dawson film festival - day 1

Dawson City, Yukon. Up near the Arctic Circle. This is my favorite community of humans on planet earth.

They say "Truth is stranger than fiction," and the term applies here more than anywhere else I've been. The show "Northern Exposure" seems kind of like this town - but the series is nothing compared to reality.

Today I spoke with Caveman Bill about the depth of the river ice, as he was hauling a sled across in the bright arctic sun. Half the town, including Bill, lives on the other side of a river, and has to pick across carefully during this time of year, when the ice starts to thin. There is a town-wide lottery on when the river ice will break - a wire is rigged from the ice to a firebell, and the whole town hears the ringing when the ice finally shifts and cracks and carries downstream. Then the people in West Dawson are stuck on one side or the other for a few weeks until the ice chunks clear and the ferry is put in the water.

(Caveman Bill actually lives in a cave, by the way.)

There are a tonne of artists and filmmakers up here. There is a writer's residence, an artist's residence, a credited art school, and a great gallery with a very savvy curator who brings in work from across Canada and the world.

There are still gold mines here, and the dirty gamblin' miners that come with them. The Trondek H'wechin First Nations is here, with all their rich history and spirit tied to this land. There are dog sleds, trappers, rough-looking dudes in cowboy hats who haven't seen another person in months, scowling in the dark corners of the bars, including my favorite place in town, "The Snake Pit", which has two sides so it can legally open early in the morning for the breakfast drunks, and close late at night for the regular drinkers.

Last time I was here, they had a weekly lottery where you put money in a pot for a peg, put your name on the peg, and hammered it onto the river ice. Then they took a helicopter and hauled a snowmobile with a mannequin on it high above the river and let it go, to smash down on the ice and explode. The person whose peg was closest to the biggest chunk of snowmobile won the pot.

There is the 'SourToe' shot at the Downtown Hotel where I'm staying, where you can take a shot of your favorite booze with a real human toe in the shot. The toe has to touch your lips for you to pass the test. (Fuck that.)



Today at the film festival I got to see a documentary I worked on a couple years ago, called Cry Rock, by my friend Banchi Hanuse, from Bella Coola. It's about her reluctance to record her mother's stories. Her mother is one of the last remaining Nuxalk elders who knows the stories and the language of their people. It's the second time I've seen the film in its entirety and it's the second time I was blown away by it. Brought to tears by it's importance.

Imagine living in a place where your language was created, and the only place where that same language has been spoken for thousands of years. Their word for "rock" doesn't just mean any rock - it means the rocks in that town, in that valley. Imagine your creation myth being about that mountain across the water. Imagine the encyclopedia of all your stories and knowledge and beliefs being passed on by word of mouth, from generation to generation. It just blows my mind.

I am very honoured to have worked on that film.

Today I learned that there's only two Trondek H'Wechin people left who can speak their language - who know the thousand-year old stories and lessons and words of this land around Dawson. Today someone told me about a place up in the mountains behind Dawson, which us whiteys thought were "nameless wastes", and was given the name of a explorer in the days of the gold rush. It's actual (Trondek H'Wechin) name is something like "The Last Place to go When There is Nothing Else Left".

I don't know what the lady's point was in telling me that, but with a language left with only two people now, there is something poignant in that. It was enough to bring tears to both of our eyes.

unholy

an unholy mishmash of different things I'm working on at the moment. I tried to layer enough on there that I'm not giving too much away, because these are all collaborations and not strictly my own work. I'm learning a lot of new software these days, which is giving me neat ideas for my own projects.

This image is a pretty good representation of my state-of-mind, as well. Way too much going on, way too much computer stuff, and a distinct lack of drawing and painting action. Long daily walks are the only thing keeping me sane.

Today I'm headed up to Dawson City - another six hour drive North of Whitehorse, and quite close to the Arctic Circle. My animated film, "The Perfect Detonator", will be showing at the festival there. This is the first time the film will show to an unbiased audience. That's not entirely true - I know quite a few people in Dawson. But still, body language does not lie, and I'll get an idea of how people really feel when I'm sitting in the audience with them.

I really have no idea how people are going to react to my film, and I have no big expectations. I know I put my heart into it, and did my best, and I'm personally proud of it. Now it's just a matter of turning off that sensitive creation side, and throwing it out to the world as much as possible.

I guess what I'm getting at is that I'm nervous. Gah! First festival for The Perfect Detonator!

the surroundings

If that ain't purdy, I don't know what is. Look up the south slopes and you'd think it's all easy-going...

...but if you look behind you, the shadowy sides are still covered in snow. It's fun to climb to the top of a snowy incline, knowing that the other side is going to be warm and dry.

More purdy. I think one of the dogs, Freya, is starting to get the hots for me. She keeps giving me long looks - constantly hoping for a little eye contact. She's eyeing me right now from across the room.

This happens to me way too often with dogs, both male and female. I get dog-humped way too much. I wish I knew a way to turn off a dog, I would do it all the time. Maybe if I made retching sounds or something.

They are pretty hot though.

sky

Four pages of stuff - initial character designs for myself, and notes for a scene in a dance collaboration.

I've been going on progressively longer walks up through the back hills of the place I'm house-sitting in the Yukon. There's a hill with a radio tower on top, and that's my goal for today. The radio tower means it's the highest hill around, so there's probably a great view from there. I'm sure there's a service road going up to the tower, but I'll stay the hell away from that. Besides, my vibe is that it's on the northeast slope, and I want to stay on the south slope, where there's more sun and therefore less snow.

