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...

What’s the difference between an adventure and emergency? I’d say, if no one gets hurt you’ve had an adventure and if no equipment gets damaged either, then you’ve had a damned good one. With only a very slightly dented ski arm and a sprained wrist, I’d say we’ve just had a pretty, damned good adventure. And a reminder about complacency. Our broken down machine. Still there We have a broken down snow machine at our pals’ place about 50 miles away. “We’ll head down Wednesday, throw it on the sled, and tow it home,” we told them by email. “Won’t need any help. We’ll just say hi and be on our way,” we wrote, with the stupendous confidence of total idiots.   Already dipped our toes in the creek that week The trail’s good, what could go wrong, we thought? Again (see my last blog). Didn’t bother packing much of our emergency gear as we wanted an empty sled, left the dog on his chain with no extra food and set off with a flask of coffee an...