The things I didn’t do in Dawson City - Moritz Ingwersen
The things I didn’t do in Dawson City.
I did not bring or purchase a novel by or biography of Jack London, yet I was struck by the fact that the enthused Parks Canada officer and retired English teacher tending the heritage of North America’s revered goldrusher-turned-littérateur emanated the same glow as my primary school teacher Frau Ullrich, whom I hold in very dear memory and who might have been the first to instill in me that peculiar exoticization of the Canadian North so characteristic of the twisted German imagination.
I did not yield to one of the profusely advertised opportunities to “pan for gold and keep everything you find,” yet I brought back a chunk of sedentary shale from the bed of Blackstone River that weighs as much as a pint of Yukon Gold and whose contoured edges shimmer like the rust of a century.
I did not visit the historic Dredge No. 4, the “largest wooden hull, bucket-line dredge in North America,” and was hence not able to marvel first-hand at the fact that it is “the size of a football field and 8 stories high,” yet I learned that a good portion of the land that supports the tailing ponds in West Dawson is owned by the Roman Catholic Church, whose bishop oversees his diocese from Whitehorse and required some serious coaxing from Dawson’s committed mayor to allow the Canadian League of Lady Wrestlers to stage their Grand Finale on church property.
I did not buy a shot and pay 5 dollars extra to become number 6000-something on the list of bold adventurers whose lips have touched a severed human toe pickled in salt and submerged in bourbon, yet I was told of decadent times when there was an abundance of donated toes and one could order “a foot” for 15 dollars, of tough times when brash boys would dare each other for a sourtoe coke on the front steps of the Dawson Downtown Hotel, and I learned that indeed there are no toe-prongs but that the toe-keeper’s job is to use fingers to fish the venerated limb from its salty jar before placing it on a special tray.
I did not shed my unease about tracking in the footsteps of settler colonialists who have constructed this part of the world as wild and replete with opportunities to mine riches and tales of adventure, decadence, and hardship, forcing Chief Isaac to place Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in songs and symbols in the hands of the Alaskan people for safeguarding while metropolitan entrepreneurs desecrated Han land and turned Dawson into the most populated city west of Winnipeg and north of LA; yet I began to learn what it might mean to follow the example of the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in Nation in giving the Yukon salmon population a life cycle’s break to recover from overfishing downstream of their spawning grounds.
It is curious to note the simultaneous sensation of exposure and constriction as the bus to Dawson wiggles its way north on Highway 2 through a sheer endless sea of pine and rock that promises to envelop anyone presumptuous enough to stray. I would like to assume that what presides in everyone who has at point or another called the Yukon their home is the reciprocity between its environmental propositions and the sense of community among those who accept them. It is one thing to blast through its layers in search for shiny epiphanies, and maybe another to listen to some of its stories, savor their texture, and share a meal.
This trip was made possible by the School for the Study of Canada International Student Travel Prize. I am grateful to Trent University’s Frost Centre, Ihor Junyk, and Veronica Hollinger for the generous support.
Moritz Ingwersen - 2017
View from Midnight Dome on Dawson City
Tombstone Territorial Park
The Yukon Valley
8 hour bus ride on Highway 2 heading towards Dawson
View on the Moosehide Slide