Full Moon Over Caribou (or - Why I Live in The Yukon)

Yukoners like to ask each other the question “What brought you up here?” Sometimes the answer is “for work”. Frequently it’s “I came for a visit and fell in love with the place.”

Mine usually contains a combination of (a), (b) and:

• my husband being from a small town in Northern BC

• Vancouver’s housing market (crazy even in 2006, or so we thought then)

• the stress of living and working in a big city getting to us

Tonight, however, I was driving through downtown on my way back from Canadian Tire, after a conversation with a friend about his having to pry a caribou bone out of a toilet once, and spotting the gorgeous full moon over the Yukon River when suddenly - BAM - I remembered the real reason. It’s so funny, how you can forget something for years and years and then it’s so present all of a sudden.

The real reason for our move, from Vancouver BC to Whitehorse YT, was my realization that:

I didn’t even know what phase of the moon it was.

James had taken me to a movie by a filmmaker he knew, called “Being Caribou” (cue - Yukoners of a certain era, smiling and nodding). Walking out of that film I was left with a sense of awe and a deep longing. This couple had hiked from Old Crow, Yukon to Alaska (and back) to follow the annual migration of the Porcupine caribou herd and draw attention to the (still ongoing) threat to ANWAR - the Alaska National Wildlife Reserve, and the calving grounds for the Porcupine caribou herd. In the documentary, Karsten describes how he became so attuned to the energy of the animals that he was able to sense the caribou, like a deep thrumming within his chest. I walked out after the movie and looked up into the sky of downtown Vancouver and thought, “He can sense the movement of caribou. I don’t even know what phase of the moon it is.”

Within several months we came to visit, and one year later we packed up our lives and headed North. After moving here, I realized that though I thought of myself as moving to “a small town up North”, Whitehorse is actually “the big city down South” to the real Arctic. Despite that, it struck me immediately how even in the middle of the city (we lived downtown for a year) you cannot escape the impact of nature, virtually every moment you leave the house.

If it’s Winter, it’s the cold (and snow, and THIS year, the most snow we’ve had in half a century…). If it’s Summer, it’s the sun (and sun, and sun, and sun…).

It’s the Yukon River running right alongside downtown. It’s the mountains and hills and valleys that envelop us. And the forests that surround us for hundreds to thousands of kilometres in every direction.

It’s the foxes who play in our yard almost daily, and the trio of deer I watched as I walked the trail around Riverdale the other evening, and the lynx who sauntered down our road last month, and the bear and cubs who hung out at the end of our street last Summer. And the mosquitos (but really, they’re not that bad!!).

It’s the Northern Lights if you happen to have a hot tub or outhouse or another real keen reason to be up in the wee hours to see them, and the stars in the zillions once you get out of town even a little bit.

It’s seeing more sunrises in a week than I swear I’d seen in my whole life prior, because it happens during walking or working hours. And the sunsets that colour the world in pastels.

It’s the fact that from my very first acupuncture client I went “WHOA, what is this? This is different .” In energy, receptivity, response.

We are a part of this web of nature that surrounds us. It’s been inside us all along. But sometimes we need to see it surrounding us to remember that truth. Some of us are lucky or privileged enough to have it present outside our doors. And ALL of us have it above us in the phases of the moon - if we can just look up to see it.

CONFESSION!! I wrote this LAST full moon. It took me a month to get around to finishing it and posting it. Lest you think I whipped this up before the full moon had even peaked. So, there you go. I figure there’s a lesson in there about taking it slow and being honest and compassionate with yourself about capacity, as well!