Around the Rowan Tree, Day 61

The evenings here were long. It was almost midnight before it grew dark

Next day, on calling in at a gas station to refuel the enormous tank, the attendant said: “You guys must have come over the Steamboat yesterday. You’ve sure got your van in a mess. Still, you were lucky.” Further on in our trip a driver of a juggernaut pulled into a rest area near the Great Slave Lake. We got to talking. “How was your journey?” he asked.

We talked of the Steamboat. He had crossed over with his juggernaut on the same day and had got stuck up to the axles.

After the Steamboat, Henry was in an area he remembered well. He had worked for some time on the Alaska highway in the Muncho Lake district all those years ago.

He had forgotten just how beautiful it was in its snow-capped mountain setting, a still lake a long, lonely way from any town, shining in the sun, now jade, now turquoise, now cerulean.

The weather improved and was perfect by the time we reached Liard Springs, where we stopped for the night. Next day we would be in the Yukon. Unique As far as campsites were concerned, Liard Springs was unique. It had hot springs. In the cool evening air we could see the steam rising as we approached.

A big campsite, it was as yet half empty and each camper van had a tree-lined bay to itself. Opposite our one stood a big pump which gushed out water, the few campers keeping it in constant use.

The evenings here were long. It was almost midnight before it grew dark. Birdsong was heard until late. One bird in particular, the one I had first heard at the lake with the loons, was to haunt me all the way north. It sang its heart out from the top of a tree and was answered by its mate.

It was almost dark before it stopped singing, to begin again at first light. Several hundred yards away from our bay was a boardwalk made of slats of wood that led over a marsh.

Here, pools of water gave an occasional bubble. There were lots of birds of all kinds in the marshland. I could have stood and watched them for hours.

Over on the other side was a deep pool from which steam was rising. Campers were in bathing. I felt the water. It was hot hot.

Don’t go far to the right, I was told. It’s too hot. Further up there was a hanging garden. A great wild rockery holding small pools of warm water.

Wild animals were to be seen in this campsite too and everywhere there were signs – A FED BEAR IS A DEAD BEAR.

Bears don’t often attack you, I’d been told, especially not black bears. It’s rare but I’d heard too many instances of attack to think it was quite rare enough. Someone told me later that only the year before, two children had been mauled in this campsite and their father who went to their rescue was mauled too. I didn’t ask further.

I could hardly believe, next day, that I was in the Yukon. To begin with, it wasn’t so very different from the northern British Columbia that we travelled through. What had I expected?

Perhaps some of the scenes that Robert W. Service depicted in his poems. At Watson Lake we stopped at a modern township to get provisions.

Our objective that night was to reach Teslin. We made it and parked in a bare campsite with very few trees beside the wide Teslin river still half covered in ice; a shining silver, northern-looking, more what I had expected, beautiful in a lonely, far-north way. Disappointed Just beside the campsite was the bridge by which we had crossed the river. It had shuggled and rattled when we crossed. All night it rattled with traffic crossing.

Next day we were in Whitehorse. I have to confess to being disappointed in Whitehorse. What did I expect, something out of Robert W. Service again?

But Whitehorse is a modern city with wide streets and handsome shops and restaurants. We arrived first, down beside the Yukon River.

Here the old paddle steamer, Klondike, is on show. It’s been preserved just as it was when it made the long journey up the Yukon River to Dawson City. It was so well preserved I could feel I was back at the end of the 19th Century.

The high holds held all the goods that would have been carried at that time. On one deck we were shown the cabins and dining room used by rich passengers who wanted to travel to Dawson City. It looked very elegant with small tables covered in white cloths and laid with shining cutlery.

The Klondike used to travel up regularly with prospectors and provisions, and later well-heeled passengers, for Dawson City. On the return journey it was heavily laden with silver ore.

At Whitehorse, Henry and I had to come to a decision. We had intended to travel as far north as Dawson City. That was another 600 miles and back.

We had taken longer than anticipated to reach this far. Skagway in Alaska, where we also wanted to go, was a lot nearer and we really didn’t think we had time to go to both.

Henry said: “I’d rather visit Skagway. More than anything else I want to see where those would-be miners landed and get to feel the country they had to traverse before they got to Dawson City, that great mountain pass they had to cross before reaching the Yukon River.”

So Skagway it was. We set off from Whitehorse on a day of bright blue skies. Some of the highest of the Rocky Mountains are in the Yukon and the lakes really have to be seen to be believed.

The colours are exquisite. No painter could adequately catch them, no poet tell in words, however skilled. Emerald Lake in particular took my breath away, what fantastic depth of colour and no one there, no one at all but us.

Soon we entered what in the brochures is called ‘mountains of the moon’ country, breathtakingly barren and out of this world. The sky clouded over, the snow began to fall. Distraction I began to worry again. What if we were snowed up in this God-forsaken spot? Arrival at US Customs proved a distraction.

We had to show our passports etc, and pay 12 dollars to be allowed into Alaska, another magic-inmy-imagination place.

It wasn’t long before we were descending out of the mountains down a precipitous slope that fell away very steeply into a deep gorge.

The sheer impact of it was somewhat diffused by crash barriers for most of the way, for which I, and probably many another traveller, was most thankful.

If Whitehorse had disappointed, Skagway achieved the opposite. It was preserved very much as it had been; the old shacks still around and anything new, built in the old style. The effect was perfect.

It wasn’t big, a one horse kind of a town but with plenty of restaurants and shops. Its harbour, on the other hand, was big and in the season the berthing place of huge cruise liners, sometimes as many as four at a time.

They come on certain days of the week when the whole town is populated with strangers. It had always been thus, ever since the gold mining days. More tomorrow.

Margaret Gillies Brown