The Cremation of Sam McGee

The Cremation Of Sam Magee 

by Robert Service

There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.

EDITORIAL

IMPRESSIONS OF ALASKA

After spending 47 days in our 49th state, I more or less got a feel for the place.  It’s not in any way like living there, which is a totally different experience, nor do I have a comprehensive understanding of what drives the state.  To be absolutely clear, I’ve got to say I love Alaska.  I love it for its wildlife, its vastness, its wilderness, its beauty.  But as we were leaving Alaska, driving along a dirt road paralleling the Walker Fork of of 40 Mile River, we saw numerous amateur and semi-professional gold miners panning, digging and generally exploring for gold.  We saw a substantial mining operation re-destroying parts of this previously completely destroyed river and ecosystem, digging up the creek bed, removing the forested “overlay” all around it, tearing down canyon walls either with heavy equipment or high pressure hoses, all to obtain gold.  In fact, I seriously doubt that there is a flowing body of water in most of Alaska that has not suffered a similar fate, first mined by hand, then dredged by giant machines, then blasted to smithereens.  In Nome, Alaska, we watched numerous small boats with bottom sucking equipment going back and forth along the ocean’s edge, ruining the ocean floor, so some gold could be sifted out of the rubble that was then redeposited on the now barren ocean floor.

Now here’s the interesting part.  I’m guessing, and remember, this is not a researched position I am taking, that in no other state in the country would such environmental insults be allowed to occur, and if they did, would be subject to huge fines and criminal penalties, not to mention incurring the wrath of every environmental organization on the planet.  But here in Alaska, not only are these not prosecutable offenses, they are championed activities, fully sanctioned and encouraged by the state!  Freely extrapolating from our Walker Fork experience, it seems to me that the driving force in Alaska, the underlying philosophy and rationale for being for many folks and certainly for the government, is exploitation of natural resources.  This includes gold mining, oil extraction, logging, hunting and fishing and a lot more. I am not condemning these activities.  Hell, we just drove here in a diesel powered vehicle.  I am just saying that in Alaska, there are those who want to overwhelm the environment and extract from it, wring from it, drain its every resource to make money, with not enough thought to preserve the land that is being trampled in the process.  Alaskans complain about too much interference from “the Outside”, especially from the federal government and its gigantic National Wildlife Refuges and the like, but if the feds had not taken action years ago to save the most beautiful, pristine and wild parts of this glorious state, I’m sure the land would have been stripped clear by now, drilled through like Swiss cheese, dug up and ripped apart, all to extract the riches that lay on top of and underneath this fragile arctic soil.  It is a profound and probably never to be resolved battle between the forces that want to destroy the land to get rich and the forces that recognize that they already are rich from their existing natural heritage.  Is there a balance?  Who knows?  No one has asked my opinion.

DREDGE CORN ROWS

FIREWEED ALONG YUKON ROADS

DAWSON CITY FROM "THE DOME WITH CONFLUENCE OF YUKON AND KLONDIKE RIVERS




"

July 11:  So after that tirade about Alaska, you ought to see the Yukon River valley and surrounding river beds.  It’s worse.  Driving east from Dawson City, all you see are giant “corn rows” of river stone, each formed when an immense dredge went along each river, creek, stream, scooping up the ENTIRE river bottom in huge buckets, processing them for bits of gold, then spewing out the river bottom in piles behind it, like some huge river-eating animal shitting out the remains as it plods forward.  East of Dawson, the full valley of the Klondike River, stretching at least 1/2 mile between hills, has been dredged out.  Bonanza Creek, where the original strike of 1897 occurred, is torn to shreds miles and miles back from its confluence with the Klondike.  Where hills come down to meet the river, they have been gutted by high pressure water hoses designed to strip away all loose soil and rock so it can be processed for gold.  

Wrecking the environment for oil, or in the vast iron ore mines in northern Quebec and Labrador which we saw a few years ago, are bad enough, but as a society, we clearly need and have become totally dependent on these commodities.  Wrecking the environment for gold baubles and bangles, on the other hand, is a completely different deal.  I know there is a need for industrial gold as a conductor and also for certain people’s shiny teeth and I’m sure there are other important uses for it, but come on - do we really need to allow and encourage all of this seemingly little regulated destruction?

