Whitehorse roadtrip!

Earlier today I arrived in the lovely, sunshine-y, people-filled, cultural centre of the Yukon. I'm sort of excited to talk to people who don't talk about squirrels and to take in all the things that go along with city-living.

There is a lot going on here this weekend. Tomorrow, the Yukon Environmental Fair is on at the Canada Games Centre. Actually, there will be a Red Squirrels and Climate Change talk in the morning. I might skip that.... The Rotary Music Festival is on at various venues around town. AND, tomorrow the Stanley Cup is visiting Whitehorse! It's stopping in 15 cities across the country on it's playoff tour. It'll be at Scotiabank. I need to go to the bank this weekend, so I might as well stop in while The Cup is there too.

I have a good old fashioned squirrel update for you, but I'm on the free internet computer at the hostel (which is very nice and small and all of the people staying here are very pleasant). So I will post that later on when I'm using my own computer. I'm sure I'll have lots of interesting things to post about before I head back to camp.

I'm off to see the downtown and maybe catch a movie at the tiny Whitehorse Cinema this evening. I'll have to see what's playing. I have the truck and it's daylight till late at night, so it'll be easy to find my way around town.

More soon, Cass

They sell Tim Tams in Haines Junction and they cost $4.89.

What a rush! Our town days are so busy, I barely have time to squeeze these blog posts in. I also don't have any time to prepare them ahead of time because work is so busy. We have so many squirrels to trap, tag, stretch, monitor, it never ends. Not to mention, all the things we have to do to keep camp running smoothly.

My camp day was last Sunday so I made everyone a huge Easter Dinner Feast. This included creamy, garlic mashed potatoes, roasted acorn squash and beets, steamed greens, bread stuffing, and hardboiled eggs. I decorated the eggs with wax drips and elastic bands and dyed them in beet juice and boiled onion peels. The elastics made stripes and the wax made spots. They turned out quite well and everyone was very pleased with dinner. I also hid the 61 chocolate Easter eggs that Mom and Dad sent (thanks again!) and Frances' parents sent. It was so funny to watch everyone search for their surprise eggs. They didn't notice any of the hidden eggs before dinner and it was a lot of fun.

I'm off to dinner at the Alcan tonight. I have to put up some pictures of places around town one of these days! Here are some from the past week.

Self-portrait in mid morning sunshine on Chitty. My hair is growing so quickly.


Little Y!/Y!. I made a movie of him for the blog! Unfortunately, it will take 2 hours to upload all 30 seconds of it here. I also have an hilarious one of little Purple/Blue digging out a cone and squeaking at me from her midden. One day this will be a videoblog.


Sprout update! Look at our little guys! We're so proud. This is the kale. That's why it's so pink and pretty. Will make a tasty half sandwich, or so.


Dylan and his current project. He's staying here for the entire 6 months and he monitors Agnes grid. It's huge and is a food add grid, so the squirrel population density is high. He's also got a whole lot of pregnant mothers and babies to look after. This is a map he made to keep track of everything and aid in navigation. I hope it helps him stay on time. We carpool together and he is frequently late which means I have to wait patiently because we don't like to rush each other when handling the squirrels.


A shot of the map. Someday it will be a rainbow of colours and symbols, we hope.


And by waiting patiently, I mean, knit in the truck at the pullout off the side of the Alaska Highway. To be honest, this is not a bad part of my day. Here, I'm working on my bright blue sock. I purchased the wool in Ottawa and it's almost finished. The goal is to finish it by the end of the week and cast on it's mate. I designed the whole thing with a cool chevron pattern. Close-ups to come.


And I almost forgot!! I've been finding buried traps in the snow on Chitty this week. All along, I've said I didn't really relate to the namer of the traps on Chitty. I don't really get his references and why he'd name the traps the things he did. This week I found Pancakes, though. I promptly took out my Sharpie and corrected that mistake. It's now called Pamcakes, after one of the most special kittens I know. Next though, and this freaked me out a bit, I dug out Agamemnon. That's the dude from the old times who the prophetess Cassandra was murdered with. Good thing I'm not that superstitious. I am a little though, and I haven't actually set the trap yet. Ha. I might trade Dylan for a different trap this week. Just to be on the safe side.

