Janis goes to Dawson City
WHEN MY BOSSIE SAID "Janis, I'm taking our guest from Europe up to Dawson City. Tonya's going, but Lizzie can't go because she has little puppies to take care of. Would YOU like come along?" I didn't know at first, 'cause the only trip I ever took was that horrific long airplane ride when I was just a li'l scaper. And I wasn't so sure about riding in the cab with that strange Man from Spain who I didn't rightly know so good. But I have this unshakable determination to go looking for traces of ARTHUR WALDEN here in the Yukon where I KNOW he was. So I said, "yes, please"!
Sniffin' Around
I want to explain something about my quest! Some people
are gonna say right off, "Well, you're a dumb little dog if you think
you have any chance of sniffing out the trail of somebody who's been
gone for over a hunnerd years!" Maybe those people won't understand
this at all, but I'll try to explain anyway. You see, I, Janis Duppins, AM
A SPIRIT DOG!
If you've seen Chinooks before, you
know what they sposed to look like: BIG RED DOGS -- kinda rich,
tawny, yellowy-red. Big, real, down-to-earth dogs'dogs. But not me!
I'm a SILVER FAWN! Real light, hardly
red at all. That's 'cause I'm not really a hunnerd percent HERE in
this body world at all. I'm partly in the Spirit World all the time! If you
saw me out in the bush, you'd understand. I look like a little doggie
ghost floating through the woods.
So being a SPIRIT DOG, I have a SPIRIT NOSE, too! Now a big red hunnerd-percent body-dog wouldn't stand a chance of sniffin' out Wally's Trail. The body-nose is just no use there. What you gotta have is the Spirit Nose, like me! So I'm gonna spend some of my time in this here Yukon Territory SNIFFIN' AROUND, looking for the tracks of our beloved Founder, Arthur Treadwell Walden, whom all us Chinooks know as "Wally." And I'm sure I'm gonna find him. I have faith that this was what I was sent here to do!
The Outskirts of Dawson, and King Solomon's Dome
So we drove all the way to Dawson City in Boss' truck, an' I thought it was kinda cramped in the cab there with two big Men and Tonya and me, but when you go on a Spiritual Quest you don't complain about the hardships 'cause they are all part of your quest. Just outside of Dawson there are big hills of river rocks and gravel to either side of the highway. They aren't natcherl hills; they are spoil from all of that Gold Rush mining a long time ago. We got out there and I started sniffin' hard, as you can see from the photo at the top of this page! Sure enough, there were tantalisin' little hints of WALLY here and there! But in all that jumble of rock, I couldn't follow the trail very far. So we had to decide what to do next!
Bossie had been to Dawson City before, an' he had a really great
idea: he said we should go up King Solomon's Dome where we
could get an overview of the whole Dawson area. The Yukon
Quest trail goes up there an' I guess Wally wouldn't miss a
grandiose place like that. After all, he used us Chinooks to
climb Mount Washington later on, in New England; so I figgered
he would have found the high ground attractive.
So up we went in Bossie's truck, but it
sure was a steep old climb, an' the engine was gettin' awful hot
by the time we made it to the top. Boss was lookin' kinda worried
about that. Well, we got out and sat on the hillside to have a good
look. Then I saw how MUCH there was of them mine tailings down
below us; it looked like somebody took a giant rake and raked 'em
all into big old windrows. An' I could see the Yukon River from 'way
south of Dawson to quite a ways north of the city. It was an i
mpressive sight, and then somewheres down below we heard a
kennel of sleddog howling, real faint like, though we couldn't even
see where they were. Man, talk about atmosphere, an' nostalgia!
That was quite a moment for a little Chinook gal, I tell ya. I just sat
there with my Bossie, lookin' and lookin' out over that Dawson City
where I know our founder Arthur Walden spent so much time, and I
wouldn't take anythin' for that memory. An' I could FEEL that Wally
had been up there on King Solomon's Dome, lots of times. I just knew
that, an' I felt SO CLOSE to him in my spirit, then.
Wally was HERE! I can feel him. I KNOW it.
(You can see all them big piles of mine tailings right off the end of my nose.)
So then finally we had to go back down, with Bossie still worryin' about the truck, only this time it was the brakes that was gettin' too hot! An' we decided to go on into town so's I could ask people if they had seen or heard anything of Mr. Walden ever. But I'll have to leave that for another day, an' another web page. I hope everybody likes the photos that Boss and Ramon took, documenting my Quest. What an adventure for a little yearling Chinook girl, huh?
Love and doggy-kisses to the Homebody Howlers and all my family in Maine!
HOWLIN YUKON JANIS
Photos Copyright J. Jeffrey Bragg
