CROSS COUNTRY #32 Yukon Do It

Goldie (sotto voce): Ugh...Barry said this trail is steep for a few minutes then levels off...twenty minutes straight uphill, to see a lake...talk about fool's gold.

Goldie (inner imaginative voice) Just have to keep going, for the sake of the family, keep their faces in front of me. How can the incline be so steep? How do you kill your horse when it can't take you another step farther? Some abandon theirs. I used my shechting knife....is there a blessing for mercy? Bones showing, back sagging, my last dollar went for her feed..."First care for the animals," my father always said, "the tradition requires it." 2000 pounds of pack, the Canadian government requires it, a year's provisions to go on the rush.

Don't look down in the snow, at the animals - some still moving, their bodies form a bridge across the endless rocks, ice and snow....keep walking. The gold is real. I hear it washing into my pan in my dreams, a fortune waiting for us to just pick it up.100,000 of us started out. Stampeders they call us. 30,000 remain on this trek, most turned back, many dead along the way. Have to keep going. Oh! No! Old Klem just jettisoned his fiddle, he won't last. Yukon do it. That's my refrain, when Sarah saw I couldn't live knowing I'd failed her, she finally agreed, Yukon do it.

Goldie (sotto voce): How did any of them make it and why? Was it avarice or need? I can't even breathe, midlife out of shape woman....Look at Mark, leaping over tree roots like it's a game. Tourist bureau rep says, twenty minutes to the top. Why do they always hire people who have never done the things they suggest to others?

Goldie (inner imaginative voice): Some have begun to eat their shoe leather. The tephillin in my bag can't have such a fate, they were my grandfather's. Am I the only Jew on this path? I've heard Jews from Lithuania are even in South Africa, pedlars heading into the bleakest hot, lost places....Outshoorn was one town's name. Master of the Universe, I'd trade this cold for even that. Turn back? I have no money for return passage...turning back means working for the railroad being built on these same torturous passes to Dawson....then a year's wages to get home, home with nothing.

There's my buddy, Solomon Nordstrom, he swears he'll take back a fortune, open up a store and stay put forever after this hell for fools. There's a camp ahead, $5 for a pound of tomatoes, they say, $2.50 for a cucumber. Also has a comfort station, one of those places that has everyone pushing themselves the extra bit they didn't think they had in 'em, "The House of Negotiable Affection." I'll die before such a fate befalls my Sarah or little Rachel.

Goldie (sotto voce): Fifty minutes, straight uphill. Does he think I'm like that Rabbi Howard Cohen who leads Jewish outward bound type stuff? Where's a helicopter when you need it? 

Oh God, Mark's on a branch over there creeping across that waterfall...don't shout, wait, trust....pheww!!

Goldie: (inner imaginative voice) The spring thaw's coming they say, waterfalls every few feet, eagles nesting, moose calves that are easier prey if you can get by the momma. Seven, I have seven waiting hearts and mouths back home, hungry and hopeful. Sarah feeds them on what little the farm can still produce besides dust. Yukon do it, Yukon do it. Only Yukon do it

Goldie: (Audible voice) Barry! You didn't have to double back, of course I'll make it. This strong young feminist isn't a quitter. Never mind, you say. Not much of a view, you say? Let's just head back? Aauuugh! 

Barry: They rushed to build a railway to the Klondike. Save people and animals going on the Klondike death march. It took only two years to blast the mountain for hundreds of miles and lay the line. Never mind, the gold rush was already over. Today they use fifteen miles of the one hundred fifty mile line to show tourists the area.

Skagway, Alaska.

Barry: How do you spell relief in Alaska?
          Aah, the ship is air conditioned.

We went to Alaska to get some decent weather, after a stint in Seattle. A few days ago it was 92 degrees. Today it also felt that way. What's all this preoccupation with weather? You may ask. In this part of the world, they don't hide the fact that it rains twenty five days a month. They boast that it's their "liquid sunshine" and throw out statistics that talk about annual snowfall and rain in the three figures - "two hundred inches of rain a year" and "one hundred feet of snow a year except this year it was two hundred" and so forth. The Carribean, this isn't.

