Life on the River

Here at Yukon River camp life on the river is in some ways very similar to life on the river floating down it’s murky waters towards the Bering Sea. The act of living is defined by ritual and routine and remembered for routine’s exceptions. On the river it is daily rituals of breaking and setting up camp, and the routine of floating. You alternate reading books, with watching the landscape as you drift by, and various isolated, poignant, and forgettable conversations. Occasionally something exciting and dramatic occurs that forces you to break from routine and thus becomes memorable. One day your boat may become swamped as waves crash over the stern while you eat dinner, or a grizzly may angrily pace up and down the shores of the opposite bank, perhaps boredom and cramped conditions may force you out of your dry tent and into a wind and rain storm to sip whisky and enjoy the chill wind and the biting rain assault your senses.

At Yukon River Camp life isn’t so different. It is defined by living and working with the same 7 people for 5 months, completing the same chores every day, and reusing the same conversations to pass the time. Books are read, movies watched, and watched again. Rituals are defined and then perfected to the point of thoughtless repetition early on. The tourists come through, ask the same questions as the last , get on the same coach and head north or south on the only road. Every day becomes the same as the last and no different than the next. Remembered only due to exceptions.

A couple weeks ago, there was an exception. I arose early, to drink coffee down by the river, as I do almost every day. I have a screen tent in an old hot shot encampment with a camp chair. I sleep just up the river in a two man tent. So I woke up, stumbled from my tent, grabbed the stove, coffee, pot and water and staggered down river to the screen tent. (I wasn’t drunk yet, but due to a lifetime of Scotch and cheap beer, followed by coffee upon waking up I stumble, stagger, tumble, and bumble through life until either the second cup of coffee hit’s the blood stream or the third Bloody Mary reaches my head). I reached the screen tent and began to unzip the door when suddenly a flurry of activity caused me to jump back and desperately search through the haze for the source of this most unwelcome excitement. There inside the screen tent occasionally standing on the ground, occasionally flying into the wall seeking release was a Boreal Owl. His head turned backwards his eyes never left me as he struggled to get free. Eventually he calmed down and I put my coffee gear on the ground in order to unzip the door. I was positive he would see his opportunity and bolt for the door, hesitating just long enough to scrape my face off my skull, but instead I was able to tie the screen door up out of the way and walk off to the side. I waited and watched for a time but his eyes did not leave me and he made no further attempt to escape. So I left. Fuck it, there’s coffee in the café. On the way to the café I ran into one of the cooks with a camera so we headed back down to the river. The Boreal Owl was still in the tent, now sitting in the middle of the floor and apparently sleeping. He heard us approaching and lazily opened his eyes before closing them again. Jerry snapped off a few photos and then we decided to flush him out. His eyes popped open when we started moving again and he watched as we made our way around the back of the tent. He didn’t make a move however until Jerry shook the wall of the tent at which time he took off out the tent and banked downstream. And that is the story of how Jerry and I released a Boreal Owl back into the wild.