Camping In the Yukon or

I slept better before you pointed that out.

Last year I agreed to sleep in a tent in the Yukon. I figure if I just keep saying Yes…

No, the Yukon is not part of Alaska.

Yes, at some point EVERY person in Alaska must go there. Juneau-Alaskans have been known to travel 6 hours by ferry and car to the Yukon town of Whitehorse

Q: Why?

A: Because Whitehorse has a Dairy Queen.

I know…

But there are reasons to visit the Yukon, other than soft serve. My girlfriend wanted me to experience a great big, hard, scoop of wilderness, Jack London style. Just substitute our Subaru for his dog sled and we’re set.

At any rate, I actually thought this trip to the Yukon might be fun. Our next door neighbors who are a chic couple (she runs an artic art gallery and he is a wildlife photographer who brings me fresh caught fish), had recommended it. And she mentioned a sunny little place called Atlin, a town with Swiss influence on a giant icey blue lake .

Ok, so start with a ferry trip through the Lynn Canal, the most beautiful inland waterway in southeast Alaska. Now add so much fog we couldn’t see beyond the boat railing. Did I mention the dozen drunken Alaskan students who seemed to be following us around deck singing rude songs and spilling beer?

It was late when we arrived in Skagway; it was cold, wet, even the light was grey…a pretty typical Alaskan summer evening. I prevailed. Tonight there would be no sleeping in a tent. We stayed in log cabins at the head of the Chilkoot Trail and the next morning at breakfast listened to stories of campers who had been flooded out and, while focusing their headlamps on the river, watched their tents float away in the swirling black current. In a fit of self congratulation, I applauded my wilderness acumen and looked at my partner for acknowledgement. I wasn’t totally surprised to see a trace of envy on her face as she thought of the swell adventure she had missed sleeping in the claustrophobic comfort of our cabin. Note to self: Tonight you will be camping out, no matter what, so pray for good weather and a soft piece of dirt.

The drive to WhiteHorse was stark, alpine, and beautiful--the skies dramatic and storm tossed, the visibility good. Very long days allowed us to drive a good distance toward Atlin and before the evening rains came, we decided we had best find a place to pitch our tent. We passed on two campgrounds for reasons which my partner explained, but the details had about as much impact on me as a Bisonte bag has on her. It was getting darker and I was getting crankier when we saw the sign for SNAFU Lake (I could not make this stuff up). And yes, you can say it, “We should have known.”

We found a place not too far from the lake to put the tent. We made an intentionally smoky fire to keep the GIANT mosquitoes away. I heated water and slurped down noodles (you don’t cook much in the real wilderness unless you want to share your dinner with critters) and we crawled exhausted into the tent.

It’s amazing! My partner has sleep disturbance and is chronically sleep deprived in her everyday life but put her in a tent with nothing but a nylon layer between her and sudden death, and she is asleep in 5 minutes. Tonight, as the kamikaze mosquitoes dashed themselves against the tent and made themselves “one” with the raindrops, my girlfriend was already snoring. I, of course, need to read for at least an hour whether I am in a Four Seasons or sleeping on a bed of nails so I switched on the headlamp…a battery operated contraption that makes a girl look like a coal miner but does work for reading in the wild. I opened my book. I heard a noise. Not like anything I had ever heard before. I looked over at my partner…nothing. I decided to ignore it…tune it out. I was feeling deliciously groggy when I heard voices.

“I don’t know, maybe they’re out on the lake,” said a man with a slight drawl.

‘I’ll just throw a couple more logs on their fire…keep it burning till they get back,” said a kindly sounding slow talker. “They can’t be in that tent.”

Then I heard the aforementioned logs hit the metal collar of OUR fire ring. What the hell? I scrambled for my glasses and slid out of my sleeping bag and into my polar bear print, flannel jammie pants.

“Hi,” I said poking my head out from the zipper/door. “We are in here. What’s up?” I said to a tall skinny guy holding a shotgun and his shorter friend armed only with the upside down axe he was using as a cane.

“Don’t you hear that?” asked the drawler?

"What?" I asked the silence. Then of course I did hear it. As if on cue, a sort of moaning, kind of crying soft drawn-out growl.

“That,” said the taciturn slow talker. And of course, slap my forehead and feel really dumb, I realized I had been hearing/ignoring that sound for the entire last hour.

“Oh yeah, that,” I admitted, feigning casual impatience, “What is it?”

Not calmly, shotgun man raised his voice and explained, “It’s a grizzly bear and it’s right over there.” He was pointing to a cottonwood covered rise just beyond our tent, where one tree was shivering, as if in a stiff wind, and all the rest were still, not a leaf moving.

