Down to the River

Those feelings of mutability while sitting on the river bank, they are my present, they are me and as I get older the repetition, the continuity, become ever more dominant. I become my own relationship to the past. This moving present becomes less and less of an unknown.

Little here seems new to me, except the buildings: in collapse or on display,
and the curiosities: Goat Coat, Sour Toe shooters, Hobo Hotel and ample supplies of stable milk.

Everything else is a welcome echo, especially the smells. Pine and scrub grass, smoke in the air, rain on the oil soaked dirt roads; Cornwallis, the Okanagan, the West Kootenays and Wainwright, all are present here. The land echoes the past and all those other rural, removed places.

The Westminster

For your consideration: A few shots from in and outside the Westminster hotel. The Hobo Hotel seems ideally placed for those nights when the stumble home is just too much to contemplate. As well, a trailer full of mattresses is really just a trailer full of possibilities.





















































From inside: The Snakepit TV cabinet... the Wooden Cobra.






















and birchbark canoe






















And though this little fella is found at a gift shop he looks like he could use (or has used) a few pints

The Dead part 2

This marks my second day in a row of me being hung-over. This ends now I think. Back to my afternoon tipple only. I did get to wear the Goat Coat last night though. Hooves and all, but no photos.

At least it's easy to work off the booze; Mountains are handy for that. This morning I went for a boot around the base of the Dome and found various items of interest that fit nicely into my newly decided upon theme.

Graves, it seems, are all over the place here. Step off the trail and there's a mound with a body several feet under the surface.






























Further along the 9th Ave. trail I came across this little gem of an abandoned, collapsed abode. The trail is called 9th ave because decades ago Dawson stretched up the mountainside. With the collapse of the Gold rush, the town shrunk, leaving bodies, houses and roads to fend for themselves.















Treecave!















And, the last vestige of snow in town:

Guys, where are we?

I find myself struck by the mutability of this northern reach. Instead of arriving to an unknown landscape, of tundra and receding snow lines, my sense is of having experienced this place before.

Sitting on a bench, 500 or so feet past the confluence of the Klondike and Yukon rivers, on the shoreline I feel the most unsure. Part of my reason for coming here was to consider my youth in small town (village actually) West Kootenays and the weight of experience those years gave me. The slow turning of the Yukon River then, deep and deceivingly fast under the surface offers teleportation most effectively. Behemoth, that’s you.

Flowing north seems wrong, like backwards through some very cold time. Backwards to the awesomeness of fishing for Rainbow Trout on The Columbia River and the wretchedness of school bus stop beatings. Of terror and power.

The Columbia always seemed at odds with the dead landscape of Trail, rushing its occupants through to escape the ill will of the slopes poisoned by the massive refinery on the river’s shore. While Dawson and its architecture are rooted in the very specific lineage of gold (Trail was Lead and Zinc), it’s this, the landscape which is a chameleon, changing to accommodate my past, putting me a bit on my heels.

But unsurity is part of the residency experience – a challenge to produce something coherent when coherence comes only from the accumulation of these fractures.

The Dead

Where to begin?
With a mediocre Americano I suppose.






















Actually, in answer to the question of darkness, here's a photo out of my bedroom at 2am, taken after getting back from a ride around town at 1am. It's really quite weird as it feels like daytime but there are so few people around. Perhaps there's a flesh eating plague keeping folk inside. On the other hand, when you see 9 year old kids wandering the streets at midnight, well, that seems kinda weird too.






















After the coffee I hopped back on the bike to check out the cabins of the Illuminati/literati. In the case of Dawson, that's Jack London and "a cat named Bobby Service". Both places have grass roofs and even if there are currently no goats manicuring them, they're still pretty sweet little abodes.

First is Robert Service:




















































And Jack London, who is cooler than Service in the he-man cabin contest because he has a stilt house (used for keeping bears and hobos away from his furs and meat).






































This was a pretty filled day for me. After the mad trappers of literature I rode up The Dome, stopping first at the cemetery area. The area has divisions for various faiths and affiliations such as Catholic, Jew and cop. Also YOOP.

Many of the grave markers are seemingly ad-hoc, but like much around Dawson, the necessities of Northern living generate resourceful and unexpected results. The first thing that strikes Big city folk (I suppose) is the wood markers that are completely effaced by time and the weather.























Steel piping is standard fare up here too. Many of the graves use it as a fence.





















































If you don't like thinking about dead kids, skip ahead.
There are quite a few tiny graves up here, again in various states of repair and making good use of whatever's available.




























































... 3 days old. sigh.



















That's it for now. There's more dead folk to come. For now though, I'm off to The Pit. In my years of drinking there are a few standout (and falldown) joints. Walt's Place in Rainier Washington, The Wainwright Hotel in Wainwright AB, The (late, great) 'Wick in London ON, perhaps The Communist's Daughter in TO and now The Snakepit

Come with me, if you will

Day 2 and I spent a fitful night's sleep worrying that I hadn't produced any work in my 12 hours here. That would be really lame if it didn't summarize my personality so nicely.

This morning (well, morning, afternoon and evening are more or less the same, differing only in temperate, not light) I wandered around, stewing over project ideas and taking shots of architecture. For your consideration, I offer: a selected number of highlights.
Starting off with a lie, this photo of a local telephone pole wasn't really taken today, but was taken at midnight last night. I guess that's today though, and yeah, day or night, little difference.

I suppose I should do some research on these buildings, but for now, here's a nice abandoned ochre structure down on the riverfront.
















How's about some birds? Swallows in fact, nesting in the eaves of another building.
















And in closing, a tree house. Pretty sweet.

Here we go

I've been here in Dawson for about 10 hours and so far I've done one lame drawing, assembled my bike (and stripped the head of my stem bolt), gone for a run, had a Yukon Amber Ale and made dinner from items left here by previous residency artists. Except for the crappy drawing, not a bad day so far.

There's no real night and in about 4 weeks the sun won't actually set at all. The birds seemingly love it as they sing all night long. Last night I was in Whitehorse (somewhere around 600K south of here) and I woke up at 3am to the sound of birds singing in the twilight.

I have no photos of birds singing in the twilight so for now, a shot out the window of my studio. There is one bird, perhaps a Red-Winged Blackbird, singing as I type this period.