Don't be scared! Got to run! Miss ya lots! Cass

The Law of the Yukon

This is the law of the Yukon, and ever she makes it plain:
"Send not your foolish and feeble; send me your strong and your sane --
Strong for the red rage of battle; sane for I harry them sore;
Send me men girt for the combat, men who are grit to the core;
Swift as the panther in triumph, fierce as the bear in defeat,
Sired of a bulldog parent, steeled in the furnace heat.
Send me the best of your breeding, lend me your chosen ones;
Them will I take to my bosom, them will I call my sons;
Them will I gild with my treasure, them will I glut with my meat;
But the others -- the misfits, the failures -- I trample under my feet.
Dissolute, damned and despairful, crippled and palsied and slain,
Ye would send me the spawn of your gutters -- Go! take back your spawn again.

"Wild and wide are my borders, stern as death is my sway;
From my ruthless throne I have ruled alone for a million years and a day;
Hugging my mighty treasure, waiting for man to come,
Till he swept like a turbid torrent, and after him swept -- the scum.
The pallid pimp of the dead-line, the enervate of the pen,
One by one I weeded them out, for all that I sought was -- Men.
One by one I dismayed them, frighting them sore with my glooms;
One by one I betrayed them unto my manifold dooms.
Drowned them like rats in my rivers, starved them like curs on my plains,
Rotted the flesh that was left them, poisoned the blood in their veins;
Burst with my winter upon them, searing forever their sight,
Lashed them with fungus-white faces, whimpering wild in the night;

Staggering blind through the storm-whirl, stumbling mad through the snow,
Frozen stiff in the ice-pack, brittle and bent like a bow;
Featureless, formless, forsaken, scented by wolves in their flight,
Left for the wind to make music through ribs that are glittering white;
Gnawing the black crust of failure, searching the pit of despair,
Crooking the toe in the trigger, trying to patter a prayer;
Going outside with an escort, raving with lips all afoam,
Writing a cheque for a million, driveling feebly of home;
Lost like a louse in the burning. . .or else in the tented town
Seeking a drunkard's solace, sinking and sinking down;
Steeped in the slime at the bottom, dead to a decent world,
Lost 'mid the human flotsam, far on the frontier hurled;
In the camp at the bend of the river, with its dozen saloons aglare,
Its gambling dens ariot, its gramophones all ablare;
Crimped with the crimes of a city, sin-ridden and bridled with lies,
In the hush of my mountained vastness, in the flush of my midnight skies.
Plague-spots, yet tools of my purpose, so natheless I suffer them thrive,
Crushing my Weak in their clutches, that only my Strong may survive.

"But the others, the men of my mettle, the men who would 'stablish my fame
Unto its ultimate issue, winning me honor, not shame;
Searching my uttermost valleys, fighting each step as they go,
Shooting the wrath of my rapids, scaling my ramparts of snow;
Ripping the guts of my mountains, looting the beds of my creeks,
Them will I take to my bosom, and speak as a mother speaks.
I am the land that listens, I am the land that broods;
Steeped in eternal beauty, crystalline waters and woods.
Long have I waited lonely, shunned as a thing accurst,
Monstrous, moody, pathetic, the last of the lands and the first;
Visioning camp-fires at twilight, sad with a longing forlorn,
Feeling my womb o'er-pregnant with the seed of cities unborn.
Wild and wide are my borders, stern as death is my sway,
And I wait for the men who will win me -- and I will not be won in a day;
And I will not be won by weaklings, subtle, suave and mild,
But by men with the hearts of vikings, and the simple faith of a child;
Desperate, strong and resistless, unthrottled by fear or defeat,
Them will I gild with my treasure, them will I glut with my meat.

"Lofty I stand from each sister land, patient and wearily wise,
With the weight of a world of sadness in my quiet, passionless eyes;
Dreaming alone of a people, dreaming alone of a day,
When men shall not rape my riches, and curse me and go away;
Making a bawd of my bounty, fouling the hand that gave --
Till I rise in my wrath and I sweep on their path and I stamp them into a grave.
Dreaming of men who will bless me, of women esteeming me good,
Of children born in my borders of radiant motherhood,
Of cities leaping to stature, of fame like a flag unfurled,
As I pour the tide of my riches in the eager lap of the world."

