We arrived
back in the Yukon on January 30 from our trip to Austria. That night, we measured minus 18 degrees Celsius. Overnight, the temperature
dropped to minus 35. The next day, minus 40. The day after, minus 45. And it
stayed there. For a week. We stayed in Dawson to wait for our flight back to
Poppy Creek. And we did our shopping. At minus 45 degrees. With Anya all
dressed up. Still, she was either getting tired when she walked, or she was
getting cold when I hauled her in the sled. It was tedious to get her from
point A (my friend’s house) to point B (the store, 20 minutes’ walk away).
We managed.
After a few times, I dressed Anya in my warmest down jacket and put a warming
bottle in with her, before I sat her on an insulating pad into the sled. She
stayed warm and happy. On the way back to the house, she even fell asleep!
On Tuesday,
February 10, the day to fly home had finally arrived. At 10.45 we received a
call from the pilot, that he wanted us to be at the airport at 12.30. We walked
to town to pick up a friend’s car. 20 minutes at minus 40 degrees. No problem.
We took the car to the grocery store and picked up our groceries. We had
bought, paid for and boxed them the day before: six big boxes of fresh
groceries. Anya was waiting inside the car while I carried and packed. Then we
drove to my friend’s house, the one we had stayed with and picked up our
luggage and another box of groceries. Four more boxes, a duffel bag, a dry bag
and my backpack. After that was all loaded into the car, we went back to our
car-owning friend’s shop and picked him up. He gave us a ride to the airport
and dropped us off with our luggage, inside the heated airport building. We
still measured minus 35 degrees outside.
It was
12.45. We were late, but the pilot had not arrived back from his previous trip
yet. We had a sandwich. Then the pilot arrived. I gulped down the last piece of
sandwich. Then we moved all our luggage to a little luggage door at the wall,
while the pilot fueled up his plane and brought it around to park it right in
front of the luggage door. He loaded all our boxes into the plane. I was astonished
and very pleased that it all fit. But Anya did not have her own seat in the
three seat plane. She was to travel on my lap.
I had to
enter the tiny cockpit first and buckle up. Then the pilot handed me Anya. I
put her on my lap and we tried to find the most comfortable position for both
of us. Then, the pilot entered the cockpit and I felt a bit like a canned fish
in the can would feel.
The plane
took off seemingly without effort. And as soon as we were airborne, Anya fell
asleep. She woke up 28 beautiful flight minutes later to my words: “Anya, look,
it’s Papa out there!” Gaetan and Lance were standing there, next to a fire,
smiling. We were smiling inside the plane.
We unloaded
our boxes from the plane onto the snowmobile sled. After the plane had taken
off in a cloud of powdery snow, we embarked on the short trip home: Lance
(running), Gaetan (driving the snowmobile), Anya (sandwiched between us and
therefore protected from the cold), Manuela (in the back of the snowmobile),
and the sled.
The cabin
was warm and our boxes were quickly unloaded into the cabin.
The
following hours and days I spent storing things away, sorting through and
storing vegetables and fruit, and moving into my own space, finally!