Yukon

There are a few places in this world which beckon to adventurers everywhere. Their names are such that the very mention of them get some of us dreaming of wild days and remote nights under the stars. Patagonia, Mongolia, Tibet, Serengeti etc etc. I am sure we all have our own personal list, but on my list there has been "The Yukon"

The river itself is central to that longing I have for the region. It is one of the great watercourses of the world, up there with the Mekong, the Orinoco, the Congo,the Nile or the Amazon. Sure there are other big river like the Mississippi or the Rhine, but to me they do not mean "adventure" The Yukon does. So it was with childlike excitement that an email arrived in my inbox last week from our operations Centre. Clay, who has a similar love of the open road and wild places as me, had simply entitled it "Atlin!!"
Now I am almost certain that people reading this would never have heard of Atlin, which is why I have a whole entry dedicated to it. But I knew it enough to know I was off the the wild blue Yonder!

The Air North flight was on time into Whitehorse on Monday, and I touched down in this regional capital on the banks of the Yukon a little before 22:00. Gone are the hard traveling days of hunting the cheap bus into town and then stomping around under a weighty backpack looking for the cheapest sleazy dive in town. I now get to expense things, and Clay had organised everything in advance. So, despite the fact I was still heaving the same old Macpac on my shoulders, I got to stroll over to the rental cars and pick up a nice to little SUV and drive into town to a rather swank hotel complete with Jacuzzi.
Yesterday saw me do the work needed out in Atlin and get back late after leaving early. No time to explore this town, although a truly wonderful trip with some of my best photos in ages.

Today was although more touristic. The flight back leaves a little before 15:00, giving me the whole day really with only a couple packages to send. So I have been walking around in this nice little town, taking photos. It is clearly NOT tourist season and there is not much to do. It is a Balmy -10 outside, which for this time of year is outright hot. So I took the chance to stroll all over town. Aside from the standard photo in front of the boat I was rather amazed with the murals in town, so I took a number of shots of them.



Lastly and maybe most importantly for me, I got to meet the Yukon. Ask my friends, I like to meet things up close. Merely taking a photo of some famous landmark in the background does not cut it for me. I want to touch it, feel the texture, examine it from different angles. The Yukon should be met in a canoe if you ask me, with days of paddling and nights on remote shores. But failing that at least I want to touch it, taste it and be at one with it. In summer I guess swimming it would count. Now, I took a photo, not in the river, but on it. Standing alone on the ice 100m from shore, with its once famous rapids (form where the name Whitehorse comes, since dammed out of existence) somewhere below my feet I at least met the river enough to feel satisfied with my brief and interesting visit.


Hopefully my work will bring me this way again, and hopefully I can bring Wen-shu with too, to see this outpost in the True Northern wilderness. The remainder of my time in town was spent in a fruitless search of some worthwhile trinket to take back to my loving wife as a memento of the trip. Sadly everything is brutally overpriced here and nothing I saw in the shops I visited was interesting or unique enough for me to part with the better part of $50.
Next time my sweet!