OK, enough of this.  Let’s get back to what’s fun about this trip.

After doing a bit of banking to exchange $US for Canadian funds, acquiring an ethernet cable for my new bluetooth enabled external hard drive which I cannot figure out how to make work and filling the RV with liquid gold, we finally had to stop clip-clopping our way around on Dawson’s charming wooden sidewalks.  First stop - ascending The Dome - a high round hill that overlooks Dawson, with a five-mile paved road to the top.  Dawson was built on a flat bog along the Yukon River and until 30 years ago, was subject to severe flooding when the river rose, usually due to ice jams.  From atop the Dome, it’s like having a map in front of you - the city directly beneath, the hideous scars from mining to the east, the muddy Yukon running east/west, joining with the clear southbound Klondike and the mountains of Alaska to the west.  You can even see the nine-hole Top O’ The World Golf Course just across the Yukon, perched on a high flat plain.  I played here once, ten years ago, under the midnight sun and had a totally enjoyable experience as black bears and moose freely roamed the course.  The grass greens looked more like shedding caribou than putting surfaces, but that was unimportant in the overall scheme of things.

From here, we continued east 30 miles to the entrance to The Dempster Highway, Canada’s equivalent of the Dalton Highway in Alaska.  The Dempster is a 450 mile ribbon of dirt, stretching from the AlCan Highway almost to the Arctic Ocean.  The difference is that this road crosses two major rivers along its path in the Northwest Territories, the Peel and the mighty Mackenzie (one of the longest rivers in North America, but entirely in the Arctic, so few Americans know anything about it).  To journey from one side to the other of these riparian giants, one must take a ferry.  In winter, the rivers freeze solidly enough that traffic, including large trucks (you’ve heard of “Ice Road Truckers”? - this where they’re from), just rumble across the ice to the other side.  But during mosquito season, the ice melts and the roads are impassable until a) the ice goes out and the ferries are inserted or b) the ice comes back in sufficient strength to support the trucks.  Right now, in warm weather, the river flow goes up and down quite rapidly every day, requiring that earthen ramps get built and rebuilt to allow traffic to board both the cable-driven Peel ferry or the self-powered Mackenzie ferry.  We have learned, much to our dismay, that the water has gotten so high at the Peel River that the ferry cannot operate and is temporarily shut down, thereby severely diminishing our chances of reaching Inuvik at the far end of the Dempster, unless we can teach Albie to either fly or swim in short order.  Neither seems likely, especially since Albie is starting to have more serious mechanical problems, due to the beating she has endured lo these last three months.  Speaking of which, today is the start of our fourth month on the road!

We traveled about 50 miles north on the Dempster and are camped at Tombstone Mountain.  This is the end of the boreal forest, as the road immediately climbs about 1000 feet to the tundra, where we will travel the next 250 miles before reaching the Peel River in the Northwest Territories.  Stay tuned...

July 12:  It was a good day and a bad day.

FOX TAIL BARLEY GRASE

YELLOW WARBLER

DEMPSTER HIGHWAY

We get up bright and earlyish and BEFORE breakfast, take a two-mile hike along the North Fork of the Klondike River.  I had prepped for this trip the night before, learning how to properly use our newly acquired can of bear spray.  To be able to read the instructions on the side of the can, which were too small even for ants to read, I had to turn my binocular around and use it like a magnifying glass.  It’s a good thing you don’t have to do this when suddenly confronted by ursa arctos.  The trail took us through the woods and willows well over our heads, where we could hear the bears licking their chops.  I was ready, though - I had my can of spray on my hip, all set to blast away at the first sign of trouble.  Bear spray is like mosquito repellent, though - despite buying it for a purpose, you’d just as soon not need it.  We didn’t.

