Leaving the Yukon

Watson Lake is the last "big" town on the Alaska Highway in the Yukon, on the way south. It's memorable because of it's huge "Signpost Forest."

A very small part of the Signpost Forest

One could actually probably even get lost here! I ended up at the Visitor Center to get more water, ask again about where to find home-cured moosehide, to make some phone calls, and find a letterbox that I'd somehow missed on the way up here.

Watson Lake does have good cell service, and a good grocery store, although they did close up at 8pm. So I had to stay overnight so I could get ice and fresh groceries for the push south.

I ended up chatting with the ladies in the Visitor Center for longer than anticipated. My question about "moosehide" loosed a flood of information, as it seems that one of them had tanned her own moosehide with one of the local moosehide-tanning legends.

Tanning a moosehide (hearsay)

This "auntie" tanned 30 moosehides in a season! Considering that it takes about a week of work to tan one hide, that's a lot of hours. Before tanning, the moose has to be skinned, and my source said that the first mistake she made was to leave the legs on the hide. "What did you do that for?" the auntie asked her. She replied that she'd wanted to get every scrap of hide, but the first thing the auntie did was to cut the legs off her precious hide.

The raw hide first has to have the hair scraped away from the edges of the hide. That alone is pretty labor intensive. Then holes can be cut on the edges so the hide can be stretched on the frame.

The best way to tan the hides, according to this local expert, is "frozen" tanning. The best time to tan the hide is in the March. When it's wet, you stretch the hide on the form, and leave it to freeze overnight. The moosehide tanning apprentice was told to "come at 5:30am," whence the scraping of the frozen hide would start.

Late lupine

While it is stretched, first the hair has to come off the outside; then the inside of the hide is also scraped clean. My source said that this procedure starts to stretches and break down the leather. Only then can the actual tanning can happen. Old wisdom has it that each animal has enough brain to tan its own hide. In the old days, the brain was put in a vat of water and let sit until the cells had broken down and the mixture was slimy and smelly. Now, they just put the brain in a food processor with some water and let it rip. Much faster and not so odiferous.

The hide is then smeared with the brain tissue. My friend commented that it was sort of like putting on lotion all over the hide. Then it's bundled up and put in a vat to soak so that the tannin from the brain can get into all the pores.

After that, the hide is wrung out. This auntie had done so many hides that her husband built her a large crank to turn twist the hide and wring it out. It is scraped and worked again, after which the hide is smoked. This smoking is to preserve it, and it is a cold smoking. There apparently is an art to smoking so that it is not near the fire, but still gets the benefit of the smoke. There may be a second smoking, which adds color. The "recipe" for what makes the smoke is a closely guarded secret, and may include rotted pine cones, or special wood chips.

All told: seven days of seven hours of work each day. I am now almost regretting that I didn't get that $600 "home-smoked" moosehide at the trading post in Dawson City! It was a bargain!
- more about preparing a moosehide
- still more about preparing a moosehide

Mosquito graveyard

My contact in Watson Lake said that the best part (aside from the fact that her "old, tough, moose" was turned into a beautiful piece of leather that is bigger than a bedspread), was getting to talk and banter with woman with whom she was working. Like a quilting bee, or other work done together, there is a richness in sharing time like this.

I stayed at the campground at Watson Lake a couple of nights. During the day it was tolerable, but it was warm and sticky at night, and there were a lot of mosquitoes. I kept swatting them, and was surprised to see that my cache of bodies was being raided by a... spider!! It kept dragging off the fat bodies, much to my amusement.

Much of the time I spent working on my beading project. I finally determined what to do with the background, and had made enough progress that I just wanted to get it done. I have broken countless needles on this project, and have learned a lot. I actually cannot wait to start on the next one, but... I need moosehide (thus the quest for moosehide).

Beading project (front) almost done

I did go down by the lake and made the acquaintance of a very drunk young woman who had grown up in Watson Lake and a not-so-drunk older man who had come north from Okanagan fifty years ago and never left. He said, "You know what they say: if you stay here for six months, you'll never leave." The young woman kept exclaiming loudly, "You see over there? They call that 'The Face.' It's where we go skiing in the winter." "It's so beautiful!" she exclaimed, and then fell into the water.

She eventually made it out, and the gentleman drove her — presumably home — in his rusty pickup.

Alcohol is a big issue.

You can only buy it here in the Yukon at the dedicated Liquor Stores. You can't pick up a bottle of wine at the grocery store. I know that it's expensive (plus I don't want to have an open bottle in the car),  so there hasn't been much impetus on my part to visit one.