Tag: “Darkness is within all of us, it’s how you use that darkness that matters”

Yukon Take it With You

• Home
• Wednesday, December 6th, 1995, 1:00 pm
• 7 Louders Lane, Jamaica Plain Boston, MA 02130-43422

Two years have passed. We’ve grown larger, more studious in the interim, and all of us have become remarkable people. Except Lorenzo, who hasn’t given me his description and so is a blank slate. We are told we’re all going to go to support Lorenzo as he gets his Extreme Conditions merit badge. Those that don’t have backpacks (like Gabe) are given one, and we settle in to what must be fifteen pounds of roast beef.

We pack our stuff, including a fairly impressive array of weaponry for a bunch of teenagers. No one seems to notice or comment on Gabe’s white-hilted sword.

We travel for more than 30 hours, via plane, small plane, smaller plane, and various other conveyances. Alex Lawton is one of the scouts, and his uncle, Robert Lawton, is flying the plane and supervising the trip. Carl Stanford is another scout seeking his badge. That makes the PCs, Alex, Carl, and Robert. Alex and Robert are obviously native american; Alex might also be part Korean. Carl is a happy-go-lucky, annoyingly cheerful boy out on his first big adventure.

We call him RedShirt, instantly.

When we land in the Yukon, it’s the coldest day on record; -53 degrees (-47C). Between our arctic clothing and good HT, we’re good, but still: damn.

Rented House
Friday, December 8th, 1995, 9:00 am
15 Prospector Street, Ross River, Yukon, Canada

We all realize that we’d get all dead very fast here, so we all look carefully into things like maps and whatnot. We haul the gear into a range rover, pack up the plane, and drive for 10-15 minutes. It’s a small house, three rooms. The living room and kitchen are one thing, a bathroom, and an extra bedroom. With a big fireplace. If we sleep inside, we’ll all pile into the living room.

We’ll actually take snowmobiles up to the site, then we’ll stash ’em and snowshoe out the rest of the way. We’re headed into Chippewa territory; we need to worry about Grizzlies, Polar bears, angry lynxes, and burial grounds.

Robert Lawton asks which of us can shoot. Gabe raised his hand, and so was given one of the hunting rifles. Various parts of us are already freezing.

We’ve got 48 hours to kill, so Amos reads (and remembers) every book in the house. We all invent super-elaborate ways to kill time, and then head out.

We ensure we know exactly where we’re going, double-routes in case there’s trouble, and things are well-mapped. When Gabe looks down, he notes that the maps look an awful lot like the SFOD-D maps that my father was definitely not supposed to show me.

We all take a jog and familiarize ourselves with the snow shoes, and figure out how quickly we get tired, and how to move. Then we practice making a snow-base, and other stuff. We’re fast learners, making perfect shelter and base camp location, including a shelter. We move in circles for four hours of practice, trying to pick up survival skills, and by and large we do.

Kamali sets into set a fire; he’s a city boy, so we’re all like “oh, I can do better.” It becomes a competition; we all go to gather kindling, and then start the fire, and Christopher takes notes on who does what, and even some surprisingly useful Hobby skills. We all successfully make the fire, and then it’s a matter of keeping it going. And the final winner is . . . well, Lorenzo then Gabe found the best firewood, all the scrap from the wood-chopping, and started it the fastest, followed by Amos. Gabe and Lorenzo kept it up the longest. So overall, Lorenzo seems to win.

While we’re doing this, Carl starts talking very knowledgeably about primitive fire-starting methods, explaining stuff, things he’s pre-made. We button up for the night; Gabe notices Lorenzo isn’t quite buttoned up. He fixes him up, and I crit-succeed my HT roll for warmth; Lorenzo, thanks to Gabe’s help, also is no problem. The rest are cold but safe. Kamali goes back inside, noting that we can go be ourselves, but he’s going inside like God intended. On the other hand, he does come outside periodically, along with Amos, to turn the fire periodically.

Gabe is just happy and snoozin’ away.

We wake up . . . and very much miss the smell of bacon and hoe-cakes.

Gabe and Timothy decide we’re going to go hunting. Alex goes too. Lorenzo sets some snares, and follows Kamali into town; Karl follows along shadowing the pair.

Gabe and Timothy
20 miles west of Rented House
Friday, December 8th, 1995, 9:00 am
Ross River, Yukon, Canada

On the hunting trip; Gabe does the tracking, and is very impressed with Timothy’s fieldcraft and quietness. We hike out about 20 miles or so; we see a stag on the hill across a clearing. He’s with a small herd. The stag has an absolutely magnificent set of antlers; an 18-point buck.

Gabe takes aim very carefully, and pulls the trigger deliberately on an empty chamber; we have plenty of food, and don’t need to kill to eat. Still, it would have been mine. The deer bolt and run off.

So we just hiked 20 miles to scare some deer. Timothy’s glare on the 20 mile hike back says exactly this.

Back in town, Kamali strikes up a conversation with a local, who is confused – he asks Kamali what tribe he’s from, and Kamali describes his mixed ancestry. The guy, who looks like Lou Diamond Philips, asks if we’re up here with the Lawton boy (Alex) as the conversation turns to squirrel bacon and goose eggs. Amos discovers a bowl of marbles on the shelf; they’re not glass – turns out that they’re some sort of local stone. Amos isn’t sure what kind.

