III: Carmacks to Dawson City: 2 Chiefs, a Czech and a Command Performance

III: Carmacks to Dawson City:
2 Chiefs, a Czech and a Command Performance

I woke up and left some time or other. I couldn’t tell you when. I know I felt great to be this close to Dawson, knowing I’d make it today. It was Friday and the happening that never happened was supposed to start happening this day, but that was no matter as it turned out. I left slowly and was wandering up the side of the highway again, when before I settled on a particular spot, the Chief (Eddie) from the Little Salmon government grabbed me and drove me along, teaching me a lot about the land around his Nation. He was going to a conference near Minto involving all of the chiefs in the region, about drugs and alcohol. When he dropped me, I waited about 40 minutes. Then, the Chief from Pelly Crossing (Eric) picked me up, having been told about me by the other guy. This guy had just been elected for the first time, only a month before.
When he dropped me in Pelly, I went to the store briefly. Pelly is a reserve village, and one of the locals talked to me as I left. He seemed impressed that I had been driven in by the chief. He also advised me that I would be stuck in Pelly. I’m guessing it’s about ten times harder to get a ride out of Pelly if you are a local Indian; the drivers by are mostly white tourists. Then “Petr” picked me up, he was a seasonal worker who had just moved here from the Czech Republic. He was staying for the season and then heading back to Vancouver for the Winter. He took me to Stewart Crossing, playing house-beat electronica the whole ride and offering little in the way of conversation. But Stewart’s Crossing, where one could go to Mayo (but very few ever do) and I was in front of the gas station, where there was pull-off space. Traffic was light, the wait was awhile here, but it wasn’t until the “Dawson City Courier” drove by that things were interesting. The driver went for a longish break, while all sorts of photo snapping tourists in their matching goretex got out. A fellow in a fishing hat came over and asked me some innocent questions, and was generally welcome in so much as it broke from the monotony of starting down a road watching for cars to come at me, mostly fruitlessly. He asked how I get rides, where I was coming from and the usual questions that make me feel a bit like an exhibit. Then, as always, a car went by and I did my dancing bow thing. The man found this very interesting, and went back to the bus and told a bunch of the others about my little routine. When I was headed to the outhouse across the highway, they even yelled out at me that a car was coming. Not so bad, but then when the truck came by and I did what I do, a new guy with a baseball cap way too big for his head and huge sunglasses to match came out with his video camera, finding me something to archive for the trip back to Germany.
“You know buddy, you should ask before you do that. I’m not really performing for you.” No apology, he just wandered away. Two minutes later another car went by and I did the same dance & this time the car stopped, and all the tourists from the bus stared and couldn’t believe I was getting out of there. “See you all later,” I yelled to the audience as I left the stage, into the car that drove me to Dawson City, a nice pair of folks both originally from Québec.