New plates.

I thought I was going to have to relinquish my $85 hologram BC drivers licence (I JUST had it renewed) for a $20 laminated Yukon licence to insure my car up here. Nope.

It wasn't nearly as difficult as most things seem to be in the Yukon. Some faxing of documents was required. And I did have to get a mechanical inspection, but that's just because my car is pushing 21.

I won't tell you how cheap it is to insure a vehicle up here.

We're almost real Yukoners.

Not something you see on wine bottles in too many other places.

Dream fulfilled

It snowed. A lot.

It snowed so much the power went out leaving me no choice but to leave my homework and go outside.

I put on my skis and headed down to the lake fulfilling a life long dream of mine. Cross country skiing right from my back door.

snowy lake

snowy logcabin

snowy poplar trees

Good People

The other night we were invited to dinner by our neighbours who also act as our landlords. We prepared ourselves for an evening of grown-up conversation and adult manners. We were ill prepared.

It was one of those dinner parties where a minute doesn't go by without a tearful laugh. Where age doesn't matter and spirit counts for everything.

A dinner party where you wonder how such big, intricate flavour can make its way into such a tiny appetizer. Where the moose meat pot roast melts in your mouth and everytime you pick up your wine glass it seems to have replenished itself.

A dinner party where the more animated rise and begin reciting Robert Service poems and everyone struggles with the last line of The Creation of Sam McGee. Where suddenly there's a harmonica in the room and everyone joins in a round of 'Don't Cry for me Argentina'.

Personal stories and accounts of the Yukon were shared (we even have a few of our own now) and everyone reminisces about when you first showed up to view the cabin and they knew that you were good poeple. The kind of dinner party that now has you anxiously awaiting the new real estate guide.

The dinner party didn't end until we ended up on the ice rink our neighbours had been creating on the lake. They had done a very good job in making it slick and we had all drank a little too much wine. There were a couple of falls and we called it a night. The dinner party ended at 3:15 am.

When we moved up here I braced myself for a life of isolation and exclusion. Never could I have imagined that we would fall into the company of such wonderful characters. The more familiar we become with the Yukon the more I am amazed at the pockets of warmth and colour we find in such a cold climate.

This isn't our dog. But he sure likes it in our cabin. When it's time for him and his owners to go home he pretends he's sleeping.

Sensory Overload

Lastnight we had some seasoned Yukon friends over to listen to the strange sounds the frozen lake has been making. Of course we got out on the lake and nothing happened. We had a gander at the stars and our friends left looking a little more concerned about our mental capability of handling a Yukon winter.

An hour later we went back down and things got out of hand. The lake started moaning and cracking and cooing, the sounds travelling all the way up and all the way down the lake. I mean strange unearthly sounds. Sounds I've never heard before. Like the sound of an owl cooing through some strange megaphone travelling over ice. Then the northern lights show started and it was pulsing green, waving across the sky and it was all just too much foriegn stimuli. Jay was running back and forth between the lake and the cabin with his mini disc recorder until 4am.

Sadly I didn't catch any of this on film, but this is what the sound looks like on a computer.

sounds of the lake

It's really winter here now.

Walking on the lake.

Apparently we're very lucky this year. The lake has frozen over flat. Most years it freezes chunky.

It's warming up though. Chunks could still come.

Today we're happy it's like glass.

Yes, this is ice on the INSIDE of the cabin.

I've always known that Jay walks on water.

Minutes after this photo was taken a school of fish swam right underneath me. UNDERNEATH ME!

Safe?

Chunky lake.

The lake froze and then it got warm and windy and this happened...

If you can imagine, the sound it made was like the most delicate wind chimes...

Give a dog a bone?

Or, if you're in the Yukon, a moose leg.

Bushed

bushed/adj. 1 (predic.) informal tired out. 2 forested; wooded 3 Cdn informal (of a person) a living in the bush. b crazy; insane (due to isolation) 4 Austral. & NZ informal lost or confused.

The Canadian Oxford Dictionary's definition of 'bushed'.

The prints of one dog walking.