They do hear a story of a shaman that went bad 200 years ago; many left because of it, and he brought a lot of bad medicine with him. The locals eventually took him out into the land and staked him down to die of exposure. He couldn’t move from the spot he was at. No one knows

Gabe and Timothy hike out and back – 40 miles – and we’re both long-distance runner types with snowshoes, Hiking, and Very Fit. We more or less kite poor Alex along in our wake, making ridiculously good time; Alex is going to be unable to walk for a while.

As Gabe moves,he crit-succeeds a Per roll, and discovers a pair of discarded deer antlers, perfectly shed. It’s a rare find; they came off all in one piece, which is a very valuable piece; he offers it to Timothy; he accepts, not knowing their value.

When Lorenzo and those guys come back from town, there are three rabbits dead in the trap. Nice. Lorenz butchers them.

When we come back, they ask where we went. Timothy grunts at him. Then shows off the antlers; Timothy’s kind of down that we hiked so long, Robert says we could fetch $3600 for them. Timothy refuses to sell them; they were a gift from his brother. And Kamali’s supernatural sensitivity goes off; there’s something up with them. We’ve been briefed in on Kamali’s talents; if he says there’s something odd about them, there’s something odd. If he says he’s talkin’ to a dead ghost, he’s talking to a ghost. “You didn’t find these by accident.”

“Nothing happens by accident,” Gabe notes faithfully.

Into the Wild

So, the merit badge requires us to go out into the wilderness on our own plus Robert, hike to a location, and live there on our own for five days. He’s the one who will ultimately decide who gets badges and who doesn’t, in the end, but other than refereeing, he’s gong to let us do our thing.

Camping Ground
Friday, December 9th, 1995, 5:00 am
Fort Smith, Unorganized Northwest Territories, Canada
62°56'31.6"N 129°02'29.9"W

We’ll head off into McKinsey mountains into a basin there, and set up camp.

We snowmobile something like 130 miles out of town. We each get a map for the location we’re going into, shown how to read it, and otherwise prepare. We head out, but it took Kamali and Lorenzo a bit to get used to the power of the snowmobiles; Carl doubled up with Alex, who knows what he’s doing. It takes us about 3 hours to cover the 130 miles; that’s not terribly fast as snowmobiles go.

We note on the map that we could get access to both good shelter and good water by hiking about five miles upward into the hills, to a mountain lake, the Natla lake. We’re sitting at -20F, but we’re well protected; the +5 bonus we get from our excellent quality clothing. Kamali is dragging large branches behind him for firewood

We wind up going to the tip of the Natla river; it’s a stunning view. About 20 feet from the water, the forest starts. There’s also a bit of clearing, and a rock foundation, and it looks like someone started to build a cabin here, but it was abandoned. Underneath a tightly-wound canvas, there’s a very large pile of cedar and hawthorne wood that’s probably been there for like 30 years. Amos finds a cache of hand tools, nails, hammers, and all sort of things. Hell, even a 1970s wood stove still sealed in plastic.

The weather is about perfect; 0 degrees Fahrenheit: It almost feels warm enough to take off our arctic gear. We ponder building a cabin up here with the materials and earning our construction badges . . . and Kamali absolutely refuses for a while, to build a cabin. Not enough time, and more importantly . . .

Timothy jumps in. While the group is interested, almost driven, to build the cabin, Kamali is firmly reminded that the entire group had willingly entered a dangerous house – which turned out to have actual monsters in it – purely on the premise of rescuing a ghost, in order to safe his sister, and since Gabe and Lorenzo can earn extra merit badges by engaging in the construction task as well as the survival one, that really, being the holdout here is not how “brothers” in the “Band of . . .” behave. Reminded of his duty, he makes his choice, and having made his choice, he gets a feeling. The certainty that, in fact, we really, really need to take this gift and build a house.

“Tell you what guys, we have to build this. Like Gabe said earlier, “nothing happens by accident,” and we need to do this.”

Given Myriam’s admonition to us, we take him seriously. Our Weather Sense is telling us that we’ll have nice, clear weather (barring supernatural interference) for several days. Kamali pulls out all the stops, Leadership to motivate the group. Carpentry for a plan. Then he’ll turn it over to Gabe, who also has carpentry and both single-minded and the diligent virtue to carry this to completion.

With many bonuses and great rolls, we git r done: Gabe makes his natural skill roll by 6, and with bonuses and cards played it takes it to a critical success: we get a ton done, and are inspired rather than exhausted from the work. We get the foundation cleared, shore it up, and get ready to go. The thing has a full-on root cellar, and even a basement. This thing is more like a homestead than a shack. We even find boxes of plates, perfectly preserved.

This entire site was basically built for us. Hawthorn wood also has mystical properties:

Masculine energy. Hawthorn is a sacred tree of Celtic Astrology 13 May to 9 June. Considered sacred by the Celtic summer flower maiden Olwen, also associated with the owl. This tree is also sacred to Aquarius and the windlord Vashaan. It was often planted in the parameters of a cottage for protection. It is believed that fairies live in the hedges of Hawthorn especially if near ash or oak. Associated with the element of Air.