Dawson City, Yukon Territory
Dawson City in the spring is many things to many people, a myth, a lie a legend, a passing fancy, a barb-wire fence. Dawson is a microcosm amidst the illimitable tenderness of the Yukon Wilderness, an outpost that is still wildly cosmopolitan. Dawson is a paradox, an unfolding mystery of twilight.Dawson City in the spring is the season of the floods when the discharge of melt-water is at its most churlish height; the welter and smash and foam of the river most savage and unforgiving. The great river and the great land is turbid with primordial migrations. The mosquito awakens under leaf and the salmon begin their mad struggle up river.
Dawson City in the spring is the gentle mingel and swarm of humanity: the miners, artists, students, backpackers, mountain climbers, kayakers, dancers, drinkers, fishermen, natives, locals, tourists, travellers, fire-fighters, mushroom pickers, bush people, gamblers, and other assorted tumbleweeds. Dawson City in the spring is a study in character, an imposition of history and hands-on mythology. It would seem that there is a common element inherent in all those who are attracted to the Yukon, yet it is an element that is so impalpable, indefinable, incomprehensible, ineffable, that it will never be understood, never be measure, never bottled.
Dawson City was conceived a century ago in the pioneer tradition of western United States mining camps. It was an era of instant towns as prospectors drifted from strike to strike bolstered by truth and rumours and visions of gold-poke glory. When the treasure ship EXCELSIOR sailed into San Francisco bay in July of 1897 with 2 tons of Yukon gold mass hysteria erupted around the world. Gold fever is the spontaneous combustion of human movement. Cry Havoc!
Dawson City is a concept based on impermanence. Tens of thousands of America's prodigal sons, thousands of bohemians of all nations, and a mittfull of Canadians soon built a massive village of planks and canvas along the mossy moose pastures at the mouth of the Klondike River. This frenzy last 18 months but Dawson City has been basking in the afterglow of legend ever since. At its height, Dawson was the most populous city in the Pacific Northwest. A few years later, another gold strike would sweep away the bulk of the transients.
The cast of characters in this sweeping epic have been enlivened by novels, poems, and cinema. Names like Diamond Tooth Gertie Lovejoy, Arizona Charlies Meadows, Klondike Kate, Belinda Mulroney, Swiftwater Bill, Jack McQueston, Sam Steele, and hundreds more have been immortalized by artists and historians alike. But that was the old testament of Lives-Lived-To-The-Fullest...
Stragglers still trickled into town after that initial boom looking for work. Most found employment on the dredges along bonanza creek when large scale operations replaced the individual miner. Dawson has always enjoyed the distinction of perennial employment. It has survived the Great Depression and a relentless string of recessions.
For fifty years in its existence there were no roads leading into Dawson. The Yukon River was the only access to the outside world. Perhaps, it is because of this that from its inception as a port town, and consequently as a service-industry town, Dawson has thrived. Not much has changed. Today, that wild and frenzied crazy-making era in Canadian history is a marketable commodity.
Wayward miners still wipe the sweat off their brows working in the goldfields and they still come into town for their yearly sprees. however, the majority of todays transients are occupied otherwise: They scuttle scalding hot dishes in huge stainless steel sinks, pour highballs of Glenlivet and mugs of Rickard's Red, balance steaming entrees of poached salmon expertly on out-stretched arms, tuck and fold 'courtesy corners' onto rolls of toilet paper, dribble pancake batter onto 180 degree grills sourdough originally brought over the Chilkoot Pass, slide tarnished room keys across polished mahogany counters, and among other activities, dance upon darkly tanned legs a la Gay Paree. All of this is done to service, accomodate and entertain the growing influx of tourists every year.
Dawson City in the spring is a season of awakenings. A season of illuminations and synchronicities. Nocturnal sun-lit skies shimmer with the solstitial suspension of time. And the gulp, the gurgle, and the kloo klook of the raven's tongue sounds like time, itself, caught in a bottleneck.
A sort of satori by misadventure...