THE DEMPSTER HIGHWAY

LYNX TRACK

The trail was pretty quiet, with the pleasant sound of the rushing river always present in the background.  Yellow, Wilson’s and blackpoll warblers flitted about, making only “chip” noises, as did white-crowned and tree sparrows.  A presumptive lynx ran across the path in front of us so quickly all we saw was its rear end, but the large cat tracks in the path proved its provenance.  A pair of merlins were feeding young atop a tall black spruce right next to our campsite!  We visited the new Tombstone Visitor Centre for a bit, gaining some knowledge about the geology and history of the area.  So far, so good.

Then we were off, heading north on the Dempster.  After 20 miles and several stops, we sadly realized that we had completely missed the boat for birding at this time of year.  By mid-July, nothing is singing, and many birds had even already changed directions and aimed south for the winter.  I do most of my bird-finding by listening and then attracting the birds by making unusual sounds that they apparently find offensive, like a bird joke in poor taste.  When nothing is singing and has lost interest in being territorial, birds don’t respond to pishing or squeaking or even playback of their recorded songs. First Result: We can’t see the birds very well and I can’t get any good photos since the birds won’t come close.  

Second Result: we decided to not go any further north on my beloved Dempster Highway, blowing off this portion of the planned trip.  The scenery was gorgeous, but the birds were gone or silent and the large mammals, like moose, bears and caribou, were mostly away from the road.  

Recommendation: come back in early to mid-June at the peak of all wildlife activity, unless all you want to do is see the area.  The Dempster is an absolutely exquisite wildlife and wilderness experience and in my opinion, the best road you can take in North America to see true northern tundra and all that it entails.

We turned around and headed south, back to the road leading toward Whitehorse, YT.  I tried a couple of spots on the tundra for Smith’s longspur, but the tundra was dead quiet.  

HARLAN'S HAWK (RED-TAIL) LIGHT MORPH

Driving in the evening, such as it is, tends to produce the most interesting sightings, so we kept moving until 11:00 PM, ending up in Carmacks, YT for the night.  Along the way, we found two full size young great horned owls and even better, a white morph “Harlan’s” subspecies of the red-tailed hawk.  We had seen quite a few of the dark morphs along the way, but light morph adults make up only 1% of the total population, so this was quite a lucky find!  And at 10:30 PM, no less.  We made one more stop for the evening, overlooking Five Finger Rapids on the Yukon River.  Since it was so late, we were the only people present at this usually popular spot.  In the gloaming, the mighty river slid past the huge rocks in its path, once formidable obstacles to upriver bound paddle wheelers.  Camped on a quiet side road next to the river.

July 13: Got a deliciously late start after being up into the wee hours last night.  Today’s pleasures were totally dominated by the ingestion of insanely good comestibles.  First, we took the side road to Lake Labarge,  stopping for breakfast (at 1:00 PM) at Mom’s Sourdough Bakery.  This place, owned and run by Tracy Harris seemingly forever, is a fixture along the Klondike Highway.  Tracy bakes the best stuff ever and to boot, is a great birder.  She’s slowed down somewhat since a heart attack last year, and now just fires up the oven when she feels like it.  Today she felt like it and we enjoyed a four berry pie that was so tart and tasty my taste buds nearly decided to move there.  Capping it off was a scoop of caramel vanilla ice cream, with little crispy chunks of caramel, hand made by her Swiss neighbor from whole fresh dairy cream.  With a pot of black tea, we could have sat at her gardenside table for even longer, enjoying a sunny day and lots of talk about birds and migration.  What a sweetheart!  We couldn’t leave without taking a giant (9”diameter) cinnamon bun she hadbaked that morning with us, plus a jar of Tracy’s homemade fireweed blossom jelly that tastes like no jelly you’ve ever had before.  Whoever heard of jelly being made from flowers?  Tracy explained that the best way to eat the bun was to slice it in half widthwise, slather the inside with butter and then heat it up in a skillet like a grilled cheese sandwich.  That’s obviously tomorrow’s breakfast.

The next stop was only a quarter mile away, on the marge of Lake Labarge, immortalized in Robert Service’s poem, “The Cremation of Sam McGee”.  I read it aloud to Gale.  Just hearing the words always gives me the shivers and makes me laugh.  Do yourself a favor and google the full poem for your total enjoyment.

