Yukon bush life

It’s hard to find ways to celebrate special occasions in the bush. You can’t go for a meal or buy some cheap prosecco and get shit faced. It was our wedding anniversary on Saturday. Creek causing big puddles at the river's edge We’d saved 4 cans of beer but what else to do? The best we came up with was finishing the scribed log kennel we are making for our dog. It didn’t promise to be very romantic but suddenly, between the chainsawing and the swearing, a wolf howled from across the valley. Making notches in logs for our ungrateful dog After each howl an echo rang from the hills and hung in the air. He was joined by his friend from the bottom of our ramp, and another on the creek behind us. They were so damn close, we ran over to try to record them, but as soon as I turned the Go-Pro on, they’d stop. It was like playing grandmother’s footsteps. Every time I turned it off and walked back to work, they’d howl, we’d dash back and the...

That’s it. We’re out. Out of the water, out of time and, aside from the internet, out of contact with other humans. We’re cut off until the river is frozen and we can snowmachine to town. Last year we didn’t have trail in until the end of January. Why the hell didn’t we buy more booze? Ice on the hull Two days after I wrote the last blog, a crust of ice formed at the shoreline and crept along the edge of our boat. We pulled the boat out straight away. By the following day, the river was filled with chunks of spinning ice and the eddy where it was moored had become a skating rink. We would have had to chop the hull out with an axe if we’d left it. Neil moving the boat with the rope puller attached to a willow It took two days to get the bloody thing across the beach, up the bank, turned 180 degrees and pulled into its winter resting place with a handheld rope-puller, chain hoist, rollers and skids. Stuck in a hole There are fid...