Yukon bush life

Our cache by moonlight, house behind I started the New Year annoyed at wolves. We’ve spent days working on a trail upriver to Dawson and marking it with wooden stakes in case it blows in with snow. Stakes on the back of the machine The bloody wolves have pulled most of our stakes out and chewed them up. God knows why, perhaps they’re using them as tooth picks. Then they really started fucking with me. The Forty Mile caribou herd are returning from their winter vacation. All 70,000 are plodding back just now, over the hills, down the river and sometimes right through our yard. America’s gone mental with random border policies so will they even get back into Alaska, I wonder? Caribou crossing the trail Maybe we’ll see them plodding back through the yard again, clutching their green cards in their little immigrant hooves and wandering what the fuck happened. With the caribou come wolves. Their howling is so beautifully wild and lonesome...

Caribou on the river in front of our house You get used to the wilderness. It begins to feel familiar, even a bit suburban and then wolves attack a caribou at the edge of your yard and you remember just how wild it is. We took the snowmachine for a swim in the Yukon that same day, so have been thoroughly shaken out of our complacency. Ice pressure ridge up river from us I nipped out for a pee in the evening and heard a commotion. When the temperature drops to 30 below, sounds distort. They bounce off the frozen surfaces and become brittle and hollow. It was pitch black. Neil came out and we both heard a volley of crashes and cracks very, very close. We are ever so brave and so ran inside in a panic, grabbed the guns and went up to our raised back porch, where we would be safe from the intruder. Been cold recently Something was thrashing the willows right at the edge of the yard. It was grunting and snorting. The creature was big, very big- so most li...