Leaving Carcross: days of blissful regret

I am tearing myself away from the north. It's not pretty. The weather has been awesome, the scenery amazing, the people fun, and I really, really do not want to leave.

The Carcross train station

The only thing that is making me to is that I know if I don't leave that I may be missing something even better down the road. But this is pretty hard to beat!

"Downtown" Carcross

Kids in summer

Right across the street (and railroad tracks) from the train station is the "pink building" of Matthew Watson's General Store, which must serve gallons of ice cream daily in the summer. The gray building is the hotel, which looks like it is being renovated.

I had one scoop for my birthday, with their signature homemade waffle cone. The aroma of the cooking cones wafted over the town each day.

After the busses leave and the train chugs out of town, it's a sleepy village again. The kids do what kids should be doing on long summer days: every day I see the same group of them diving off the bridge, swimming in inner tubes and kayaks, splashing and laughing and not a cell phone in sight.

I will be back here to paddle on the lakes and hike up Montana Mountain and pick raspberries again along the railroad tracks. Can't wait to come back.

Last look at the "SS Tutshi" and the Carcross village.

It's funny how sometimes it takes awhile to get things into one's head. I totally understand how learning needs to happen on several levels for things to really "take."

Red ripe strawberry!

For instance, one can look at a map and realize that a road goes from a town to a town, and that there may be mountains to the east or west, and that it may go by a river, which connects to another river. It's all very cerebral, and until you actually SEE those things, it really doesn't mean much.

Carcross really was a sort of locus for understanding for me of how the rivers and the mountains and the land all came together.

I stayed the night at the intersection of the South Canol Road and the Alaska Highway. I've been through here a couple of times now, each time from different directions. I had driven south on the South Canol Road a couple of weeks ago, so it's starting to feel familiar. At the rest stop here, there are a few old cars, relics from the building of that road. All of these are protected as "heritage" vehicles. You can climb in them and pretend that you're driving an old car, but you can't haul them off.

In the morning, I took a ramble down a dirt road that soon became a dirt track. The leaves are just starting to turn, and there is a crispness to the morning air that is refreshing. Lots of berries are ripe, and I was fortunate to find just one tiny strawberry. These wild strawberries are so sweet. The flavor is intense, and the juice stains one's fingers bright red.

You do just NEVER know what you are going to find. Besides berries, I hit the jackpot for old cars and trucks that had been used to build the Canol road.

You could clearly see the writing on the side of the trucks!

This area actually became a dump. Old cars from the 1940s to the present (including a classic VW Beetle) have been joined by bits of flotsam and jetsam of people's lives, discarded and mouldering and returning to their elemental state.

It does seem that there is a gravity or accretion principle: once there is a group of something, it attracts more of the same. Seems like there should be a universal law about this!

Everything from the car to the TV to the boat

Ptarmigan, summer plumage

On the way back, I flushed a ptarmigan out from the forest floor. These birds are so well camouflaged that you could practically step on one and not realize it was there until it burst upward in a whirr of wings, and then sat in the tree with the mistaken idea that I couldn't see it if it remained perfectly still.

While it was "frozen," I was able to quietly work my way around to get the bushes and branches out of the way so I could get a good photo. It just stared at me with its beady, red-rimmed eye and never moved. Its feathers were still rimmed with white from the change from its winter plumage. It won't be long before it has to lose its feathers again and turn all white!

There were also bunchberries and soapberries and highbush cranberries, most of which are now as familiar to me as the huckleberries back in Marin.

Regrettably, it was time to move on, otherwise I'll never get anywhere.

Teslin

Teslin Lake is a sparkling blue lake, surrounded by low hills. I've stopped here before, since there is a lovely beach near the local First Nations cultural center, but when I've passed by they haven't been open. There are picnic tables and totem poles, a boat shed, and fish-drying stations. It's a pleasant place to stop and stretch and eat.

This time, I made sure that they were open so I could get my passport stamped!

Fiberglass "traditional" Tlingit canoe by the shores of Teslin Lake

The ladies at were very nice, and volunteered that Tom Dickson was demonstrating carving inside. I asked about the moosehide boat, because the one that I saw in the boat shed sure looked a lot like the one that was made at Adaka. It was indeed; I was told that it had split when they put it into the water, and so it was here for repairs! In fact, the master boatbuilder was on site, and was demonstrating boat frames out in front! (I hadn't heard that the boat split; that was interesting news... I guess "stuff" happens, even with expert builders!)
About soapberries

Service berries aka soapberries (Shepherdia canadensis)

Along with some other tourists, we watched a film called "Two Winters" which was about the tales that have been handed down through the generations about the time that summer did not come. There was winter, then no spring or summer, followed by another winter. It was a hard time for the people, who could not find berries to eat or game to hunt, since the animals all left, too. They had to resort to chipping frozen fish out of the ice for summer food, since it never melted. This was followed by yet another winter. Many people died. Turns out this was the year (1815) that Mount Tambora erupted, and which had worldwide repercussions, resulting in Europe's "Little Ice Age."

I hadn't thought that this the cooling was such a world-wide phenomenon, and that it would so adversely affect the people in the far north. Pretty sobering.

Of course, now, I am told by many "old-timers" that the winters are not as cold as they used to be, which is anecdotal evidence for global warming.

While at the Center, I talked with the wood carver, and as we were discussing the excellence of spring steel for carving tools (it's also been used for ice carving and for scraping moose hides), one of the ladies who had been busy in the kitchen came out with a big spoonful of "Indian Ice Cream." This is made from soapberries, sugar and water. That's it. You have to beat the mixture. They said it is a lot easier now that there are electric mixers! "Oh my, I remember beating and beating and beating in the old days," remarked one of them.

The taste is... probably an acquired one. The first taste was a bit off-putting, but one did get used to it. The texture is certainly interesting. It's a fairly hard foam, something like an Italian meringue, but nearly so sweet. There is a kind of slippery feel on one's tongue, no doubt from the saponin. While one of the ladies said, "My grandfather, he said it was good for the digestion!" upon reading, I'm not sure this is the case, as eating to much can cause diarrhea. Sure glad I didn't eat THAT much!
- About soapberries
- About Indian ice cream

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