It’s a strange world – I hope you’re all okay
Like many of you, I’m hoping that what’s going on is just a bad dream and soon I’ll wake up and life will be normal again. I’m not looking forward any further than tomorrow – things are changing too fast. Cathy and I are okay, and I hope you all are as well.
Winter is just ending here in Whitehorse. This is the period of the most dramatic change of the year, and I thought you might like to see what that has looked like over the past month. And I’ll also tell you about how the virus situation looks in the Yukon today.
March 22. Winter was still here (the first photo is in my back yard). Snow – even heavy snow – is common this time of year, but most of us have had about enough of it.
March 25. I find looking close at the beauty of the world is good therapy when “the big picture” gets chaotic and scary. These icicles were hanging by my front door.
March 31. The melt had started, so this was about the deepest the snow piles got. I try to keep my decks clear all winter.
April 1. I took Tucker and Bella down to the Yukon River bridge for a bit of a walk. It would have been such an awesome day to hit the road (the Alaska Highway in this case). I had planned to be on the road for my 8-9-week season-opener RV about now, but that of course has been cancelled.
The kids were happy to get out for a bit. Every walking place in town had a few cars parked, but it’s easy to find places like this with nobody around.
The Lewes River dam (a.k.a. the Marsh Lake Dam), just downstream from the bridge. The water was incredibly clear.
April 4. There were a lot of happy birds in the feeder today. These are Common redpolls (Carduelis flammea). We don’t get birds very often for some reason, while other people in Whitehorse get lots.
After getting all excited by birds (she sometimes gets quite noisy), Molly always needs to chill, and a snuggle is particularly welcome.
April 8. We haven’t sat in the memorial garden much this Spring yet…
April 7. There were some wonderful frost feathers on the deck glass this morning. A frost dragon?
April 8. With the temperature up to +5°C, the woodpile looked like a much healthier place to be than Facebook.
Now the wood room in the basement is in good shape. I was still firing up the wood stove every day at this point.
April 12. I saw my weather station hit +9°C yesterday, but Spring feels like it might be a long way away yet. That’s a 12-inch ruler below Tucker – I dug a little area down to the grass yesterday afternoon so I can keep en eye on the progress.
April 14. I posted on Facebook that “there’s still 3 blocks of snow and ice in the way of getting my bike to dry roads.” Two hours later, the City grader showed up 🙂
Then it was time to get the bike polished up – now Spring is here! We don’t have any driving restrictions other than a request to stay out of our smaller communities. The importance of social distancing is the primary message here. The Yukon Government says: “Maintain safe physical distancing of 2 metres (6 feet) between people even when you’re enjoying the outdoors.”
April 17. The biggest part of the job of getting my summer wheels on is getting them from the barn to the driveway! Despite the way the back yard looked, the roads were bare and dry, though.
I thought that my health was back to about 90% of normal, but as the weather warmed up and I got more active, I discovered that I’m very fragile. I made myself quite sick a week ago, and I’m still “off” – dizzy, headaches, muscle pains, etc, etc. With my therapist shut down for the foreseeable future, I’m searching for other answers, but the main one has to be to slow down.
Tucker enjoys tv time because it means snuggles, but sometimes a particular show will get his attention 🙂
April 19. As we were having breakfast, I spotted this fox bedded down in the forest. I bought a game cam a few months ago, but haven’t set it up yet, partly because I’m not sure which is the best way to point it.
We decided to go for a long drive to watch swans, which our first major sign that Spring has arrived. The Tagish Bridge provided what we were looking for, and we had the place pretty much to ourselves.
I find watching swans to be very therapeutic. They do make me miss my cabin at Carcross, though – they were a significant part of my life there, as for many weeks each year I could always see and hear them. I loved listening to them chatting, especially first thing each morning.
The news of the mass shooting in Nova Scotia on April 19th was my breaking point. I still have no words, only tears, and can’t bear to read the details… 🙁
April 20. There are a fair number of businesses in the Whitehorse area offering online shopping now. We really like Firebean coffees, so I ordered 3 pounds, and picked it up from an honour-system box on the porch of their home the next evening. I really hope that #supportlocal is an idea that continues when things get back to normal.
April 21. I went out for groceries, and this is what the Alaska Highway looked like at 06:50, normally the start of “rush hour.” I shop almost exclusively at Save-On Foods now, and go during their seniors hour from 07:00-08:00, once a week or even 10 days.
Earth Day (April 22nd) didn’t seem to get as much attention as it has is recent years. Many reports, though, show that Mother Earth is loving the shutdown, with greatly-reduced pollution, and animals moving into now-quiet urban areas.
All Yukon campgrounds and related facilities are closed until further notice, though the hiking trails at campgrounds like Wolf Creek just a mile from my home are open and popular.
Though many projects have been shut down, a few are continuing. The electric vehicle charging station at the Yukon Transportation Museum looks great now.
One of my neighbours posted on her Facebook page that she and her dad had set up signs on the Alaska Highway thanking truckers for keeping our store shelves fairly well stocked. Last night I took a short drive to get some photos of them. The highway is very quiet – I waited just over 20 minutes for this truck to come along. With even the most basic services – coffee, meals, showers – getting tougher and tougher for truckers to access, appreciation is a big deal. Nice work, Kate White 🙂
As of yesterday, we have 3 active cases of COVID-19, all of them doing well at home. We’ve had a total of 11 cases but 8 have recovered. All have been related to travel, or contact with those travellers. With the Whitehorse airport all but shut down, our biggest challenge is people driving up the highway to Alaska, and regulations there get tighter and tighter. Drivers now get stopped at the Yukon border and have to give a bunch of information about their trip. If they are allowed to proceed, they then can only be in the Yukon for 24 hours – and getting through the Yukon is a 938 km drive, so there’s little time to dawdle.
I know that some of my readers are in areas that are being badly hit by the virus, and I expect that many of you are out of work. I hope that you’re all okay. Each of us has a different situation, and each of us will react in a different way. Please be kind to yourself, and to those around you.
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