Yukon bush life

Temperatures are down to -12C at night and below zero during the day. The creek is freezing over and ice is beginning to form at the river bank.  With our boat now out of the river, we are cut off from the world maybe until next year. We can’t travel again until the Yukon is frozen and we’ve managed to get a trail either 60 miles south to Dawson or 30 miles north to the old mining road. Until then we are in splendid isolation.  Moose receipts and laundry- all the glamour of our last trip to town And so we made our final boat journeys last week. We did our last supply run to Dawson for this year and, for once, got to town on a weekday that wasn’t a public holiday so all the shops were open! A cause for celebration though we had no time to.  Days are getting shorter and with at least 4 hours of driving once we got out of the boat it was a race against time to get everything done. We were on the river at first light around 8am- it was bastard cold still, at 12 be...

(Lou, Yukon) We’ve been fortunate enough to be involved in a media project for the last couple of weeks, which has involved multiple people toing and froing and even camping at our property. We are unused to seeing so many people in one go and all got a bit dizzy with it. Neil has been stuffing his face with their exotic luxury food, I’ve been too excited to sleep and Homer’s forgotten all his training, who we are and probably his name again.  Me and Homer getting dizzy with it Snacks- brilliant! I won’t say much about who visited at this stage which makes it all sound terribly exciting, like we have had MI6 here listening in on Putin.  Thankfully it wasn’t MI6 as I can’t imagine the British civil service would have brought such nice biscuits.  In fact, the food was so nice we were tempted to empty the squirrel’s winter stashes out from under the tree roots and stuff the holes with KitKats.  Learning the river Aside from snacks, we had the privile...

We are now lowing in earnest like flirtatious lady moose and have progressed from practising indoors with the aid of YouTube videos, like some weird bush karaoke, to bellowing from the porch with the aid of our moose bugle. We have fashioned the bugle in traditional style from birch bark and duct tape and are interspersing our “lonely lady” calls with huffing “I’ve got a girlie here” male calls with the aim of making any wandering bulls think there’s a gorgeous cloven hoofed gal on the porch but some other bastard’s got there before him.  Moose bugle enhances the sound and doesn't make you look stupid at all We are calling morning and evening, from the porch and the river, with the aim of getting a bull right up into the yard and preferably into the hanging rack so we don’t have to move him far if we get him.  Anyone who wants to join in go to the links at the bottom and sing-along-a-sounda-horny-moose with us. We’re also thrashing brush with an old scapula bone to m...

(Lou, Yukon) Our journey home was packed with more firsts than anyone should reasonably be expected to cope with in one day. First time towing the boat over a rocky beach, first time ever launching a boat, first turn of the key on the engine, first time driving a boat up the Yukon alone. First time landing the bloody thing, testing our guns, seeing our property covered in matted brush and willow instead of snow and best of all, first time for us to arrive back at the place we left in the spring with all our things and a ready-made wood pile!  With no place of our own previously, we’ve had to move each year so this is the first autumn we had the joy of coming “home.”  Trailer troubles Things went remarkably well, our only fuck up being reversing the trailer into the river at 90 degrees, forgetting about the Yukon River’s tremendous 7mph current which instantly swept the boat off taking the trailer lights with it.  We made it to our place with...

(Lou) Fireweed not cinders Great news from Ryan, our hunky Dawson City Wild Fire Crew dream (I have no idea what he looks like, by the way.) Our cabin is still not cinders and with more rain forecast it’s likely the nearby forest fire will be out. A friend passed by in his boat and has informed us that the brush, mostly fireweed, is now at chest height all over our property. So the cabin is engulfed in fireweed not flames, which is less of a worry. Though now I’m wondering if we’ll even spot it as we head down the river. Cabin will be out there somewhere Beach landing Some more good news, there is a beach to land our boat. The river was still frozen when we left in April so we had no idea what was sitting under all that ice. I’m not good with landing boats. I get confused about left and right, up and down with the outboard motor. You have to do everything in a reverse-mirror Alice in Wonderland fashion. So I have a tendency to be accelerating at high speed bearing left whe...