A Memory with Our Son

father and son atop Midnight Dome near
Dawson City, Yukon Territory, summer 1986

In the school year 1985-86 I taught English to our son, Steve, in eighth grade at Harmon (Middle) School in Aurora, