Hiking the Tombstone

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As we cover the 7 hours that separate Whitehorse and the Tombstone Territorial Park, I try to make sense of my impatience of the last few days. That’s one thing the road does for me: it allows me to sit with my feelings. Sitting with discomfort is never fun. It’s so much easier to run away and get busy with something else. But here, between Carmacks and Pelly Crossing, there are only rows of spruce trees and the nagging rain. I feel frustrated. As I talk to JF, I realize he also feels the same. There is 100 reasons to feel frustrated. There always will be if we choose to be frustrated. It’s all about attitude. We can choose to focus on what we wish we had or we could try and turn this frustration into gratitude for what we actually have. And we do have a lot. By Steward Crossing, the frustration had dissolved and we both felt lighter and ready for a weekend of fun.

We arrived at the Tombstone campground a bit after 11 pm (yes, it was still light out. And no, there would be no Perseids watching for us this year!). In the Yukon, you don't make reservations, you just show up. For $12 (or $50 for the entire season in any Yukon government campground if you are a resident) you get a gorgeous campsite and free firewood! 

On Saturday monrning, the sun was shining. We made cinnamon-apple latkes while the girls made their most beautiful fairy garden ever (because there is all sorts of mosses and berries here, mama!) and we hit the new interpretation center for some more info on the hikes. There, we got to try some bannock bread and delicious tea made of yarrow, blueberries and labrador tea leaves, while the girls practice a puppet show with Joanna, a park interpreter that also spoke French. That interpretation center seriously rocks!

We decided to drive North a bit more (we were a mere 350 km from the Arctic Circle!) to do a hike called Surf Bird in the alpine tundra. It is quite fascinating, 20 km North of the campground, the boreal forest is no more, there is only alpine tundra.

When we arrived at the trailhead, there was no trail. Only 360 degrees of mountains and wet and mushy tundra. There were tons of ripe blueberries and moss berries and almost ripe cranberries. We feasted on them every ten steps. The dwarf birches and alder were already starting to turn red and yellow. We could see the moon the whole time we were there. Is it because we were so far north?

The next day, we decided to do a guided hike (with our beloved bilingual interpreter Joanna) to Grizzly Lake overlook. It's fun to notice things we wouldn't notice without an interpreter and it seems to motivate the girls to be in a group. Here, Aïsha gave highbush cranberries to an Irish man for him to try.

I stopped at the lookout with Mathilde who had a sore knee, while JF and Mara and Aïsha kept going up. Here, we can see Monolith mountain. Many people do an overnight hike to Grizzly Lake (11 km) down in that valley. We'd like to do it in 2 years with the girls.

The man, on top of the world!

Music with her

Ever since they were tiny babies, she brought music to their life. She sang to them every Wednesday night when she came and babysat them with Johanne. She held them on her lap as soon as they could sit while she played the piano. No wonder they love music so much. And for the first time, they could share that passion with her. DanB teaches music to children here in the Yukon and she showed the girls some of the great games she uses with them. The three of them had twinkles in the eyes! Even after all those years apart, the connexion is still there, and their love for each other is still intact. 



p.s. For those who do not follow Road it up on FB (or who haven't checked Get Notifications), here is the link to an interview that was aired on CBC. They used the same footage for a longer video version that you can watch here (you have to select the August 13 Northbeat TV show in the boxes below - the guy with the blue hat, it's at about 36 min).

Her week

She had been looking forward to her canoe-kayak camp since May. It was her first time packing a lunch and a lot of attention went into its preparation (she wanted boxed raisins and salted sunflower seeds and sesame sticks). I had made a thermos of warm chocolate almond milk, because I knew she would get wet and cold. 

On the first morning she was so proud and excited, she was literally bouncing up and down, just like she did as a toddler. When I picked her up, she had barely touched her lunch (she was probably too busy chatting away…), but she was tired and in a foul mood (oh the low blood sugar…).

I found one of her sock in the parking lot. She had no clue where her water bottle and hat went. Oh well! Cheers to first experiences!

 

Home, but not home

It is a weird feeling to come back to a place that used to be home. A part of me still feels at home here, but so much brings me back to the reality that I am not anymore… Sometimes, I feel like an old man standing in the middle of town, holding an old photograph, comparing the past and the present, lost in memories. Familiar faces walk past, not remembering me as one of them.