Now, until this moment I had never experienced an Alaskan, man or woman, scared of anything but I assure you, this guy was not calm, even armed with a shotgun he seemed agitated.

“He was here all last night. He was bothering my girls in their tent. Had ta’ make 'em move into the truck and I slept in the tent.” He pumped his shot gun once, a really manly exclamation point; he almost growled himself. “He’s back. I don’t know about you Girrrrrls,” he said, “but we are gonna’ finish our dinner and pack up.”

Now we were all awake and from the look on my partner's face, she was more scared of the guy with the gun than the invisible moaning bear. I had a bad feeling we were not going to “pack anything.”

The rest of the night was quite eventful. Every trip to the bathroom, beyond exciting and even though we slept in the car, (she does make an occasional concession to my fear) neither of us slept very well. In the morning after making coffee in my amazing campfire espresso maker, I bravely climbed the hill behind our campsite. Sure enough there were some bear signs on the trees and around the area but the teenage grizzly was no where to be found.

Sometime remind me to tell you about the cabin with the view of a lake, its 800 thread count organic cotton sheets and king size beds. We stayed there the next night and the night after that. They call it a Wilderness/Fishing lodge. Hmmmm, tell that to the chef.

I KNOW where I am. How did I get here?

It was about 5 years ago that my girlfriend and potential life partner said to me, “You know, I can do one more year in New York, but I don’t think I can do two.”

Let me put this proclamation in perspective: I have lived in Manhattan since 1969 and it had only occurred to me once to consider living anywhere else… Los Angeles in the 70s. I lasted roughly 6 months and only because I was madly in love with a Broadway musical comedy star who was trying to get a sitcom there, my best gay boyfriend Franklin was willing to come too (don’t ask me to remember why, it was a LONG time ago and it was the 70s) AND I love sun, palm trees, and gorgeous blue skies, all of which Los Angeles circa 74 had.

But despite all these compelling aides to joy, the thought of Christmas in the same sentence with flip-flops made clear that the word panic was a perfect partner to the word attack. I packed a cooler full of Dos Equis and diet soda and jumped in my MGB. Before you could say Dancer/Prancer/Vixen, I was back in my Manhattan rent-controlled apartment, happily dragging a 10 ft Christmas tree, up 5 flights of stairs.

In her defense, my new girl friend had been clear when she fell in love with me and moved-in to our Village apartment: “Hell is a town with more than two stop lights,” “There is nothing that even comes close to wilderness or wide open spaces on the East Coast,” and, “I don’t know how long I can do this but I love you and I really want to try.”

I have been called a “game girl” a “good sport” and I make it a habit to try always to “say YES” no matter how trite and pop-metaphysical that makes me sound, but even my friends who had labeled me “willing” were shocked by my response to the chilling suggestion that we might move, “Ok where do you want to go?”

“Alaska?” she muttered, cringing toward her side of the truck like an abused dog (yes she has a blue pick-up with tires so big, I have to jump to get into it and I THINK IT IS VERY SEXY and no, I have NEVER even thought of hitting her).

And no one was more surprised than me by my answer, “OK.” I said firmly, with an inflection that hinted I might even be excited about what came next.

I have lived in Juneau, Alaska for the last four years.

And now, as anyone who’s paid attention must have seen coming, I am overdue for a little proclaiming of my own. Standing knee deep in slush, heaving snow off our January driveway with my girlfriend, “Shovelina”, I blurt, “Honey, I’m DONE! Stick me with a fork I am so done.”

She, of the calm presentation, would have stopped there. I continued, “I am done with being apart for weeks and snow that starts in October and ends…does it end, ever? I’m done with all the flying and sleeping alone…”

So, in the midnight blue afternoon, with the fat flakes falling, to the endless accompaniment of metal scraping ice from concrete, the discussion that eventually resulted in our decision to leave Alaska and go back to New York (it’s temporary) began.

How have I managed 4 years in Alaska while working with clients in New York, Europe, and the Middle East, a rent stabilized apartment and a generalized anxiety disorder, specifically triggered by riding in airplanes whose wings appear to be coming off…?

How have I paddled through water so cold icebergs hang around all summer, forgetting to melt and learned to live with bears (New York was good practice for not being the top of the food chain), NOT TO MENTION living through a national election which introduced the world (oh, the shame of it) to Sarah Palin, www.Conservatives4Palin.com the hillbilly-ninja Governor of Alaska?…that’s for the next post.