welcome to a new year of news and musing from the Klondike, where the most descriptive word for the several weeks seems to be “snow”.
It’s ironic since I’ve only lately written a piece for another publication explaining that great amounts of snow at one time are rare here. It seems to have been snowing steadily since the Christmas/New Year break began, almost since I wrote that piece.
This old truck – an odd lawn ornament – is also a good way of keeping track of how much snow has fallen lately. PHOTO: Dan Davidson
The ploughs and loaders have been out, and there are snow piles awaiting removal all over town. The parking lot that our local newspaper shares with the tourist information center next door has been blocked off several times by their efforts.
Our back lane at our home was ploughed and it left such a concrete wind row across my parking pad that I actually had to have it ploughed out. I managed to get our front-wheel-drive car stuck in the pad at my next-door neighbour’s and had to have that extracted.
Worse, it’s snowed so much since the mentioned ploughing incidents I had to go at the pad myself with scoop and shovel in order to keep it from getting out of hand again. The snow is easier to move before it’s had time to settle into itself, or before the ploughs go at the lane again – though the ploughs have been so busy on the main streets it may be some time before we see them here again.
There’s been a bit of wind too, sometimes quite a bit of wind. For many years it was possible to brag to the folks in the capital that they get all the wind in the winter, but that hasn’t been entirely true lately. The breezes have been drifting our usual fluffy stuff, packing it together and making it harder to shovel and drive through.
The wind’s been pushing the snow around on rooftops too. We don’t normally get snow coming off the roofs until we start receiving a few steady hours of direct daytime sunshine, but I’ve seen and heard snow coming off my own roof and porch as well as several others in the last week.
Speaking of sunshine, there is some. From my house I have a clear view of the trees on the west bank of the Yukon River, and every day that hasn’t been overcast for the last week I’ve watched the sun their tops turn to a lovely yellow gold – each day it’s a little bit further down on the branches.
The top of the Moosehide Slide has been showing sunlight as well. It won’t hit the downtown streets for a while, and it’ll be a long time before it comes in my windows again, but some of my Facebookfriends have office windows that let in a patch of light and they’re exulting in the sun’s return.
On the social front, we have the Youth Art Enrichment art show on display in the Robert Service School. It will be there through January and the administration asks only that you check in at the office before going to see it.
Finally, the annual Fulda Challenge concluded earlier this week, January 15 to 17 being days it took place.
