Yukon bush life

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...

(Lou, Yukon) The emotional rollercoaster we’ve been riding on our broken down snowmachine took a couple of stomach-churning turns this week. We fixed our machine! All by ourselves! (With only a little bit of help from just about everyone in a hundred mile radius.) Then we managed to break it again before we got it running! Superb. How did we manage this amazing feat? We went to town last week on a borrowed Skidoo to collect our new snowmachine, a 1993 Polaris 340 (or Piccolo as we’ve named him.) The new part we needed to fix our machine, a coupler, was there at the PO (along with a very welcome parcel of gin and chocolate.) We waited for it get above -30 before going to fit the coupler as our disabled machine was still two miles away out on the trail. It didn’t. We went anyway as we wanted to return the Skidoo our Alaskan pals had lent us. The new coupler fitted beautifully. We got her running but she just wasn’t happy, smoking and backfiring, now what? Ah, very si...

(Lou, Yukon) You know how whenever you do a home improvement job there is always some bit you can’t be bothered to do? Some little bit of trim, or a corner that needs painting?  Or a roof that needs putting on.  We got as far as putting the roof on our resurrected cache then had to stop because Neil hurt his back. But with snowy clouds darkening the skies, we had to get it finished, bad back or not. Health and safety is a serious challenge and works in inverse proportion to temperature and time. So we start with the best intentions (not using a chainsaw when off the ground, one of us always holding our rickety handmade ladders etc.) then as our hands get colder and frustrations build, we progress in an increasingly stupid manner until the job is finished or one of us is injured.  Not using the chainsaw on the swaying platform lasted for as long as it took me to look at the log that needed a corner notched into it and then look at the hand saw. Keeping both fe...