Yukon bush life

(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...

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...