Everywhere I go, there are pieces of my life as a young mom. On that street I walked so often with babies in sling, at the pool I visited weekly with wiggly toddlers, on that climbing wall where I pushed little bums up so many times.

But I remember where to find the chickpeas at the grocery store, where to turn to avoid all the stop signs and super long red lights, who to go see early on at the market to secure some eggs, where to find arnica flowers and wild blueberry patches…

Everything feels so familiar and so foreign at the same time. Home but not home. It’s bittersweet...

 

The shooting of a documentary

There is never a boring moment with Simon! Here: chewing grass just like the muskox!

Mara and Bella even had the crew film their dance routine!

We will be part of a documentary series presented by TV5 on people that live off the beaten path. Simon and his crew spent the week with us and we truly had a blast! They filmed our daily life in the bus: waking up, making breakfast and picking greens in the greenhouse and garden for the green juice, preparing the energy balls for the market, JF working and finishing the wood flooring, the nightime routine (accompanied by a very funny made up story by Simon!). All this in our bus. At times, there were 9 persons in it! 

We all jumped aboard the bus and went to visit the Yukon Wildlife Preserve. We were in luck and got to see all the new babies! We found the 4 lynx kittens hidden in the shade cuddling with their mom and even got to see the mountain goat triplets (a very rare occurence) from very close! 

On the way back, the film crew was filming from a vehicle in movement, and just like in the movies, they were driving in front of us, beside, behind... It was pretty impressive!

It's a lot of work, and many days will go into the making of this documentary... We will spend a good 4 full days with them for a 20 minute episode that will be released in January 2016...
We are pretty excited to be part of this! And it is such a neat experience for us and the girls!

Caribou Mountain

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There are not many places in the world where you can do a short (but steep!) hike and have such an amazing view... and with nobody else on the trail. After a mere 20 minutes, we had a stunning panoramic view of Bennett Lake and Montana Mountain. We kept climbing and climbing through the alpine vegetation. The descent was slippery, but fun! 

Half-way up, Mathilde found a rock with what looks like a petroglyph of a mountain goat (there are lots of mountain goats on Caribou Mountain). We'll bring it to the Tourism and Culture Department to have it assessed. She is so proud of her rock!

The call of the wild

Water ballon play with Amanda

The children prepared a play. Here's the cutest ticket vendor in the Yukon!

Aïsha was the tree

Our little setup at our friends' place. Amanda even brought a flower pot near the door to decorate our space!

Making fishing lure with Yukon beer caps

There's always some great food at our table

Sprouts, flowers, fresh greens... Yum!

A swim with friends at the Lake

Even with all the fun stuff happening around here, I feel thin-skinned. For some reason, the Yukon shakes me to the core every single time I come back. It strips me naked, more than any other place does. I feel raw, vulnerable, my whole being exposed. Face to face with the most intimate parts of my soul. This place seems to do that to many people. You can't fake it here. You are called back the essence of your being. Jack London said it beautifully in The Call of the Wild.
 

“He was sounding the deeps of his nature, and of the parts of his nature that were deeper than he, going back into the womb of Time. “
  
“But especially he loved to run in the dim twilight of the summer midnights, listening to the subdued and sleepy murmurs of the forest, reading signs and sounds as a man may read a book, and seeking for the mysterious something that called -- called, waking or sleeping, at all times, for him to come.” 
  Jack London - The Call of the Wild  

 

Market day joy

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It was seeing familiar faces come back for energy balls and the amazement of people at finding out that something so healthy could be so delicious. It was the fishing in the river in shifts. It was catching up with old friends. It was the bartering with other sellers that left everybody happy. It was the clapping at the end of the market to celebrate another great day of hard work. It was the swim in the ice-cold lake on the way back home and the dance party around the bonfire late in the night with roasted fruits on sticks. It was seeing the moon disappearing behind the mountains. It was falling asleep with Mara in my arms with her hair smelling of wood smoke.

