True North
I’ve been reluctant to write about my time living in Dawson City, Yukon, for a while now. This isn’t because I didn’t love it, and it isn’t because it wasn’t amazing. It’s more that it was normal to me. It was home. And that is a very hard thing to put into words. So it isn’t until now, on the cusp of a new and very daunting adventure, while living back in Toronto, that I think the timing is right. I will do my best, but I know that I will not capture it all. You’ll miss the light in my eyes when I draw pictures of Dawson in my mind. You’ll be unaware of the wistful tone my voice takes. You’ll lose the longing my body language betrays. It was a place, a feeling, and a community that I know I will not do justice to. Though I know that I will not succeed in imparting the full impact of the Yukon to me, I live with the hope that perhaps I will spark a curiosity in you that will send you there for yourself. So that you too can experience the magic and you too can struggle to describe it. If nothing else, I wish to relive it with you, and keep it always with me.
Yukon’s second largest city, hidden in the mountains.
I guess I should take the magnificent advice of Julie Andrews and start at the very beginning. A very good place to start. (You can take the girl out of the theatre, but you can’t take the musical theatre out of the girl). I was back in Toronto and had been for a while, and was trying to reconcile my deep need for travel and nature with my need for money. It was while speaking with a friend at work that Dawson was first mentioned. Long story short, it sounded incredible, so two weeks later I found myself on a plane to a city (if you can really call it that) that was about as remote as I could think of where I could still work. I landed in Whitehorse, and was immediately taken in by the hospitality of the north, when the woman at the information desk offered me her cabin for the night, to join her dinner with friends, and advice on the best place to catch a ride to Dawson. And the generosity never really stopped. I was overwhelmed and ecstatic, surrounded by expanses of uninhabited mountain, river, and forest. People and nature lived in harmony, not at odds. I knew right away I would love it. And so day two rolled around, and I hitched my way to Dawson with no trouble at all, barely having to wait. I got dropped off in the pouring rain by a miner who had driven 40 minutes out of his way to take me into town so I wouldn’t have to wait for another lift in the rain. This theme of generosity and kindness will become repetitive, so I apologize in advance. My friend’s friend who was living in Dawson at the time told me the best places in town to work, and I walked in to the first one, talked to the owner, and had a job squared away. Next step was somewhere to live. Unsurprisingly for a town of roughly 1200 people, there isn’t much housing for the seasonal workers who only come in for the summer. But I had a tent and was more than happy to live in that, so across the river I went to secure a spot and set up my tent in the campgrounds right by the ferry landing. Now that so much time has passed, the days all seem to blur together. But I know for sure that it was my first night in Dawson that I made my first friend as we stood in the campground, flabbergasted by the sight of a perfectly formed rainbow coming from the mountain in town, where the trees were lit with the gold of a sun that never fully sets, and ended in the Yukon river. The summer continued, and I settled into a routine, though each day had a moment where I would stop and recognize the magnificence of my surroundings. Sometimes it was the view while waiting for the ferry. Other times it was picking wild strawberries with friends while a puppy named Moose who unabashedly loves strawberries ate them out of your bucket if you didn’t pay attention. Or maybe it came when I woke up from a nap next to the river. Or sat on a bench on the hiking trail behind town (aptly named the 9th avenue trail, because the town has only 8 avenues). Or it was hiking to the top of the Midnight Dome at midnight on the summer solstice to have a bonfire and watch the sun not set. Or coming out of the only “club” in town at 2 am into daylight that never disappeared. Sometimes it was the realization that there’s one paved road in town and it ends at the river. Or when I realized that there were no streetlights in town. And that there’s one post office. And two grocery stores. And everyone knows everyone in town. Many times it was when I saw a kindness that is particular to very small towns. Whatever it was, there was something each and every day.
As the summer went on, I got to know the town and its characters. I watched as we made it through day after day of rain. I saw the town brace itself for the onslaught of visitors with the arrival of the Dawson City Music Festival, where I got to be security (a novel concept), and sling beers. I met people just passing through, made friends at work, and became a part of the community of long term tenters. Day to day life felt very normal to me, but it was still amazing. When I look back now, I can pick out the oddities, the things that make for good anecdotes, but at the time, I thought nothing of it. All I knew was that as the summer began to turn towards fall, the berry seasons changed, the light overnight changed slowly and subtly, the weather started to get colder and I needed to make a decision. Stick with my original plan of only staying until the end of August, heading back to Toronto for TIFF, work, and keeping my fingers crossed that I would head out on another adventure, or find a cabin and stay for the winter. So obviously I chose to remain and experience -40 Celsius, and the period of time Dawsonites call freeze up.
Somehow I managed to find a little cabin 4 km from the ferry landing in West Dawson (the community on the west side of the Yukon river, while town is on the east side). I road tripped with some of the girls from work to Whitehorse to load up on supplies for the winter: propane, non-perishable food, axes, and all the candles I could get my hands on. I had everything except my firewood, which despite having ordered, wasn’t showing up. As the temperatures dropped below 0 degrees, and my firewood remained nowhere to be found, the community really stepped up. My neighbour showed up every night with an armful of wood to get me through the night without freezing. The town spread the word. People offered to lend me some of their wood until I got my own. I learnt the need and the meaning of a community. In a place where winters are harsh and dangerous, everyone looks out for each other. No cabin has a lock, because no one would ever begrudge someone entering their cabin if they were in need of shelter and food. I learnt that when the sun doesn’t really come up, it’s incredibly helpful to see people, even if it’s only once a week or so. And two hours before the ferry was being pulled out of the river, and those of us in West Dawson would be cut off from town until the river froze over, wood was delivered to me. In celebration, I lit some candles, turned on my radio, and chopped enough wood for the night. Freeze up had begun, I had a nice warm fire going in my wood stove, and tomorrow I settle in to winter.
