WINDING DOWN IN THE YUKON

POST#14
As I begin to write this final blog from the Yukon, and with the temperature a mild minus 35, it's time to take a moment to reflect on the time spent here. This past week the temperature finally made it up into the minus 20's and normally that would have felt like a summer day in comparison to what we've been through. But with the milder temperature, along came the winds howling from the north down the valley created by the mighty Yukon river. When that happens it can feel even colder than when the temperatures are lower, due to the added wind chill factor, which makes the wind feel like thousands of little sharp needles hitting any exposed skin. To be out in this type of weather without being covered up is just inviting frost bite.
As it so happened I had a dinner invite across the river in West Dawson during this windy period, and I was very glad to get across and into the protection of the trees on the other side. It would take much worse weather than that, to turn down an evening with good food and great conversation. The return journey home in the dark was something else again. Even though the wind had subsided substantially, its effects were left in the form of huge snow drifts across the now, hard to make out trail. More than once I went from a hard packed surface straight into snow up to my thighs. "Oops, I guess we'll have to look harder to get back on the right trail." And even though I knew that the river was frozen solid by this point in the season, there still is a small underlying uneasyness, thinking that you may find the one spot that isn't frozen, and end up under the ice. Of course that never happened and soon I was back in town and heading home to tell Otto the dog about my adventure. Of course with new dog smells now on me from my visit to West Dawson, he was thinking that yet again, I had been cheating on him.
It's been a week of socializing trying to take the opportunity to catch up and visit with so many people, and of course it's never enough time, and everyone has plenty to do, with the exception of me, so it has been difficult to see everyone that I had hoped to see. I guess that only means that I will have to make another journey up this way in the future, in order to do that. Maybe a summer visit will be on the cards in the future.
It hasn't been all happy times up here though. Many Dawsonites have died since I have been here, and it seems to have been the winter of funerals. But as sad as that is for everyone involved, it does help us that are left living to be even more thankful than before at just how lucky we all are to have the opportunity to spend one more day. Yes we all make plans for the future, and hopefully for most of us, the plans will come to fruition, but all any of us really have is the present moment, and it's good to be reminded of that now and again, so that we can savour each one.
Yesterday, an anniversary of sorts arrived. My last day working at my last job was on January 27th, 2009. I can remember mentioning to my friend Ted, that I thought at the time, that it might be good to take a year off and see how that went. Well here I am 3 years later wondering where the time has gone. Without a regular income I have been living an even simpler life than I have in the past, but I have also come to appreciate things more, I think. I can't say when I will be working again for someone, and maybe that will never happen, but the journey to find that out is the most important thing as far as I am concerned. I was reading a quote the other day, by Henry David Thoreau, in which he stated, "My greatest skill has been to want little", and I have to say that it would be the same for me. And the older I become it seems, the simpler I want to live.
So this Monday, my friend Glenda returns to Dawson and Otto and I will head out to greet her at the airport upon her arrival. And I am pretty sure, that when Glenda and Otto's eyes meet, I will instantly become chopped liver. Still I hope I've made a good enough impression on Otto, so that he remembers me at some point in the future. Once Glenda is back to work poor old Otto will be having to get up earlier than he has been in the past month, and maybe for a few days after I leave he will be thinking that he had it pretty good with this housesitting guy.
I'll be finishing off my time back at Bear Creek where this current adventure began, and driving to Whitehorse on Feb. 1st enroute to Orcas island. Another stockpile of memories can be added to the ever expanding file of them in my brain, and with any luck I'll be back again in the Yukon at some future date. It has a way of drawing you back for some reason.
So it's on to "tropical" Orcas to settle back in with my cat friends Oscar and Felix, and I am looking forward to the warmer climate.
Until then,
Appreciate the moment.
Paul
The Thoughtful Wanderer