Onward to Whitehorse, where we checked into the Westmark Hotel, courtesy of Tourism Yukon.  On their suggestion, we had dinner at Antoinette’s, an upscale Caribbean restaurant just down the street.  Antoinette is from Tobago, loves food and apparently does all the cooking herself.  I had curried chicken, with two potato pancakes, fresh corn, a few spiced shrimp and a length of fry bread all on top.  To say that this was the best meal I have had since we left home, or even in years, would not do this dinner justice.  I can still taste all that juicy, spicy, savory flavor rolling around my mouth.  If you’re ever in Whitehorse....

READING "SAM MCGEE" AT LAKE LABARGE

July 14:  REALLY took our time departing Whitehorse.  First of all, we’re in a nice hotel with cable TV and it was our only chance to see any of the British Open.  We watched Phil Mickelson lip out a putt on 18  that would have given him a 62 and the lowest round ever recorded in a major championship.  We ate eggs benny at the hotel restaurant.  Let’s face it, we dawdled.  We then ran around town, as usual in circles, but finally departed Whitehorse at 12:30 PM.  The rest of the day was driving but had a few  highlights.  

Stopping at the “Sign Forest” in Watson Lake, YT, where a couple of acres is devoted to people nailing up every conceivable type of sign that they have purloined from every conceivable place. Kind of the monumental version of “Kilroy was here.”

SIGN FOREST

WOOD BISON

Our route had largely followed the immense Liard River and I wondered why I had never heard anything about river boat travel up the Liard.  Then we came to the Whirlpool Rapids, where the river split into several raging sections with standing waves, wild water and about an eight foot drop over a ledge.  And that was when the water was low!  A large accumulation of smashed dead trees carried by the river had been deposited at the sharp turn of the whirlpool, at least 30 feet above the present water level!

As we drove southeast from Contact Creek, where the two opposite traveling work forces met building the Alaska Highway in 1942, until about 100 miles on at Liard Hot Springs Provincial Park (where we are camping), wood bison are quite common along the road.  We saw one herd of about 70, plus a family group of a bull, two females and two calves and a few solo huge bulls, sporting furry dark chocolate knickers on their forelegs, huge shaggy heads, a large dewlap and a camel sized hump.  The males apparently like to dig out sandy “wallows” along the road and we encountered one big boy lounging at his private beach, winking at us with fly-covered eyes.  These 2000 pound behemoths like to wander along the highway, and even will sleep on the road at night, making for VERY hazardous driving.  

We didn’t pull in until about 10:30 PM, which is probably why we encountered so many bison, plus a couple of black bears munching on roadside greenery.  Interesting note: the road is very wide along this stretch, with broad shoulders to allow for bison-ogling tourists and space to get around them.  The highway verge is cut back another 100 feet from the road on each side, so that motorists can spot the bison easily and reduce the chance for a collision.  

July 15:  What a joy to be able to write this in the early evening, my butt parked at a campsite picnic table, relaxing with the beverage of my choice, mountain stream gurgling beyond merrily to my right, surrounded by bare rock mountains at Stone Mountain Campground next to Summit Lake, in magnificent northern British Colombia.  We are camped at the northern end of the Rocky Mountains, about 50-100 miles east of Fort Nelson, BC.  Simply put, right now it couldn’t be nicer.  Did I mention that it is 6:30 PM, 75 degrees and the sun is shining?  It actually will get dark here tonight, due to about five hours of no sun and the mountains.  Both of us have gotten somewhat confused in the dark, not really having experienced any of it for about a month and a half.

Today began as pleasantly as it finished, at Liard Hot Springs Provincial Park.  We paid our fee and walked the 1/2 mile boardwalk through the marsh and forest to the natural pools fed by the hot springs.  The pools are edged by forest and have a completely natural setting, with trees, grasses and ferns draping over the water.  The only tipoff of the subterranean thermals is the sulphury smell.  The lower pool was a delightful 100 degrees or so, but as we moved to the higher pool and closer to the spring’s source, the water temp steadily climbed until it was almost scalding!  