This is the Law of the Yukon, that only the Strong shall thrive;
That surely the Weak shall perish, and only the Fit survive.
Dissolute, damned and despairful, crippled and palsied and slain,
This is the Will of the Yukon, -- Lo, how she makes it plain!

Robert Service

The last verse of this poem is posted in pretty much every public building around this place and it's true.

We rock out to Beatles tunes and Dusty Springfield hits all the way to town.

Last week I wrote a guest blog post for the Kluane Red Squirrel Project's main site. Of course, I mentioned how lovely the weather was and how it felt like spring was just around the corner. On Sunday, we woke up completely buried in heavy, cold snow. The Yukon spring certainly is a winter wonderland, but squirrels don;t really like to come out in these conditions, and I wasn't really thrilled about spending the entire day outside slogging around on snowshoes either (the day goes much more quickly if you actually catch squirrels). The surrounding were even more eerily beautiful than usual, though. When there's this much snow everything is absolutely silent.

This picture was taken looking back at our huts from the cookhouse. Usually you can see them there.

I love the way the snow balances on the branches of the willow.


I've also been very excited about the upcoming wildflower season. I've been studying up on the Yukon flora. We have a lot of interesting species right on our study sites. Right now I can just take shots of last year's willow buds. Also, we were reading the Encyclopaedia Britannica the other day about the Greek Prophetess, Cassandra. It's a great story, if I do say so myself. We found out, though, that cassandra is also a little plant in the Ericaceae family. It's found throughout the arctic circle and is actually present in bogs all the way down south to Georgia. It's also known as leatherleaf. That's not a good nickname for me though.


And, everyone I talk to wants to know how the squirrels are, of course. They are well. Squirrels that live on our food add grids are chubby and having happy little babies. Squirrels that live on my non-food add grid, Chitty, are happy to have a peanut butter snack in a trap. This is my favourite squirrel pose. It's called vigilance.



The sun sets here in the Yukon around 8:50 pm these days. It's really nice to have so much daylight. At this latitude, the amount of daylight actually increases by about 7 minutes each day. Dusk lasts until we go to bed around 10:30. Last night Dylan came into the hut at 1:15 am and woke us up to see the northern lights. We had a deal that if they were spectacular we'd wake each other up. I think it's actually getting a little late in the year to see the really colourful lights here, but last night there was a huge swath of green light across the sky and I saw two little pink strikes as well. I tried to take a picture, as requested, but it wasn't working with my little Canon. I have to admit, I totally forgot about the fireworks setting until this morning, as I was quite deeply asleep last night, but I'll see if they are out again tonight and try to snap a picture.

Also, I have a bit of bad news, dear blog readers. My time in the Yukon at Squirrel Camp is going to be cut a bit short. I really haven't been feeling well at all up here. Unfortuntately, I've been spending a bit of time at the health centre, and drove in to see the doctor in Whitehorse yesterday. I'm okay, but it's not practical to be driving from Squirrel Camp to Whitehorse to try to figure things out over the next few months. So, I'm going to head home at the end of April.

Stay tuned for a few more blog posts, of course. I'm very excited to see the Nest Two babies (they'll be furry little guys! We have one coming up this week). The work is still a lot of fun. I'm going to be very sad to leave this place, but everyone says to come back for a vacation. Some day I will definitely drive the rest of the Alaska Highway (roadtrip, anyone?) Also, I'd like to give a big shout out to all of the people who are having a Good Friday Feast at my parent's house in Warsaw. I hope you guys are having a great night and time is being kept accurately by the 11 clocks of the Stabler residence.

As usual, thanks for the mail. It makes my day and I was especially happy to receive some notes and things (chocolate ;) this week.

Talk to you soon, Cass

She's got a ticket to ride.

Hi from the KPI! The soup du jour is chicken rice and we've been on the phone since 11:30 am this morning. A usual Friday in The Junction.

