The Drop Point
There is an image I would add to Sally's account. On Saturday morning Frank of Muktuk asked me if I would mind telling him what it was like for me to be scattering my dad's ashes a couple days earlier. I wasn't really prepared at that instant to describe it - I just hadn't processed the experience for myself enough. I did say that it felt very somber while at the same time there was a feeling of release. But since he had asked I thought more about it later and I would also say that I was feeling a keen need to be aware of the place where we did it. Because dad had asked us to do it on this river, right? So I wanted to feel the place we were at and be fully aware of it. So I will describe the exact location from my memory.
The whole 28-mile stretch of the river we floated that day was beautiful. But we did want to find a spot without any signs of human activities. When we got the boats rafted together the river was running more or less straight north, and it was flowing a bit slower than it had been where we put in at Whitehorse. It was fairly narrow at that point too. The Yukon has some very wide areas on the stretch we floated, almost lake-like. (Lake Labarge was just downstream of the take-out point.) But here the banks were pretty close.
The right bank was a sharp clay bluff, I'd say about 100' high, because the river was starting a bend to the west (left), and was eating away at the bank on the outside of the bend. That bluff blocked all view of anything beyond to the east. The clay of the bank was the gray-white of bleached bones. A bit lighter that the ashes we scattered.
The left bank sloped gently to the river and the shoreline was completely forested with black spruce. A very dark green and dense stand of trees which extended for some distance away from the river. So as we scattered the ashes we drifted between a dark somber green on one side and a lifeless grey wall of clay on the other.
As we did our little ceremony, our boats followed the bend of the river to the left along the clay bank. The current tended to drive us to the outside of the bend, and I think twice we had to paddle a bit to keep from running into it. When we had finished and separated the boats, the turn was complete and the river was running to the west for a stretch.
I know I could go back there sometime and find the place again.
Ted
The whole 28-mile stretch of the river we floated that day was beautiful. But we did want to find a spot without any signs of human activities. When we got the boats rafted together the river was running more or less straight north, and it was flowing a bit slower than it had been where we put in at Whitehorse. It was fairly narrow at that point too. The Yukon has some very wide areas on the stretch we floated, almost lake-like. (Lake Labarge was just downstream of the take-out point.) But here the banks were pretty close.
The right bank was a sharp clay bluff, I'd say about 100' high, because the river was starting a bend to the west (left), and was eating away at the bank on the outside of the bend. That bluff blocked all view of anything beyond to the east. The clay of the bank was the gray-white of bleached bones. A bit lighter that the ashes we scattered.
The left bank sloped gently to the river and the shoreline was completely forested with black spruce. A very dark green and dense stand of trees which extended for some distance away from the river. So as we scattered the ashes we drifted between a dark somber green on one side and a lifeless grey wall of clay on the other.
As we did our little ceremony, our boats followed the bend of the river to the left along the clay bank. The current tended to drive us to the outside of the bend, and I think twice we had to paddle a bit to keep from running into it. When we had finished and separated the boats, the turn was complete and the river was running to the west for a stretch.
I know I could go back there sometime and find the place again.
Ted