The townsite was a moose swamp, not much more than one hundred years ago, and when not frozen over is still pretty swampy.  Moose are still a big presence here, both in terms of symbolism and in traditional practices that go back thousands of years.  I am not a hunter, and could not kill a moose any more than I could kill any other animal, yet I do not judge those who hunt for food and survival.  The Tron'dek Hwech'in First Nation helps manage the fish and game in their traditional territory (Tron'dek is the word which became reshaped into the word Klondike). 

The Tron'dek Hwech'in are based in Dawson City and are now the largest employer in town.

The spirit of the moose is pervasive, yet a proper photo is not that easy to come by.  Finally tonight I was able to get my camera out, find the "detect aura" setting, and get a shot of the moose god in its natural environment.  Note its electric blue breath in the frosty night air.

Another evocative sub-culture in the Yukon are mushers.  Mushers train with dogs and enter competitions such as the Iditarod in Alaska, and the international race, the  Yukon Quest.

Today was the first time I actually saw a team of dogs racing along the river.  It is such a stereotypical image of the north and yet it has taken me months to actually see it.  The Yukon Quest passes through Dawson each year, and here are the Dawson City pictures from 2007.  This site provides lots of information about the race and the mushers for 2008 (for example, here's a playful profile of a Whitehorse musher).

The team of  dogs was moving so quickly, I had no time to prepare and my shots of it are not clear.  The picture above shows the track of the dog sled in the snow on the Yukon River, with the glow of the sunset in the background (just before 4 p.m.).  You can see the tracks of the dogs and the sled runners.  The dogs all wear little booties, very cute, and in the spring lost little dog booties turn up all over the place.

This picture to me captures so much of the Yukon sensation.  The glow on the horizon, pink sky, the large landscape, the tracks in the snow.  The dog sled races are a connection to history, since dog teams were the main form of transportation in the winter, to bring in mail and supplies, and the Iditarod is inspired by (although not an accurate re-enactment of) the heroic effort to bring diphtheria vaccine from Anchorage to Nome to save people from an epidemic.  The interdependence with dogs remains a living tradition in the north.  A more common sight these days, at least near town, is one or two dogs pulling someone on skis across the river from West Dawson so they can run some errands.  (I've since learned the name for this activity:   ski + dog =  "skijor", a Scandinavian word.)

Last October, during "Fire Prevention Week" in Dawson, I dropped in to visit a friend.  She said that she had just come from the fire.  What fire, I asked?  The house fire, she said.

Perhaps I am afflicted by a morbid curiosity because I rushed off to home in on the column of smoke.  Perhaps this kind of morbid curiosity is genetic, since my father has a police/fire scanner so he can follow local events of this nature.  Although maybe Dad just wants to know where my brother, a volunteer fireman, rushed off to when his beeper went off.  (I  talked to my faraway father and brother this evening; my Dad, bless his dear soul, just turned 89).

Dawson City also has a volunteer fire department and they are all over this house fire, just not in this view.  There was some difficulty putting the fire out -- at least one layer of the roof was tin and had to be pried up with long pikes before the stubborn fire was finally out.  The backhoe was standing by, and by the end of the day, this cute little house, one of the older remaining buildings, was a heap of rubble.  Chimney fire.

The combination of wood stoves, wooden buildings, ramshackle construction and crowded streets means that Dawson has a long history of fire and burned to the ground a couple of times in the early years.

I would like to mention that I do not support the idea of house fires, I did not start this fire, and no one was hurt.  There was obviously tragic loss of property and, sadly, people were displaced.  I merely took a picture, although as I admitted I did rush across town to do so.

During some of the recent attention paid to my otherwise obscure little blog, the issue of human body parts was raised.  Wanna see pictures?   There is a bar in Dawson which is famous (or notorious) for offering the Sourtoe Cocktail,  a preserved human toe offered in the drink of your choice.  The toe is supposed to touch your lips, and then you get a certificate suitable for framing.   This is one of those famous weird things and I had heard about it and was morbidy tempted before I arrived.  However, once I did more research into the toes (there have been more than one -- they are accidentally swallowed or deliberately swiped), I found that getting to know the toe was just too much detail for me.  I know -- a human toe in your drink sounds like such a good idea.  What is wrong with me?

A writer who was here early in 2007, Lisa Pasold, recounts in her blog a conversation she had with someone who remembers a paleontologist living in this building years ago, and the house being full of fascinating artifacts.  (This links directly to the one post, but check the archive for January 2007 (and February, March) for more on Lisa's experiences in the Yukon.)

This photo is taken through a store window, and is somewhat blurry, but shows some of a mammoth tusk (the big shiny arc) and on the floor beneath it is a glimpse of a mammoth leg bone.  In the display case are carvings and sculptures made from stone, bone, and antler.

Yesterday was clear and cold and went for a climb up to the sun.  Whenever I'm out in the woods now I find myself thinking of the zaadzter Farland, because of the pictures she takes of trees and snow.  I ask myself this question as I walk around, What would Farland see?

I do not even attempt the question, What would Farland say? because her words are  beautifully unpredictable. (It may be apparent that I think Farland is adorable, but please, nobody tell her about my secret crush.  Everything about her is so perfect -- her quirky pithy blogs and effortless wisdom, her ability to converse with trees, her fuzzy boots sticking out of a dumpster, even her name.)

This large rustic bench at the top of the Midnight Dome above Dawson is the perfect spot to contemplate any question.  This bench with footrest is extremely comfortable although I did not sit there yesterday.  One minute without gloves was painful, and the hands warming up again were painful in another way.  What would Farland do?  Head home for a nice warm drink.

My last pictures in Dawson were taken at Jack London square.  This was just down the street from where I was living, but I never took any pictures there until my last morning.  These are caribou antlers on a reconstructed food cache, a little box on stilts (where food would be stored, away from your cabin, and hopefully secure against animals).

Vancouver is green and springlike.  It feels strange to walk without gloves and without the camera.  People who drive SUV's do not care about pedestrians.  Let me go further: people who drive SUV's, a kind of urban tank, do not care about anything except the armour which they pretend keeps them safe from the world.    This is a city where pedestrians in crosswalks are mowed down by impatient drivers.  I'm already missing the small town where you can walk down the middle of the street, and need to watch out for tobogganing children more than traffic.