May 28 - June 9, 2018

1: Robert William Service, writer extraordinaire. 

Alaska made the headlines, when gold was discovered in 1896. It created the “Klondike Gold Rush”, and the next year, an estimated 100,000 prospectors rushed to the Klondike region in north-west Canada to partake of all the riches you can just scoop up. But to reach the gold fields, the fortune-seekers had to endure extreme hardships on their journey to El Dorado. Summer months were short, and in the winter Alaska has sub-zero temperatures, blinding snow, gale-force winds, and darkness. And once the miners arrived at their destination, they found out that digging in the permafrost was very hard, and all the good spots had already been taken. And so, for the majority, theirs were a journey in vain.

    The hardships are best described by Robert William Service, the British-Canadian poet and writer, often called the “Bard of the Yukon”. He writes about Alaska, the gold, the cold, and the loneliness away from your family or the woman you love. This is probably best illustrated in the oft-quoted poem “The Shooting of Dan McGrew”. I have shown it below.  Read it several times to understand the deep pathos between the lines; the misery, the cold, and how the stranger stumbles in the saloon to find Dan McGrew had stolen his Lou.

A bunch of the boys were whooping it up in the Malamute saloon;

The kid that handles the music-box was hitting a jag-time tune;

Back of the bar, in a solo game, sat Dangerous Dan McGrew,

And watching his luck was his light-o'-love, the lady that's known as Lou.

When out of the night, which was fifty below, and into the din and the glare,

There stumbled a miner fresh from the creeks, dog-dirty, and loaded for bear.

He looked like a man with a foot in the grave and scarcely the strength of a louse,

Yet he tilted a poke of dust on the bar, and he called for drinks for the house.

There was none could place the stranger's face, though we searched ourselves for a clue;

But we drank his health, and the last to drink was Dangerous Dan McGrew.

There's men that somehow just grip your eyes, and hold them hard like a spell;

And such was he, and he looked to me like a man who had lived in hell;

With a face most hair, and the dreary stare of a dog whose day is done,

As he watered the green stuff in his glass, and the drops fell one by one.

Then I got to figgering who he was, and wondering what he'd do,

And I turned my head -- and there watching him was the lady that's known as Lou.

His eyes went rubbering round the room, and he seemed in a kind of daze,

Till at last that old piano fell in the way of his wandering gaze.

The rag-time kid was having a drink; there was no one else on the stool,

So the stranger stumbles across the room, and flops down there like a fool.

In a buckskin shirt that was glazed with dirt he sat, and I saw him sway;

Then he clutched the keys with his talon hands -- my God! but that man could play.

Were you ever out in the Great Alone, when the moon was awful clear,

And the icy mountains hemmed you in with a silence you most could HEAR;

With only the howl of a timber wolf, and you camped there in the cold,

A half-dead thing in a stark, dead world, clean mad for the muck called gold;

While high overhead, green, yellow and red, the North Lights swept in bars? --

Then you've a haunch what the music meant . . . hunger and night and the stars.

And hunger not of the belly kind, that's banished with bacon and beans,

But the gnawing hunger of lonely men for a home and all that it means;

For a fireside far from the cares that are, four walls and a roof above;

But oh! so cramful of cosy joy, and crowned with a woman's love --

A woman dearer than all the world, and true as Heaven is true --

(God! how ghastly she looks through her rouge, -- the lady that's known as Lou.)

Then on a sudden the music changed, so soft that you scarce could hear;

But you felt that your life had been looted clean of all that it once held dear;

That someone had stolen the woman you loved; that her love was a devil's lie;

That your guts were gone, and the best for you was to crawl away and die.

'Twas the crowning cry of a heart's despair, and it thrilled you through and through --

"I guess I'll make it a spread misere," said Dangerous Dan McGrew.

The music almost died away . . . then it burst like a pent-up flood;

And it seemed to say, "Repay, repay," and my eyes were blind with blood.

The thought came back of an ancient wrong, and it stung like a frozen lash,

And the lust awoke to kill, to kill . . . then the music stopped with a crash,

And the stranger turned, and his eyes they burned in a most peculiar way;

In a buckskin shirt that was glazed with dirt he sat, and I saw him sway;

Then his lips went in in a kind of grin, and he spoke, and his voice was calm,

And "Boys," says he, "you don't know me, and none of you care a damn;

But I want to state, and my words are straight, and I'll bet my poke they're true,

That one of you is a hound of hell . . . and that one is Dan McGrew."

Then I ducked my head, and the lights went out, and two guns blazed in the dark,

And a woman screamed, and the lights went up, and two men lay stiff and stark.

Pitched on his head, and pumped full of lead, was Dangerous Dan McGrew,

While the man from the creeks lay clutched to the breast of the lady that's known as Lou.

These are the simple facts of the case, and I guess I ought to know.

They say that the stranger was crazed with "hooch", and I'm not denying it's so.

I'm not so wise as the lawyer guys, but strictly between us two --

The woman that kissed him and -- pinched his poke -- was the lady that's known as Lou. 

    Yes, for the majority, life was hard and unrewarding. And for the lucky few, maybe this excerpt from the “Spell of the Yukon”, gives another slant on success.

  left: Excerpt from the “Spell of the Yukon”, by Robert Service. This poem is on a plaque at the Yukon Suspension Bridge.

     We, on the other hand, belong to the coddled generation. On sea, we luxuriated in a cruise ship, sleeping in a nice bed, gorging ourselves with the surfeit of all the free food, snacks, drinks, and pastries we can eat. On land, we were chauffeured around in tour buses, where you can listen to the narration of the tour guides, or just fall asleep. Which many did, albeit not very comfortably.  Well, we were obviously not in search of gold, but something more evanescent and yet more enduring; the memory of enjoying the immense vistas of nature with snowcapped mountains, the awesome glaciers, and the wildlife still roaming around. And sometimes we listened to what Robert Service had to say.

    So we took a Princess cruise-tour starting out of Fairbanks. We have been in Alaska twice before, the first time for 24 days, traveling all the way to the frigid town of Barrow in the far North, going to the Kenai Peninsula in the South, and flying to Wrangell-St Elias Natural Park in the Southeast, one of the most spectacular of all of Alaska’s Parks. This time it was in late spring of 2018, and we did not have to contend with icy conditions. The itinerary called for five days on land, driving south from Fairbanks, then boarding our cruise ship in Whittier.    

   

    We then spent a week on the frigid waters of Alaska, starting in Whittier and disembarking in Vancouver. There were two other good friends in our party, Ludwig Gentner from München, Germany, and his wife Renate Gentner, from Klagenfurt in Austria. Yes, it was an easy, enjoyable trip. There were no winter gales to contend with; as a matter of fact; the weather was incredibly marvelous throughout our whole trip. We sometimes do not realize how lucky our generation is.