Becoming a Local:
The Dawson Twelve Step

Yukoners, Dawsonites among them, are rightly home-proud folks. They live in a beautiful, unspoiled part of the world where life moves with an unhurried ease, the friendships are strong, and people have a good sense of community. But if you sit down with a local over a beer or coffee, you might not just get a list of all the reasons why they wouldn't trade in their lives in the Yukon for a life "Outside" (that's what the people who live in the Yukon call anywhere not in the Yukon!); you might also get a long and interesting story about how they came to be here in the first place. Sure, some locals are born and bred Yukoners, but just as many come from parts south. In fact, many locals started out as tourists and travellers themselves, but ended up staying a while longer and putting down roots.

Now, on the off-chance that you, dear reader, are unknowingly on the road to becoming a local northerner, the Guide to the Goldfields has assembled the following simple plan to speed the process. Although we don't claim this program will fit everybody, we figured that if you're reading this article you might already be at step one.

1. Visit the Yukon and Dawson for whatever reason -- business, pleasure, dodging a draft, etc. -- and drink the water (it's lore that if you drink it you'll at the very least come back).

2. Stay awhile, sample and enjoy exotic meats -- caribou, moose, beaver -- keep drinking the water and lose your sense of time under the midnight sun.

3. Stay longer than planned so that you can watch the tourists leave and the rivers freeze.

4. Return "Outside", begin missing the north, make a spur of the moment decision and return to the Yukon, preferably mid-winter.

5. Get a dog team and learn to mush.

6. Quickly figure out the basics of wearing 50 layers of clothes, learn to identify friends by the colour of their parkas, sleep more than you ever have before and wallow in all of winter's charms -- you have to, it's 8 months long!

7. Spend another winter living in the bush in a wall tent with only your wood stove for heat, your dogs for companionship and your newly acquired fire arm (preferably a rifle) for protection and occasional food.

8. Start thinking of -20 degrees C as pretty warm.

9. Buy a beater of a pick-up and learn to keep it on the road.

10. Buy a "leatherman" portable tool thing and attach it to your belt and use it to fix things you would have never tried to fix "down south."

11. Start a business where you can employ seasonal summer workers.

12. Share the story of how you came to live in the north with curious tourists and summer workers thinking of spending their first winter.

**Story used with permission by and copyrighted to Guide to the Goldfields/Harper Street Publishing/John Ingram
Do not use the story without permission by the copyright holder**

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