This week I could have showed you what two chickadees in one cage looks like (two little black blobs together), but I forgot my camera back at camp that afternoon. I'm been all over the place this week, breaking trail on Chitty and Sulphur grids. Sulphur is named after a lake on the highway here. Chitty is named after a guy. My traps over there include Sassy Molassy and The Terminator. We have also found Paul, John, and Hey Jude over on Joe, so I'm sure Ringo is around somewhere too.

This is what it looks like when you lose your data book on the trail you just broke and had to run back several hundred metres to find it. It's corner is the tiny black speck of duct tape sticking out above my snowshoe.


This is what it looks like when you dig it out. The snow really melts the corners, so it's well protected with tape. My code initials are CDS. I'm glad I got to use my real ones. A lot of people have worked on this project over the years and we're all identified by our three letter code.



The inside of my book. Each night I make a list of the middens I need to trap at and a little map so that I can navigate without getting totally lost and wandering around. Because that is a huge waste of time, trust me. Each square on the grid represents a 30m x 30m square on the ground. They are all marked with miles of flagging tape and staked at each corner. It's pretty easy to see it all because all we have here is white snow and white spruce. And I still get lost some days and end up at L line when I should be at Q.


This is me all geared up and really sweaty from breaking trail across Chitty. I had to stop for a break and play with my camera a bit.


This week we did the spring crew's first peanut butter add. We had to deliver 320 kilos of peanut butter in 1 kilo increments to the squirrels on our food add grids. The peanut butter had been frozen out in the hut we can The Jail. We set up this peanut butter thawing contraption over the wood stove, got the hut up to 38 degrees Celsius and melted the peanut butter. I wore flip flops and a t-shirt. It was actually really nice. We drank a lot of very cold, icy beers. This process of pouring peanut butter took about 5 hours. And we made a huge mess. Which we cleaned in the dark.



Kristen and Lindsey pour.


I lid. And stack. See how I am melting along with the peanut butter?


Frances has camp day and makes us a delicious lasagna dinner for in between pouring peanut butter and then pouring more peanut butter.


This week we also had our first two nests. This was a lot of fun. Here is a nest pup. His eyes are still closed and he's squeaking because he's angry that he's out in the winter. He also didn't like getting a little notch cut out of his tiny ear, but we needed a DNA sample.


Nest pups are tiny and delicate. We weigh them, notch their ears, then put them back. When they are out of the nest they stay in a little fleece bag in the front of our jackets. Devan took these babies back to the nest and couldn't find one of the babies. I had them down my jacket and we thought one had crawled out of the bag (they naturally try to crawl up, so they can escape in trees...all squirrels naturally climb up). But the baby wasn't in my jacket and he had just miscounted when he put the babies back because mom came back to her midden and found all four.


In other news, Dylan and I have successfully grown a sprout. We picked up seeds in Whitehorse when we first came here. I have grown a lot of sprouts in Guelph, but I think the consistent heat source helps. These sprouts have basically been soaked, abandoned for two weeks, then a renewed effort was put into action and they have been cared for each day and left on the top of the propane stove that prevents the computers from freezing in the data hut. And we have a sprout.


One little sprout. It's that little white thing in the middle. Yum. Our sandwiches will be greatly improved once the rest of them join this one in sprouting.


And I'll leave you on this note...blue skies over Agnes Grid and the St. Elias Mountain Range.


Thanks for all the great mail this week! It's good to hear from all of you!

Talk to you soon, Cass

Eight days a week.

What a busy week! Time flew by and I'm still having a great time. The soup this afternoon at the KPI was a delicious red seafood chowder. We're all typing away on our laptops and the locals are having happy hour at the bar. They just sit on both sides of the bar here, it's really just a gathering place for friends.

I hear that the weather down south has been absolutely beautiful. It's been all kinds of cold up here. Not bad for working and snowshoeing in, but cold enough to stick my hands to metal traps and frost up the front of my jacket from my breath. I really love the way the snow squeaks so loudly under my snowshoes though.

This week we've had a visit from the professor who started this camp back in the 1980's. He still runs the place and works on all the projects, but mainly spends his time in Edmonton at the University of Alberta.

