Yukon bush life

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...

(Yukon) Snow! It still makes me gasp. Those first few flakes of the season drifting in the beam of my headlamp. Snow in the boat Never mind we were planning to go to town the next day, never mind we have no chains or winter tires for the truck, never mind it’s 7am, pitch black and Neil is fast asleep, “Neil! Guess what?” He couldn’t. “Snow!” Neil can stand before the most wondrous sights nature has to offer and say “Oh that’s nice, shall we have a biscuit?” but even Neil said, dreamily, “Oh… snow!” Snow in the washing   Will we still feel that flutter of excitement after 10 years here, I wonder? The year I don’t wake up and gasp at the first snow is the year we up sticks and shift to Thailand. We’ll be done with the Yukon. This time last fall I remember temps going down to -20c. The river was bumping with ice chunks and we had the boat safely out. We’ve been blessed with a few weeks of extra boat travel this fall. We’ve ...

(Yukon) You can pay a lot to de-stress yourself in a wilderness retreat with no internet, no mobile phone signal and no easy way in or out. Or you can just come here and give us 50 bucks. Trying to fix the world wide web We are still without the internet but with close relatives abroad, tax problems to sort out and tenants to manage we aren’t sitting around eating lentils, meditating and enjoying the luxury. Yellow souwester weather We’ve made one trip to town in lashing rain and fog to get a new modem, which didn’t work, and so will set off tomorrow with the satellite dish, tria arm and 100’ of cables to be tested by Bob, the internet guy. Hair-raising drive on the Top of the World highway Life without Facebook or Instagram means we have got on with stuff, which is a plus. Neil has gone mad for berry picking and jam making. I can barely tear him away from the cranberry bushes to help with our home improvement projects. Mashing berries. I...