The tops of the higher hills are covered in a blanket of snow over my knees. It's hard work hauling around up there, but usually I can find some moose tracks to step into to make it a bit less work.

Most people don't realize that most of the Yukon is in an arid climate zone - there's not a lot of precipitation throughout the year, so the snow doesn't usually get too deep. In the summer it feels like a cowboy movie up here. Dry air, sandy ground, lone pinetrees, the shadows of clouds rolling across long slopes and valleys.

The dogs know two of my whistles now - "Come Here" and "We're Changing Direction". One of the dogs, Freya, is incredibly intuitive. She almost always knows exactly where I intend to go, and when I get to a landmark I've been aiming for I usually find her stretched out in a patch of snow, waiting for me.

I want to figure out how these dogs were bred to track, but to do that I need to find some fresh tracks first. I found what looked like a 2-3 day old deer track, which seems weird because I didn't think deer wintered up here. Maybe they're already coming up from the coast. I don't want to get the dogs onto squirrel tracks, or we won't get anything done - there are squirrel tracks everywhere. I saw some fresh rabbit tracks too, but didn't think about calling "the girls" over.

finding focus

I'm having a hard time focussing on my work. I think it's because I have to switch over to non-painting again, and I'm really enjoying painting. I left my house a week ago, and I've only done a day's work since then.

I have a couple exciting collaborations to work on, but I still can't get myself to start.

I work well when I have a good routine, and I need to find one here. I think it's going to go something like this:

Morning - paint and doodle for my own fun.
Afternoon - walk the dogs
Evening - work on collaboration stuff.

Yesterday I did the morning and afternoon stuff. Maybe today I can make it through the whole routine.

I miss my daily trips to the coffeeshop to draw people. Maybe I should bring my sketchbook and camera on my walks. But I really don't want to be weighed down by things bumping around in my pockets.

The temperature dropped overnight, and now it's snowing hard.

signs

I've had dogs around for almost my entire life. They've always been mutts, but there's always been a good portion of sheepdog in the mix (i.e. Sheltie or Border Collie.)

Sheepdogs are very smart and active, and very attentive to their masters. In the bush, they'll stay pretty close, but they're bred to herd, so they will gladly chase any little creature that's willing to run away from them.

These hunting dogs I'm sitting are a whole different story in the bush. This is what they're bred for - to range in the distance and find shit.

It already feels like we're some kind of three-person organism scouting over the topography. It feels so amazing to be bouncing down a long slope with one dog on a far ridge, checking out what's happening in the next draw, and another dog far to the front. I don't know how to describe it. You can just tell they're naturally scanning, and I feel like the nerve-centre of the operation, dictating our direction and watching the two dogs for signs of something out of the ordinary. It feels very natural. Like dogs and men have evolved to co-operate for thousands of years. Which I guess we have.

Just over the first line of hills behind the house I'm sitting, I found a long gully that was covered in moose scat and old tracks. The moose tracks look like huge smooth-sided snowshoe tracks, because the original print has melted outward in the spring thaw.

Some big old bugger spent a while there this winter - sheltered out of the cold wind, munching on sapling-ends and rooting for ground plants and whatever else moose do. I'd like to find out how often moose shit, on average, and go back there and count the poo-piles to get an idea of how long he was there.

Near the tracks, about two feet off the ground, the the bark of a poplar was torn and scratched right to the wood underneath. I imagine the moose had an itchy scalp or leg and itched the crap out of it on that tree. Who knows.

I also found a few piles of old porcupine poo on the south side of a hill, where the snow is starting to melt. I wonder if he hung around longer on the warm south slope last fall, or if that whole hillside is marked with sign.

The wildlife up here is spread fairly widely because it's so hard to find enough to eat. Also, signs stay preserved for a long time because of the dry weather and relative lack of insects and microbes that break things down. For those reasons, you see animal signs far more often than you see animals. When I lived up here I learned to really enjoy finding signs like that. It's as rewarding as seeing wildlife, if not moreso. It's fun to follow signs and think and imagine the story behind them.

backyard

Here's the backyard of the place I'm house-sitting.

The homeowners have a whole network of trails along the ridges and canyons back there, but the snow is only halfway up my shins, so off-trail walking is totally bearable. When it gets up around the knees it's too hard without snowshoes or wide cross-country skiis.

Two two dogs I'm sitting are big Gordon Setters - Scottish dogs bred for hunting and tracking. It's a total thrill to wander around these ridges with the two dogs. They range far in front of me and to the sides, most often out of my view. Occasionally I see them trotting along the opposite wall of a ravine, or dashing far ahead on a rocky shoulder where the snow has blown off. Then they'll rush up to me to say hi, and run off again.

We're still working out a way to communicate where I'm headed. I like using whistles because it's easy to do and travels far and doesn't sound as invasive as shouting the dogs' names. These dogs are fast learners - they already know my "I'm turning in another direction" whistle means something. I'm not sure if they know exactly what, yet.

Apparently there is not a lot of big wild mammals in the area shown by the above photo, and by the lack of tracks I saw today, I would tend to agree. Apparently a moose comes down here every spring (she's already come and gone), and one of the dogs was attacked by a wolf a few years ago, but not much else.

If there's any big wildlife, I have a feeling they travel on the other side of the big ridge. Animals aren't stupid - they know where humans live and they like their peace and quiet. Why walk around in a area that's been well-marked by territorial dog-stink when you can stay on the other side of the hill and hang out in peace?

Tomorrow I'll head over to the other side of the hill and hopefully not interrupt any animals, but it will be nice to check out the lay of the land over there and maybe see some tracks.