Just a few pictures this week. I'll try to take more next week and be more organized! There's just been a lot to learn, so days have been extra long trying to make sure all of my tasks have been completed. Yesterday was my camp day, so I had to make dinner for everyone. We had falafels from How to Cook Everything in wraps with homemade tzatiki sauce, lettuce, and tomatoes. I also made the mixed vegetable salad that I usually make in the summer, without cherry tomatoes though, and upside-down peach cake with brown sugar sauce. It turned out very well.

This is what it looks like when you accidentally trap two chickadees at one midden. This is annoying because they take away potential squirrel traps. I actually probably have one of the lowest chickadee trap rates out of everyone, for some reason. But not in this case. And now that I've said that, I'll probably only catch birds tomorrow. Squirrels will eat chickadees though, and once Dylan came back to one of his traps and a squirrel must have followed a chickadee in and tripped the trap. The squirrel managed to catch the poor little guy and ate him. I'm really glad I haven't had any weird trap stuff happen to me yet because I would probably freak out if I came across that.


Another shot of the beautiful St. Elias Range. The clouds do all sorts of crazy things over the mountains. I've been taking so many pretty shots of the landscape. You just can't get tired of this view. The stars here are also incredible. On a clear night you can see more stars than I have ever seen before. We have seen the northern lights one night. They were bright green. Really, we need to wait for the warmer weather to see them more clearly and in a larger spectrum of colours.


This is a lynx that came into our camp. He was hunting our camp squirrel, Pipes. He leapt about 4m into a tree to try to get Pipes after stalking him for an hour. Pipes dove directly out of the tree into one of his ground holes. We think he's okay, but we're not totally sure.


And finally, a squirrel free of squirrel jail. This little girl is named blue/red. I was trying to catch her all day long. Then, as soon as I closed up the traps she came over to check things out and was trying to lick the inside of the trap from the outside. I had cleaned all of the peanut butter out, but she could still smell it. And the entire time I was standing about 1m away. I probably could have reached out and picked her up, but I'm sure that would have ended badly, probably for me.


Well, that's all from me for now. It's happy hour at the KPI, so we're having a beer before we head out to camp. It was lovely to hear from everyone who sent notes! I hope all is well back home. Next week I'll try to have more about living off-the-grid. We have cool solar panels and an exciting! water collection system.

Love ya lots and miss you more, Cass

One of the best things to do in the Yukon is picking up the mail.

Today I'm at the KPI (Kluane Park Inn). The local watering hole with pretty good free wireless internet access. I just had a bowl of split pea soup and I'm charging up all my batteries. Myself and my coworkers are the only customers here right now. The bartender went to the University of Guelph and they seem to like us a lot.

My first real week of work and training has went very well. I'm having such a fun time. The weather has been great. We do have a whole lot of snow and we work outdoors long days. I've actually never dealt with so much snow in one place at one time. All of my gear has been great. I've been warm and dry and comfortable every day. Not showering all the time has been okay. My hair had already started to dread, but I conditioned it and combed it today, so all is well.

Our days at squirrel camp are pretty straight forward. We're up at 7:15, the sun is starting to rise, but it's too dark to go out trapping. We all eat breakfast in the cookhouse and get our gear ready. Everyone wears a vest with huge pockets to hold all of the things we need for collecting information in the forest. Our camp is on one of our research grids. Each of the grids has a name. Camp grid is Kloo, I work on Joe (named after the town drunk, Thomas Joe) and Lloyd (named for someone else). There are also Sulphur, Agnes, and Blue Trailer. Each is about 1 km wide and 1 km deep. All run along the edge of the Alaska Highway. We have plowed pullouts to park our trucks on and we carpool to the grids in the morning. We arrive at the grids at 8:30 am each day. We strap on our snowshoes and head into the grid to set up our traps. In the morning we set about 10 traps (it takes awhile to break trail through the snow right now so we move a bit slowly). Each squirrel has a well-defined territory with a central stash of cones called a midden. The middens are all mapped out and there are traps at each of the middens. Once the traps are all set in a circuit we go back around to see if we've trapped any squirrels. It takes about 2 hours to get around and process any captures. We have to put the squirrel in a handling bag, weigh it, stretch it out and time how many seconds out of 30 it squirms (a handling test to determine some of the squirrel's personality traits), put colours in its ear tags so we can ID it with binoculars later in the season, retag its ears if they are not done properly, and if the squirrel is a female we have to determine if it is pregnant by feeling its little belly. Not bad, but squirrels can be pretty crazy once they get into the little handling bags. If you can get their eyes covered they settle right down.