LIARD HOT SPRINGS PROVINCIAL PARK, BC

STONE SHEEP

We continued east on the Alaska Highway, slicing across northern BC.  Just before reaching our current campground, we encountered three stone sheep, also known as thin-horn sheep (as opposed to big horn sheep further south), two females and a very perky lamb.  First on the road, they nimbly ran up the side of a rock-strewn cliff like it was a staircase and watched us from their lofty perch.  Choosing our campground was easy - it had great curb appeal - and it’s a pleasure to not be driving late.  Right on the edge of the lake, someone or some people had built a “garden” of small cairns, and right on top of the tallest one sat an adult spotted sandpiper, as if a sentinel.  Which indeed, she was, as some of the rocks on the ground beneath her began to run around  in typical “spottie” fashion, tipping up and down.  She was carefully monitoring her brood of four chicks, so we crept away, not to disturb the family dinner.  Speaking of family dinner, I have been summoned to start cooking.

July 16:  The mountains beckoned this morn, so after a quick breakfast, we started walking up a rough road to a distant microwave relay tower.  After about 2.5 miles of steady climbing, we had passed through tree line and were looking up at a rocky meadow some 500 feet above us.  There was no trail, just tundra and rock scree up a very steep slope.  It looked like it might be rock ptarmigan country up there, so away we went, step by step, wondering what would give out first, the old legs, back or breath.  Slowly zig-zagging our way across the uneven terrain, we made our ascent.  Tiny alpine flowers were everywhere; dwarf birches, no more than one inch tall, were probably 100 years old.  Getting down on my knees for closer inspection (getting up was the problem), I could see wide varieties of multi-colored lichens adorning the ancient fractured rocks.  At the summit, we could now see Summit Lake, where we were camped, now appearing an impossible distance away.  Not so far away, we saw black clouds coming toward us through the mountain passes, accompanied by rumbling thunder and rainfall.  It was time to jet.  We scrambled down the slippery slope with all the agility of sexagenarian mountain goats and headed for home.  No ptarmigan, not many other birds, some caribou tracks and a least chipmunk.  Oh yes, and a lot of pain by the time we got back.  These old bones just aren’t what they used to be.  Back at camp, a small flock of cedar waxwings surprised me - this was an extremely rare sighting for northern BC.

HIKE FROM SUMMIT LIKE TO "NO PTARMIGAN" HILL

We spent the rest of the day driving east to Fort Nelson and then south almost to Fort St. John.  A very large cow moose jumped out of a ditch and ran across the road right in front of us.  Gale’s alert driving saved us from having a moose hood ornament, or the other way around.  It really gets dark now, with about six hours between sunset and sunrise.  We will now take full advantage of that meteorological statistic.

LICHENS

CEDAR WAXWING

July 17:  Major finds of natural gas have completely transformed this area from very rural farming country to booming development for energy.  I have this image in mind when oil is struck - a gusher of black gold.  What image do you get when a successful strike is made for natural gas?  For me, a giant earth fart.  Anyway, there are wells all over the place, with fracturing plants, whatever those are and lots and lots of big truck traffic.  In utter and stark contrast are the immense glowing yellow fields of flowering canola plants.  

We drove and drove through the huge northern Alberta prairie, sometimes in agriculture, sometimes just flat woodland.  Boring.  One thought comes to mind - the farther south we get, the more the land is used by people, altered in character permanently.  Mineral mining, gas extraction, oil drilling, coal mining, farming, more communities, more roads, more people.  Inevitable, yes.  But after where we have been and what we have seen for the last six weeks, it is somewhat disheartening to come back to the reality of too many people, too much use and abuse of the land.  

GRAND CACHE GOLF COURSE

We finally began to see the mountains of the northern Rockies, since we are only about 100 miles from Jasper National Park.  Stopping at the small town of Grand Cache, we learned about the municipal campground and 9-hole golf course just up the hill.  Despite a warning in the pro shop that a grizzly had been hanging around #5,  nine holes and one campsite later, at 8:00 PM we are cooking dinner in the microwave, charging the computer on house current and have the hot water on for showers!  This is luxury!  Add in seven, count ‘em, seven hours of darkness and we are in hog heaven.  Before retiring, we managed to kill off a bag of microwave popcorn, accompanied by reading the poetry of Robert Service.