Much like the summer, I also fell into somewhat of a routine in the winter. Without running water, electricity, or most modern conveniences, this routine was simple and satisfying. I woke up each day at around 10:30am. Not to an alarm or to the schedule of people. Generally I woke up because the sun had finally begun to rise, I had to pee, and my cabin had gotten cold overnight. After putting on the sweater I had in the bed with me to keep it warm, I would build a big fire to heat my cabin quickly, pop on boots and head to the outhouse, and then return to a warm cabin to start my day. The only item ever on my to do list was to stack and chop wood. I got well acquainted with my axe (so much so that I brought it home to Toronto), the best way to stack wood, the frustration when a stack shifts and collapses, and the joys of feeling superhuman because wood at -20 Celsius splits incredibly easily. I tried different methods of fire building before settling on the bridge and valley method for my stove, though everyone has their own preference. Other than my one essential task of preparing wood, I also kept a fire well tended, and cooked periodically when hunger struck. Most of the time though, I took advantage of the very few hours of good light to work on beading the pair of moccasins I was making. Everyone has a freeze up project, whether it’s learning an instrument or building a shed. Mine was making moccasins. CBC Radio 1 and 2, the only stations I got, became my constant companion throughout the day. Without electricity I couldn’t charge my phone, so I checked it once a day to see if there were any get togethers happening, and then turned it back off. If someone really wanted to get a hold of me, they would just show up at my cabin. At about 3 pm each day, the light would no longer be good enough to bead, so I switch activities for the evening, lighting a bunch of candles and pulling out a book or preparing dinner. With the setting of the sun so early, I also tended to go to sleep early. Candlelight is beautiful and relaxing, but it’s not terribly great for anything other than reading. And so my days passed in a blissful and chosen solitude. I attended a few get togethers, watched the supermoon rise without the distraction of city lights, and lamented the outcome of the US election at a potluck. The days turned into weeks, and I went for walks, learnt to be comfortable at night without a headlamp, and saw more stars than I could even imagine. I saw the northern lights more than once, watching as the sky seemed to dance with light only for me. There were no sounds, no lights, no other people. There was a peace to the stillness. My neighbour stopped by sometimes to check on me, bringing me fresh groceries and meat he had had flown in a helicopter from town, or filling my water at the creek with the best drinking water. We all waited for water to turn to ice. Almost 6 weeks later, it finally froze in a most inconvenient place, making the trek from my cabin to town took almost 2 hours each way. I crossed once, trepidations with each step, simultaneously fascinated and terrified to be walking across a river that was theoretically frozen, but changed from day to day. In fact, the day I crossed, the last 15 meters or so were calf deep in water, resulting in a surge of adrenaline and very wet feet. This meant that the walk back was 2 hours of wet feet in -35 Celsius with a dead headlamp. In the end I lost no toes, but I did have to build a big fire to defrost my ice blocks masquerading as boots enough to get them off my feet. Needless to say, when I needed to cross a few days later, I splurged and split a helicopter with some other West Dawsonites. Those two hours took five minutes, and were incredible!! If you haven’t flown over a vast expanse of nature in a helicopter yet, I highly recommend it.
Crossing a frozen river at noon. Exhilarating and terrifying all at once.
I loved winter. I loved the quiet, the beauty, the camaraderie, the challenge, and the simplicity. But it was time to go home. My sister was due to give birth any day, I was getting antsy having been in one country for so long, and Sophie and I had already begun talking about our next adventure. Sometimes it’s hard to leave something magical behind, but in the end, it is worth it. Dawson was and remains extraordinarily important to me. Never before have I found myself living somewhere I felt I fit so easily. I found a community and inspiration. I found somewhere I could see myself calling home, and that to me is a new phenomenon.
Silent and beautiful.
I hope that you gleaned even a fraction of what the Yukon meant to me, of what my time was like. I hope that you have been inspired to visit, and maybe even join the ranks of Dawsonites who came for a summer and are still there 15 years later. I hope that no matter where we all are, everyone can experience a place that speaks to them as loudly as Dawson City spoke to me. Since my return to Toronto, however, I have also come to realize that Dawson is extremely remote, more remote than I had thought. Now that I have a new nephew (over whom I will unabashedly fawn, becoming an aunt I never pictured myself as), I find the idea of being so remote a little more daunting. So I’m heading out on a new adventure, but this time there is something, or someone, tethering me in a way that is new to me. And so I step out into the unknown, to chart new territory in my life, and I’m just as excited and nervous as I was before my first trip, when I caught that travel bug that has taken me to amazing people and places, some even in my own country it seems. Who knows what the future holds for us, but I do know that I intend to experience it under my own terms. Dawson hasn’t seen the last of me, but the rest of the world lies in wait.
Quiet and peaceful. What’s not to love?
