Yukon bush life

This is our wildest time. Until the river is clear of ice, no one can get in, we can’t get out and we are totally alone in thousands of square miles of wilderness.  Some days we marvel at just how remote and wild it is here. If we walked due north, we would go over the pole and into Russia before we met anyone. And what a trip that would be. Neil even speaks a bit of Russian- “Privyet. Mi iz Kanadey. U vas yest maslo?”(Hello we are from Canada. Do you have any butter?) “Nyet.” “Nu ladno.” (Oh well.) Saxifrage rockery coming back to life If we don’t follow the river, we could go in almost any direction and die before we meet another person or get any shopping. Yesterday we met a grizzly bear and life felt even wilder. Rowdy geese on the river honking away We’ve had a few visitors- the grizzly, wolves, two eagles and one very aggressive squirrel.  You can't see much but that is a wolf out there Homer had a sc...

“Sra Niday” means the sun is shining in our local Hän language. And it really did, for weeks. I don’t know Hän for “How the hell can it be summer already?” or “Jesus Christ, is that a mosquito?”   Things have got out of hand. A warm chinook wind roared through, hot as a hair dryer. The snow is melting, the trails have gone slushy, our meat’s thawing and there are spots opening in the creek. It’s May in March and we are reeling with it. Across river, the cliffs rumble and crack with avalanches.  Snow tunnel by the old cabin Earlier in the month, we had the most astounding March weather. Days bright enough to hurt your eyes and skies so deep you feel you can fall up into them.  Trip to visit a disused communications station in the mountains The nights were ice cold and clear, down to twenty below with a hazy green aurora rippling in a wide arc around the North Pole, brushing the tops of the hills.  Our mo...