Weeding and juicing

When you travel, growing a garden is obviously out of the question, unless you stop somewhere long enough to watch it grow for a season. So when Amanda told us to stop buying greens and use the ones from her garden, we were more than delighted. She has a huge patch of chard that is bolting, so we juice lots of it everyday, along with some kale. She also grows loads of other greens in her greenhouse, like spinach, arugula, mustard greens and different types of lettuce that we eat daily in salads.

As we helped weed the potatoes, we also saved some of our favorite weeds to add to our juices: lamb's quarter and chickweed. Freshly picked greens (and weeds!) are loaded with nutrients and you can litterally feel the energy boost they give you. I feel so blessed my girls appreciate those greens as much as we do!

Moutain Hero

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We woke up at 10 am on Sunday morning to a grey sky. We had had a nice evening in town at our friends Elise and Ludo's and were planning a slow day when Elise and Ludo showed up on their way to Carcross, where they were going hiking. We quickly packed a lunch and decided to join them. On our way there, it started raining... It's been that kind of summer here... So we ate our lunch in the rain, putting on all the layers we had, then sat in the car to wait for the rain to stop. Ten minutes later, we were good to go! As we started ascending, the sun came back and we stripped down to shorts and t-shirts!

Mountain Hero is a gorgeous hike that quickly has very rewarding views. It once was a copper mine and there are still cables and artefacts from the mining period. It is all ascent, however, so half way through, JF, Ludo and Aïsha decided to keep going to the top, while Elise and I went back down with the other girls.

It felt great to be in the wild again and the forest smelled amazing after the rain. Elise had the girls do singalong songs to signal our presence to the bears. They were hilarious! It makes my own heart sings to see my girls connect with their Yukon friends so easily.

We then met up at the new café in Carcross after the hike and the girls had homemade lemon and passion fruit sorbetto. It was such a wonderful spontaneous day! 

Yukon musing

I had forgotten how quickly the Yukon sun and wind dry clothes (and lambskins), how warm the Northern sun feels on the skin (and how cold it feels without it), how the morning air smells different than the evening air...

I had forgotten how it feels to be sitting around a bonfire and not realize it's almost midnight because it never gets dark... and putting our feral children to bed way too late with dirty feet, sticky marshmallow hair and a big smile on their faces.

A table at the Farmers' market!

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Our friend Amanda and the children have had a table at the Fireweed Farmers' market for a few year. This year, they sell raw ice cream (made simply with bananas and other fruits in the Champion). When I asked Amanda if we could sell some of our favorite raw energy balls, she said yes right away. This week, Amanda was also giving a workshop on rhubarb. If you have read my bio page, you know how much I love rhubarb! You should have seen how proud Mathilde was to join in the preparation of rhubarb chutney, rhubarb iced tea, rhubarb ketchup, rhubarb lentil curry, rhubarb jam, fig and rhubarb compote and my favorite, spicy rhubarb pickles!

The market is open from 3 pm to 8 pm, so we arrived at 2 pm to set up our tables. It was windy and cold and our friends who were selling ice cream were quite bummed, because of course, ice cream don't sell really well when it's freezing outside. By 6 pm, all our energy balls were sold! The girls were thrilled with the experience (and loved that they could use the money they made to buy what they wanted from the other tables!). Finally, the sun showed its face and we had to strip down to t-shirts, and the ice cream started selling like crazy. The girls helped their friends to make it, and Mara and I had to run to the grocery store to get more fruits. 

The rhubarb workshop was a big hit too. People were excited to see how creative they could get with rhubarb (it is still rhubarb season up here and there is tons on it!!).

The market is such a social venue, it was fun to catch up with all the people I hadn't seen in a long time, and it was such a great experience for the girls! They want to do it every week while we are here!

That special place...

We are blessed to be friends with the owners of Traveling Light Bed and Breakfast Yukon. I talked about them here when we visited two years ago. They live in one of the most amazing piece of land on earth and every time I sit on the platform in front of the yurt and look at that 270 degree view of the mountains, I almost feel overwhelmed by the beauty of it all.

To say that I needed to recenter myself after our first 48 hours in the Yukon would be an understatement. The Yukon summer energy has always affected me immensely and as much as I love the long days and whirlwind of activities, I need to work twice as hard to stay grounded. This time around is no exception. In the summer, most Yukonners are stretched thin, pulled in ten thousand directions, wanting to take advantage of the nice weather to enjoy their amazing playground. 

