Yukon bush life

Disappearing water hole Sometimes I find myself thinking, Christ this is hard. When it’s 45 below, and our waterhole has disappeared under glacial ice, and everything we didn’t put upstairs froze solid overnight, and we cannot get warm in the house as no matter how much wood we burn the heat stops 3 feet from the wood stove. It’s times like those when you need to remind yourself just how much worse it could be and go camping. We didn’t purposefully pick the coldest night so far this winter, we just went “Let’s go test the new tent out on Tuesday.” Tuesday was the beginning of a cold snap that’s kept us between 35-45 below for two weeks. Setting off We set off anyway, late in the day with the 40 year-old wall tent and "hippy killer" wood stove. It was a test to see how it would feel if we’d been travelling all day and then had to stop, find two trees the right space apart to hang the tent, clear the ground, cut firewood and camp for the night. ...

(London) At last we have news from Homer, our beloved pet husky! Here he is, looking mighty fine, in the yard of Brian Wilmshurst’s B-Line racing Kennels, just outside Dawson City. He’s howling because he misses us so much, poor dear. Actually, no. Quote, Brian “Homer is great! He fits in well with the rest of the crew. His neighbor, George and him are buds and wrestle frequently. He says he hates you and never wants to see you English pricks again.” Well, not the last bit, but I feel like a parent who collects their child at the school gates for the first time and is delighted to hear they didn’t cry and made new friends but quietly devastated they didn’t miss their doting parent. Or even notice their absence. Shopping at Walmart, Whitehorse, with rental car In a few weeks, we’ll be hauling 12 x 16kg sacks of dog food in and out of shopping carts, trucks and boats to keep our precious husky fed over the winter. That’s almost a quarter tonne of the stuff. Seems like...

We’ve few ingredients to choose from, so when our friends came to stay last week I thought I might liven things up with a fried oriental squirrel starter. (S ee footnote ) Norm and Aedes live in the bush too so we hoped they’d be OK with it. Unless they had squirrel for lunch, perhaps. Our friends and their fearsome dog Chewie between Norm's legs Turns out I should have boiled up the anuses that I cut out when I skinned them and made an exotic soup. The oriental ‘wings’ went down a storm. Then Aedes informed us that, when working with hunters and elders in the territory, she’s been presented with live warble grubs (larvae of the warble fly that exists in the hides of living caribou) and a delicacy called Bum Soup. Warble fly larvae Bum Soup is made from the anus and lower intestine (and contents) of a moose, all boiled up into a hearty stew. Wow. What will I have to do to impress these folk? Our poor guests helping us move logs. Traditionally, just about ever...