I continued on to Dease Lake, where I camped at the Water's Edge campsite, owned by a nice old fellow who spent his days maintaining the campsite and was in the middle of expanding it, so his occupation was to ride around in a bulldozer all afternoon.
I needed to gas up in the morning so I headed back into town and ran into two Chinese fellows in a bright cherry red F-350 truck, literally rolling on Dubs and low-profile off-road tires, with a brand new winch, cover never removed. (I hear winch covers are rare as hen's teeth in the boonies.)
One was working here locally at a mine, and the other was his mainland boss at Rocky something or other. He told me that there was lots of work in mining and offered me a job. I asked if the money is good. How much do you want, he says? I mulled it over and said 100 to 150. A day? No, a year. He looked at me sideways and said the money's not that good. Oh well.
He then made the most pitiful attempt to connect with the locals. First he tried to pay for the guy ahead of him in line (he had already paid), then after purchasing three jugs of milk and nothing else, he came up to the same fellow, shoved a jug of milk in front of him, and asked if he liked "this." The local muttered and walked away. I didn't have the heart to tell them that perhaps instead of giving away jugs of milk they shouldn't drive around in a pimped out truck when the local miners and highway workers drive beat up piles of rust. Hearts and minds, hearts and minds. Americans do the same, it's just we're not used to being on the receiving end, seeing others with more wealth and resenting them for it.
I pulled out my camera and dutifully the boss stopped the truck twice so I could take my shots. "They drive like assholes," someone said as they rolled off.
The road to Watson Lake was fairly boring, mostly low country that had burned a few times in the past few years. It was dotted with mushroom pickers and mushroom buyers; morel mushrooms grow thick the year after a fire. Going rate to the pickers is between $4.75 and $5.25 a pound.
Next stop was Watson Lake, where the mosquitoes were thinner. I did an oil change and a front tire change. Took a little while, but no drama.
I also had to take apart my laptop as the keyboard ribbon cable had come loose and half the keys didn't work.
I did laundry the next morning at a local hang-out called "Tag's." The washers barely worked, a source of contention because of the hard water supplied by the town. There are signs around the store, not quite announcing but rather seriously threatening the closure of the laundromat.
As I waited, I was entertained by a series of locals who came to the outdoor patio to drink their coffee.
First was a local native lady who was talking about the bears; they're hungry this year she said. She echoed what I had heard from the mushroom pickers. They told me the Spring was cold, so there are no strawberries. She told me that a full-grown grizzly can hide in knee-high brush and crawl along if he wants to. She found out the hard way when one surprised her and her boyfriend on their ATV with a dead moose strapped to the back. They got away when he put a shot in front of its nose, but even after they left a haunch behind to slow it down, it stalked them all the way back to town.
Next I talked with a German fellow who emigrated to the Yukon in the 1970s. I asked him why, and he said: Do you know the term lebensraum? There are 80 million people in Germany. Imagine 80 million people in the Yukon. It would be chaos. I asked how he got along with the natives. You will never understand them, they mind their business and you mind yours. But you know the US is going down; have you heard of the Illuminati? They were founded by a professor in Munich, all the powerful bankers in the world, most are, you know--and here he raised his finger to his enormous beak of a nose and outlined an even larger beak in the air ahead of it--well they brought up China and India to bring the US down. And the Republicans, they are just owned by Big Capital! His friend came by and sat down with a German Shepherd, which wandered around looking for scraps; surely an East German Shepherd he exclaimed. I asked the owner what its name was. Uh...H-H-H-Honey. I began to wonder what kind of company I had wandered into. But after further reflection it seemed apparent that while the Yukon houses some people who are strange, or senile, or ignorant, all they really want is a piece of their own.
My last conversation at that table stands out the most. He was a lean fellow, with tanned leathery skin taunt across his face, and tired reddish eyelids. His black hair was combed over and blended into a thick 3 inch beard. Despite that, he looked younger than perhaps he actually was, and still fair in appearance. It turned out he made his living in the woods cutting firewood, about four cord a day. He was at Tag's because it was so hot, he couldn't keep working. He stopped at two cord. He'd take down trees, haul them out, cut them up, and sell cordage around town. During the winter he'd put on snowshoes and haul a 160lb sled into the wilderness and live off it for a few months; the trouble was he needed six to eight thousand calories each day.
I asked him how life was on his own out in the woods, and it seemed to me that rather than being lonely, he had a sense of purpose, peace, and self-determination about his work and his life. His wife left him 12 years ago--couldn't take the wilderness--and his daughter was out in Alberta going to college. In fact, right now she was doing a multi-day motorcycle rally out in the dunes. He said he thought he'd met a lady who would join him out there, but when he asked her what she expected a cabin to be like, she said, oh, a 30x30--and who needs such a mansion? What struck me most about this fellow is that he seemed at ease in conversation, completely amiable and without the social fear or apparent mental disturbance that you'd perhaps expect. He reminded me of Richard Proenneke, a motivated and matter-of-fact fellow who made a fantastic documentary of his livelihood alone in the Alaskan wilderness.
Leaving Watson Lake, I took the Alaska Highway over to South Canol Rd. The road is notorious for being remote; 150 miles without services, and impassable when wet. The forecast was thunderstorms in the evening as I gassed up at the south end of it, so I tried to make quick work of it.
Fortunately, aside from some light showers midway, it was fair sailing and I enjoyed the pond-littered valley that lies near its north end.
I continued on the Campbell Highway toward Carmacks, where I camped at the Coal Mine Campground and dipped my feet in the Yukon.
The next morning I set off to Dawson, and here I am! There's a music festival in town. I don't know about the music since the tickets are $120, but the town is filled with drunk Yukon hipsters, tourists, and shitfaced teenage locals looking for trouble.
I hope to get an early start tomorrow and do the trip to Eagle Plains as fast as I can.
I am getting restless with the North, so I have the remainder of my trip planned out more or less as follows.
http://maps.google.ca/maps/ms?msid=2...be8dd21c&msa=0
From Haines/Skagway I plan to take the Alaska Ferry back to Prince Rupert, then the BC Ferry from Prince Rupert to Port Hardy.
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