Barry: By now you've gathered that today we drove up to the mountain pass in Canada where a hundred years ago, our forefathers battled starvation, drowning in the ocean, snow and ice, freezing and avalanches, and raging rapids, and highway robbery, and venereal disease, to strike it rich in the Klondike gold rush. Only about 7000 actually made it far enough to hunt for gold, only a handful managed to hold onto their wealth. (Nordstrom brought back $2800, opened a shoe store which today is a chain of high priced department stores.)

Reminds me of how much I hate to be part of the pack - like driving to Cape Cod in summer, or lining up at the new restaurant in town. They made a big deal about us taking our passports since we were crossing the border. It's true we crossed a few miles from the middle of nowhere in America to the middle of nowhere in Canada. We didn't have to show anyone anything and there was a sign at the border to the effect that if there wasn't a border guard, to report to a video camera and answer some questions. Someone needs to tell the cruise line we're not visiting North Korea.

Since Skagway (means sky-way) is kind of touristy - the statistics tell it all - 900 residents and 300,000 visitors. The principle "industry" in these parts is fishing (in serious decline everywhere it seems - what do people eat these days?) - we head out of town.  Haines is quaint, real in a Northern exposure way. It's about 15 miles by boat from Skagway and about 300 miles by road. We had an unmemorable afternoon sightseeing, but a learning experience nevertheless. I'm reminded that bus tours are not for me.

Goldie: On the boat back from Haines one of our guides yesterday explains that her Caucasian American husband has been adopted into her Tlingit tribe through normal custom. From the mother flows descent. There are two kinds of Tlingit, Eagle and Raven. She is Eagle from her mother (Eskimo father). In taking a husband, he must become Raven and so that tribe has found a family to adopt him and teach him their ways. No one can marry someone from their own side of a tribe. Ancient rules protect the genetic integrity of the tribe, requiring death for those who would defy this practice.

I'm fascinated by this approach to what is, well.....intermarriage. Instead of her family having the responsibility for his acculturation, he must be adopted into the tribe by a more objective, independent family which will teach him the traditions.......a family that is still his, even should he and his original wife divorce. He has been given a button blanket with the adopting family's version of the Raven upon it.

Our guide says she maintains strong ties to Eskimo culture also, yet sees her children as carry on the Eagle traditions of the Tlingit, which she repeats, come through the mother. As I type we are passing slopes carved by the rocks within glaciers, the carvings have the pattern found within the Raven's wing on the button robes...an elegant integration of nature and art. Next year, this same week, her people have invited all native peoples to send their best dancers to Alaska for a festival which occurs every other year.....the native people's of Alaska (Tiglit, Athabascan, Eskimo, and a few others) know their migrations south created the 49 other nations, as they call them, Navaho, etc. These peoples are seen as the calves of the Alaskan native peoples, being called home for a great dance.

"Do your people dance their love and connection to nature?" She asks me. "It is a great healing for peoples to dance this way..."

Barry: We started our journey talking about Native American culture. It's fitting that we end finding the tribe with the most advanced culture. They had fish hooks designed to catch Halibut at their prime size - 30 - 50 pounds. Their suits of armor were better than the westerners' and so on.

Our day was concluded by us watching a fireworks display held over the harbor since it is erev July 4th. Picture the scene. Our ship is docked in front of a mountain. Across the harbor they are firing off rockets of all types. The bangs echo behind us like cannons. Very impressive. Sadly, at 11pm it's still daylight.

Mark has found some friends and is rarely to be seen. Crystal is still after him, ignoring a "Do not disturb" sign and knocking on my door while I was trying to nap. The ship is gearing up for a festive fourth of July. Gorgeous outside, smoke gone, and about a dozen whales frolicking nearby. Salmon is ubiquitous - present in some form at every meal.

This morning our waiter said the Alaskan (Salmon, cream cheese and capers) omelette wasn't available because of lack of salmon. The appetizer, however, was smoked salmon. "Never mind," say I , "How about giving me the appetizer surrounded by egg?." No problem, I had my Alaskan. The British at my table looked perplexed at South African ingenuity....

I am feeling spooked being in Alaska. It's so high up. Things look normal in town, yet this is wild rugged country. It's light almost all the time. It's hot yet we're surrounded by snow capped mountains. I'm a little disoriented. What a country!