today, the flakes were still falling.

Managed to find and uncover the truck in town

We are wondering whether to take our satellite dish down from the riverbank and perhaps leave a tent and some supplies up on the hill in case we are flooded. But any changes here will be minor compared to what is happening in the rest of the world.

Caribou crossing the river

Let's hope some good comes from the pandemic. People may travel less, use video conferencing and pollute less. Maybe some of us got to know our neighbours.

The neighbours. Moose, caribou and ravens

After so much time alone, we might all become a little kinder. More eccentric, perhaps, but that means only that we will be more ourselves.

Freak

When I wrote my last blog, we were helping to organise The Percy DeWolfe Dogsled Race. It was cancelled only 3 days beforehand when, even here in The Yukon, the situation changed rapidly. We realised then that, yes, the virus is reaching even this far out into the world and disrupting our lives.

Dawson City in self isolation. With population a mere 2000, it looks much the same as usual

But unless the planet really is turned upside down, my next blog will be about break up, sometime in May. If it is as violent as I suspect, I will try to film it for you. Hopefully, you won’t still be stuck indoors and we won’t be sitting on the roof trying to catch our possessions as they rush past in a tsunami of ice and water.

The river. Still and silent for now

But whatever happens, there is a wonderful change for us this year. We are not alone. We have been joined by folk all over the world, from India to Italy. There are more people self-isolating than at any time in human history. Welcome to self-isolation, people! We are absolutely delighted to have you.