yukon walkin'

About 10 km outside Whitehorse City Limits. Down there are the 'burbs.

The first time I entered the Yukon, I was walkin'.

I hiked the Chilkoot trail, following the footsteps of the Klondike prospectors up a valley from Skagway, Alaska, and over a steep pass called "The Golden Staircase":


At the top of this climb a small cabin is perched on the ridge. Falling steeply behind you is the United States, and the gentle glacial valley sloping down ahead is Canada and the Yukon. A Canadian Flag flew on the cabin, and a park ranger sat out on the porch whittling a stick. "Welcome to Canada", she smiled, and kept on whittlin'. No ID required on this border crossing.


It was the proudest entry I ever made into this country, and it was love at first sight with the Yukon. At the end of my two-week visit, I flew home to Vancouver and quit my job and moved up here soon after.

Maybe it's because of my means of entry into the Yukon, but one of the biggest attractions of this place to me is the walkin'. Unlike the cliffs and dense rainforest of the West Coast, the mountains are low and worn, and there is very little undergrowth. You can literally head off in a direction and walk straight, for as long as you want. Pick a mountain and walk to it and climb to the top - easy as that.

I also love that there is plenty of wildlife up here. From elk to bison to grizzlies to wolverines to caribou to wolves, coyote, lynx, martens, moose and more. And you see this stuff fairly often (and their tracks n' shit even more often).

Walking up here is like swimming in the ocean down south. You're completely immersed in your surroundings, because you need to be, because there's a whole lot of animal action taking place around you. And, like swimming down south, you're pretty safe if you use some common sense.

Among other things, I'm going to be house- and dog-sitting for the next month on an acreage just north of Whitehorse. The dog owner is an ex-olympic biathlete, so I know the dogs are going to be fit, which means I'm gonna be walkin' - and I can't wait.

nothing is true

Oystercatchers got funny beaks and bright red eyes!

Strange weather today - everything was still and heavy and silky-grey. The sky felt like a big blanket draped over the horizons and drooped down low overhead. I think it must be low pressure or high pressure in the air or something. I wonder if some weather is due to come in.

Even the Oystercatchers, which are famously shy, didn't bother flying away and sat on the rocks, staring at me lazily as I walked by. The river otter, seal and sea lion all swam very close to shore tonight - as did I.

For my entire childhood, all I drew were animals from Robert Bateman books or wildlife encyclopedias. I feel like I'm going back there again for some reason. I wonder if I'm unlearning all the art I learned. That would be fantastic. I'd love to start back again with children's scribbles and make it up all over again.

a few leaves go a long way

Just finished this painting. This is the kind of delicacy I was looking for in these "Spring Bud" paintings I've been working on. The trick was to change my mindset. I had to treat every little piece with lots of attention, and put down each line and each brushstroke very carefully. If I get big and spontaneous, it doesn't look as soft and light.

I did a few other things very differently than I usually do, as well. Lots of learning.

Sometimes I hate that paintings are always such a struggle for me. But maybe that's a good thing - I think I'm always pushing the edge of what I'm comfortable with. I never know what I'm going to end up with. It's always a bit scary-feeling, because I can spend a lot of time on a painting and the wrong move (with watercolour) will destroy it. I have to ride the line between small methodical steps, and bigger instinctual decisions.

Goddamn, it's addictive!

Here's a bigger pic.

now and then

Sloppy ocean at sunset last night. I was standing out in the splashes with my pants rolled up when I noticed an immature bald eagle hovered right over me, wings outstretched, looking out to sea. It was really low, and stayed there for a long time. Low enough for me to notice his eyes, and the way his long feathers were stretched out like fingers. Long enough for it to feel like a powerful good omen. Thanks, eagle.

Today is another gorgeous bright spring day. Bugs are hovering over the salal like little faeries. My window is open. A raven is croaking in the far distance. Big dopey bumblebees are bumping around outside the window, looking for a good place to make a summer home.

I'm headed north to the Yukon in four days. It's hard to imagine it could be any better than this, but I know it will be beautiful.

hot mammal party 2011

morning ferry ride

I did some mulching today for The Old Farmer on the Other Side of the Island. It was supposed to be a two-hour job, picking up the branches that fell in storms over the winter. But Old Farmer felled two giant trees yesterday, so I have to go back and mulch all the branches from those trees as well.

