Yukon bush life

(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...

Neil's version of events: Winter 2011, Camberwell south London I didn’t pay attention when I picked Louise up from Heathrow. She'd just come back from her annual Alaskan pilgrimage (she'd been visiting regularly since before we met).  I was happy for her to go on her own. The frozen North wasn't my thing. I was more the large pilsener and bratwurst kind of traveller.  When she mentioned some crazy offer to move to a homestead in the Alaskan wilderness it didn’t quite register. I was in the middle of organising a conference at BSkyB, grappling to get 30 broadband lines installed at a hotel within 72 hours. Traveller's delight - bratwurst Louise and I met whilst rehearsing for a fringe theatre play. I was living in a dingy bedsit in Wimbledon and life wasn’t going anywhere. I'd made an effort to inject some sparkle by taking up acting.  We hit it off (well, we fell in love) and I moved into her council flat in Brixton. A few years later we bou...

Lou's version of events: Winter 2011 Camberwell, South London My acting headshot We left London and moved to Alaska because I called Neil a moron.  Neil and I were living in (then) cheap and dowdy Camberwell. Neil had a job at BSkyB, I was working, or often not working, as an actor. We had a lopsided cat (a stroke victim), no kids.  Life was fine but dull. Not much to complain about, though that never stopped me.  The far north I had a passion for the far north and would save all year to spend a couple of weeks in Alaska on dogsledding trips. Neil had a passion for nice food, pubs and comfort so I travelled alone.  On holiday in Alaska Cabin sitting Whilst mushing in the Alaskan bush I met a guy, let’s call him Hank, who needed a house-sitter for his remote, off-road homestead and 50-some sled dogs. Six weeks alone in the wilderness!  I cleared the decks of acting jobs (cancelled one day's role play for a bank, I was in high demand...

Our cabin on the Yukon Neil and Lou’s story We live very remote, in a log cabin in the sub Arctic Yukon bush. We are off the road system, off the electricity grid (and off our heads). We came to the Yukon in 2012 from inner city London, two urban middle-aged professionals with not much in the way of survival skills. I worked as an actor, Neil was a manager at BSkyB. We'd never used a chainsaw, ridden a snowmachine, driven a boat, got firewood, fished, hunted, pickled... we'd never even made jam but were pretty hot with internal communications plans and line learning. I always wanted to live in the Alaskan wilderness, Neil didn’t. In fact, far from it.  Alaska! I'd watched a Disney film called The Wilderness Family as a small child growing up in Plymouth and fell in love with the freedom and excitement that Alaska seemed to offer. I later found out the film was made in Colorado and set in Canada, so this has all been based on a mistake. Neil grew...