This is me on the way out to work in the morning. I'm standing on the edge of the Alaska Highway looking out at the St. Elias Range.


Dylan and the girls getting ready for the day.


In the wilderness.


My snowshoes. Trusty MSR's with extended fins for extra deep snow. They're pretty easy to walk in, but also pretty easy to trip over.


One of my traps, Golden Eagle. They all have names. Some of mine are: Darth Vader, Kirchner, The March Hare, and George.


Learning how to squirrel-stretch.


Some of the animals I've trapped. My favourite squirrel. His name is red!/blue! The exclamation indicates that he is a male wearing pipe cleaners. Females wear wires. Juveniles wear disks. He lives on the corner of Joe grid.

This little girl has her tail over her eyes to hide and keep her calm. I've put blue and purple wires into her ear tags.


An ermine that I accidentally tapped. He was a wild little devil in there and was really angry with me. I'm very glad that I'm not working on an ermine project. But it's cool that I got to see one up close. The smell bad, like rotten grape kool-aid.


A cute little guy in squirrel jail.


At 2:30 we meet back at the truck and head back to camp. The afternoon is used for entering data and learning other skills we will need to use this summer, such as telemetry. Which is tracking the signals from little collars with an antenna and receiver. I did a bunch of that in Australia when I was tracking numbats, so I'm pretty good at that already. Each day one person has a camp day and they are responsible for the meals and everything. I like camp day a lot because I like to cook for a crowd. Dinner is at 6:00 pm and we all eat a ton. I've already lost weight from snowshoeing every day and I eat much more than I ever did at home. We're very healthy too because we're vegetarian with no junk food. It's great, actually.

The cookhouse from the driveway.


The kitchen inside the cookhouse. The dining area is on the right with the big windows out the front. I"m standing in the living area and clothes-drying area.


The datahut. You can see the entrance of the cookhouse in the background. The little window up top is directly beside my bed in the loft.


This is the little shack that I will eventually move into. Nothing glamorous, but its name is Nemo. Everything here has a name.


The view at the end of the driveway. The clouds are constantly changing and flowing over the mountains. Some days it's been so snowy that we can't even see the mountains.



After dinner we have free time. I knit, we listen to music, we play music, we chat, we drink beers (there is a great local brewery up here), and we write and read. Dylan, Frances, and I also have a push-up challenge going on where each night we do one more push-up. Tonight I have to do 7.

This is the winter wonderland we live in. There has been some time to play with my camera, so I've taken a lot of cool landscape shots.




Here are some pictures from the drive up.

This is a moose in the middle of the road. There are moose everywhere up here. Dylan ran into one in the woods. We see their tracks all the time on our grids.


Caribou. We also saw a lot of elk.


Wood Bison! Incredible, huge animals. The like to sleep on the highway. That's dangerous.


This is the little town of Haines Junction. It's called Haines Junction because it is basically the widening of the Alaska Highway where you can go one way to Haines, Alaska, or the other way to the rest of Alaska. A lot of large trucks come through here.


I've decided that I'm staying at Squirrel Camp until the end of June. I just think this is the best place ever and I'm having such a good time. I have a few days off, so I'll be checking out Whitehorse and on my way home I'm going to get a ride into Haines, Alaska, and take the Alaskan Ferries down to Prince Rupert. From there I'll travel south to visit friends in British Columbia before flying home for the summer and wedding events!

Today I received a postcard from the other side of Canada, lovely Halifax, NS. Getting mail up here is the one of the best things ever. Any fan mail can be directed to:

Cass St.
c/o Squirrel Camp
Box 5506
Haines Junction, Yukon
Y0B 1L0

It would be very nice to hear from any of you. Also, there aren't any treats up here at all, so if you happen to have a spare Cocoa Camino chocolate bar of the chili and spice variety, I'd be thrilled if you stuck that in the mail and sent it up north to me.

Love ya and miss you all, Cass