Imagine packing a large bedroom floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall with huge branches, twigs and bark. Then imagine feeding each individual branch through a flowerpot-sized hole lined with ultra-loud dull metal blades that spin and squeal and rip and bang and whine. It kinda sucks. But it's nice to be outside, I guess.

I went for a sunset skinny-dip tonight, and after I crawled out of the water I heard a long low belching sound around the edge of the cove. I thought it had to be the sea lions, so I put my clothes on and snuck quietly around the rocks to check it out.

I didn't see anything, but the water at the head of the cove was really pushing around in the tide. That kind of current means a lot of nutrients moving, which means lots of plankton, which means lots of fish. You could just feel the life underneath.

So I waited a few minutes, and a sealion surfaced. Then another. Then a mass of them approached from further down the coast. In the next half hour I saw a total of at least a dozen sea lions! Probably more. They were surfacing at high speeds, smashing out of the water together and spreading their fins, then pounding back down again with a huge splash. Some would come up some slowly and give out ultra-low belching groans. I think there must have been a lot of fish-eating, but it felt like some kind of mating action was happening too.

Solo sea lions were passing closer to shore, right in front of me, watching the big hubbub from a distance. The real party was about 60m offshore - I think there was between three and seven sealions out there. Then another raucous sealion party approached and made several loud farty noises at the first party as they passed by. It was quite the scene.

I climbed the bank to head home and looked back at the darkening sea. The whole coastline was pockmarked with the heads of sealions. I think I was very lucky to have decided on a quick skinny-dip instead of a long-distance wetsuit swim tonight.

conversations and trees

overheard conversation, and overhead tree

I haven't been posting much because I haven't been drawing much. I've been fixin' up my website ( www.gogomax49.com ), and starting on a website for my film, and getting the film ready to send out, and other write-y think-y things.

Today I'm headed to the other end of the island to do some mulching for an old farmer I worked for last summer. I miss getting out there and working hard, and I'm happy that he called with a job. I'm looking forward to working for him again this summer - shovelling in the rain, long bike rides across the island, tired but strong. It's amazing how regular exercise relieves stress. I never really realized that until last year.

Mulching involves pulling around a huge gas-powered nastybox, starting it up, and throwing in branches that have fallen off the trees over the winter. You get a fine organic mulch that you can mix in with your garden soil, or layer on top of the garden.

Mulching is loud and violent. This is the device Steve Buscemi used at the end of Fargo to dispose of the body - remember the leg sticking out? Sometimes a branch gets stuck inside and I have to turn it off and get my hand in among the mulching blades and pull it out. It makes me cringe.

I don't especially like gas-or electric-powered tools like that. I would way rather use a handsaw than a circular saw, and I would way rather use an axe than a chainsaw. Those power tools just feel like they're more than we need. It feels like I'm giving the gods a big "fuck you" whenever I start a chainsaw. That probably doesn't make sense to most people. Most guys love that power shit, but I prefer using my own body power to do stuff. It feels so good to hand-split huge rounds of wood and know you did it with your own hands. I fantasize about building a place in the bush one day, using only an axe, a hatchet, a saw a hammer, a mallet and and chisel.

Anyways, today it's Chainsaw and Mulcher, but it'll still be fun.

nighttime thoughts

My favorite sound is the sound of wind moving through trees. If I had to be more specific, it would be the sound of wind moving through evergreen trees at night, when I'm alone. I'm not exaggerating here. This isn't like Facebook bullshit where everything is the "best ever". I've thought about it a lot and this is actually my favorite sound.

We always think of wind as "blowing" - which makes it sound like it's being forced or pushed. What's actually happening is the air is flowing from high-pressure areas to fill up lower pressure areas. In my mind, it's more like the air is being drawn-in, or sucked, than blown out.

I think it makes for a nicer image, as well. It's like a long steady inhalation. Relax your mouth open and draw in a nice slow breath. It's like that. Relaxing. Your lips are like the canopy of a forest.

I also like to imagine that the trees gather something from the wind. Kind of like how barnacles use their little fronds to gather in plankton from the water. But more like the cilia in our guts. Trees feel like giant filters on the surface of the earth, combing and cleaning the air as the planet takes a long, slow breath.