Where to?

I came across this song by Schubert as part of my research, and was struck by the loveliness of it. The piano accompaniment is rather charmingly brook-like. The words speak about the rushing of the little river, and how the protagonist is enchanted to follow it. The way the man interprets the natural environment as a kind of psychic landscape full of personal, subjective meaning - and the piano, acting as the brook, bends to the movement of the singer's line - is very close to the way we often locate ourselves in relation to bodies of water.

There are references too to a mill in the stream. Where I live, just next to the River Lea, is Millfields Park, presumably the site once upon a time, of just such a mill. Indeed the Bow Back Rivers, a series of channels fed by the Lea, were originally dug to power tidal mills for milling grain and gunpowder. The Lea has become slower and slower, no longer required to power the industry that has always been present along it. Even recently, the flow has been further stilled for the sake of the Olympics a little further downstream.

I took the music from the Schubert song and made a little study in deceleration, and interrupted flow.

Wohin?

The Lea, the wind.

"I think that the Root of the Wind is Water"

Emily Dickinson

I have been mildly obsessed by the sound of wind since I first got a microphone. I have recorded a fair bit of wind down by the River Lea: it's one of the sounds I associate with being there. I have made this short study - from a recording I made of a stormy wind in the poplars by the riverside - to try and transform the wind sound into something else, that sounds a bit like talking.

Windtalk 1

This one combines a similarly treated wind sound with a drone (derived from my voice). One of the things that has emerged from my conversations with amateur and other musicians about their experiences by the river and the kind of music they associate with it has been the idea of a drone: a sustained note of one pitch.

Windtalk 2

London: fire, boat, arrows, figs.

While Cara, Carolyn and Pia have been in, on and around the Yukon River, thinking about water and ice, there has been a fire in London. The reeds in the Middlesex filter beds - where we filmed Cara just a few weeks ago - have gone.

Not being able to canoe with the others, I made a little boat and floated it off into the Lea. More detritus to add to the river's payload.

Orange arrows have appeared near the river. No idea what they're for.

The transient scent of figs as you walk by a fig tree is one of the delights of the riverside. It's interesting to remind yourself of how it got there though. The seeds of fig trees survive their transit through the human digestive system, and wash up on polluted river banks where they germinate and grow.

Pia’s statistical ponderings - no 1

The Yukon Territory and Sweden are almost the same size in area, while UK is half that size. On that island live 60 million people and 2 moose. The latter moved over from Sweden, which reduced Sweden’s moose population to 398,000 – which is still 5 times more than in the Yukon. 165,000 caribou are running around wild in the Yukon, while the 220,000 caribou in Sweden, are owned by Saami herders. No caribou, bears or wolves are to be found wild in the UK – yet. The Yukon has 6 times more bears than Sweden, which has no grizzly bears at all. There is a steady wolf population in the Yukon of 5,000 – while in Sweden 18 of 220 wolves tend to walk over to Norway.

ferry crossing

For about 5 months of the year, the Yukon River at Dawson can be crossed using the small ferry that runs 24hrs/day during most of the summer. In winter, the river freezes hard enough to allow an ice bridge to be built. But in between these two seasons are the interim seasons of "freeze-up" and "break-up" – each one lasting 1-2 weeks when crossing the river becomes impossible. Dawsonites have to decide in advance which side of the river to be stranded on until the river settles into its next long season...

Late summer Canoeing

(photo by John Overell)
With a wallop of good luck and a bit of effort, we finally got ourselves on the river.

We spent several blissful hours today canoeing the Klondike river, one of the many tributaries of the Yukon river. Known primarily as the namesake of the Klondike Gold Rush, the Klondike flows into the Yukon river at Dawson City.

It was at the confluence of these rivers that the Tr'ondëk Hwëch'in, People of the River, had an ancestral fishing camp. The english language name Klondike is in fact a mispronunciation of the word Tr'ondëk and means 'hammer rock river'.

The river winds through valleys of boreal birch forest, spruce groves and dredge piles – unceasing reminders of Dawson's gold mining past. Its waters are clear and often one could look down into the depths to see the river rocks gliding by – silent and dreamlike, and seemingly discordant with the dramatic late summer colours. Idyllic but sometimes mischeivous, the river's pace is uninterrupted and continuous – like a pleasant trot on a sunny day.

I have dreams of coming here to this river in winter; each time I return, I try to imagine its frozen choppy surfaces, gleaming ice, snow crusted banks and stark trees. I hear that one can feel the ice shift sometimes or hear it creak groan and crack as it flows underneath – this too I would like to experience. The sense of danger looms – but in an exciting, keep-you-on-your-toes way and there's comfort in the knowledge that the Yukon River and Dawson lie not too far ahead.

Where the Klondike meets the Yukon, the land itself appears innocuous. For a very long time the area was a site of salmon harvest, hunting preparation and meeting place for families. At another time, it became a site of ill repute, better known as Lousetown – another throwback to the Gold Rush days. Now it has recovered/regenerated a sense of youthful serenity. As we drift into the slow lazy flow of the Yukon, there is the most incredible sound sensation: similar to onions sautéing in a frying pan, or being inside a coke can, the silt of the Yukon river makes an audible sizzle as it rubs against the canoe's exterior.

By the water, one can view the metamorphosis of the two rivers. A visible line between the murky, drab olive brown of the Yukon and the translucent jade-like Klondike appears, varying the width of each riverband daily. And as we drift closer to Dawson, it's the sound of industry and transport that breaks the spell: helicoptors, cars, ferry and heavy machinery – vast reminders of the differences that lie between millennia of Trondëk Hwëch'in river use, and our current methods of coming north. -Cara

Dawson City from the Moosehide trail

Today saw us not only at the river's edge in the morning – by the afternoon we were hiking to Moosehide, 5km downriver from Dawson on the Yukon River. Originally known as Jëjik Ddhä Dënezhu Kek'it, the site at Moosehide has long been one of many traditional camps for the Tr'ondëk Hwëch'in. This short video shows the view of Dawson City and the Yukon River from a point about halfway to Moosehide.

river music Sunday Sept 19th

Three members of the Dawson City Beginner Orchestra – Peter Menzies and Lolita Welchman (both on fiddle), and Kerry Barber (cello) – agreed to get out on the river early this morning to play a river-inspired tune for us (thanks you three for persevering, despite the frosty temperatures). Stay tuned all, for further musical river outings!

Yukon River at last

After six days in a cramped car driving 3118 km, we have finally arrived in Dawson City, our next research site for rivercities. Our focus is the Yukon river which is immense, mighty and wild - and long!

The journey from Vancouver to Dawson took us through British Columbia and the southern Yukon regions of the Yukon River watershed.

We will be spending the next 2 weeks here in Dawson City, with echoes of our London River Lea experience still fresh in our minds.