I felt off my game a bit when we arrived. Surrounded by people with full agendas, I realized we had missed the boats to see many of our dear friends. Many already left to visit friends and family afar whereas most of the others were having a string of visitors throughout what was left of the summer.

I realized that I live more and more in a separate world. A world without plans, without an agenda, with long unplanned weeks and plenty of time on my hands. It truly is a blessing, but it does clash more and more with all the busyness around us.

Needless to say, I was disappointed. And I felt it the way the princess could feel the pea under the twenty mattresses... so that moment in that special place, sitting on the platform in front of the yurt, helped me move on towards acceptance of what I could not change. One breath at a time. I stayed there until the wind had cleared my mind. Until things started to make sense again. Until my perspective had shifted.

And as I walked back to the bus, taking in the sweet smell of the boreal forest through all my senses, I felt more alive than I had in a long time.

 

To the land of the midnight sun

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All the regulars were there: the stone sheep at Muncho Pass, the bison herd near Coal River, the shiny black ravens everywhere along the road. By Watson Lake, we had stopped counting the bears…

There was the tasting of the first fireweeds and a happy dance as we entered the Yukon and recognized the familiar smell of the northern air. “It’s our birthplace!” Mara exhorted. Ahh! The feeling of home. I hope they always feel this way when they come here.
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There were barely any bugs at Liard Hot Springs this year, which made for a pleasant soak as we chatted with another traveling family from Quebec. And at 9 pm, the sun was still high in the sky as we inched towards Whitehorse.

Eat. Drive. Sleep. Repeat.

With each passing kilometer, we shed the frustration of the last couple of weeks, the stress of the last few months, the worries of the last year… With each passing kilometer, I can feel my shoulders drop, his spine lenghten as he drives on.

As we travel along the highway, I can hear my thoughts with unusual clarity, expansive and full. Anything feels possible.

It is our fourth time crossing Canada (JF’s fifth. In 2008, when we moved back to Quebec, he drove that same road in 5 days. Yes, 6000 km in 5 days. He is a road warrior!).

Every time, I am reminded of how on the road, the need to have things go according to plan is less pressing. There is only that big open road that swallows us and spits us back. And changes our perspective. 

 

*For those of you who do not follow Road it up on Facebook, I invite you to do so since I post a lot of things that do not make it to the blog, like this interview I did for Radio-Canada (in French).

 

We're peas in a pod

An improvised game of soccer aftter breakfast in a Manitoba rest area, a smiling dragonfly, great food on our plates even when we drive 8 hours a day, kitchen helpers that are now truly helpful, roadtrip playlist and girls dancing in the bus while we drive the flat straight roads of Saskatchewan. Smiles all around. We truly are peas in a pod.

An evening in Northern Ontario

There was a curious loon coming closer as we showered in the cold northern Ontario lake. There were bike rides in sooty black bare feet, the obligatory fairy garden, and tofu quinoa tacos and cherry blueberry crumble over the fire. There was a toast to this amazing new life that we get to live every day now. And the loon that sang late into the night.

Farmers' market and the Great Lakes

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One of the things I love about living on the road is discovering the local farmers' market. We love our greens and sprouts and supporting local organic farmers is very important to us, so wherever we go, we try to shop at health food stores that carry local produce or at farmers' market when the timing is right. This is a great site to find the farmers' market in every town we visit.

The other night, we stopped to make dinner at one of our usual spot near Pancake Bay Provincial Park (Ontario) and the girls swam in cold Lake Superior while we sat in the soft sand. We looked at them jump in the waves and scream with glee and smiled in silence.

Things felt more right than they had in a long time.
 

And we're rollin'

As we drive on, I understand why everything is carpeted in our bus. Since the engine is sitting between the driver's and passenger's seat in what is called the dog house in Bluebird lingo. The engine noise is louder than our old '77 Westy, in which puttting on music was like trying to have an adult conversation surrounded by toddlers: pointless.

So we crossed Canada without talking much, our huge stinky St-Bernard sitting between us, just where the bus' dog house sits...

And now, since we cannot talk without screaming, we simply look at each other and smile our giddy smiles. Happy as clams.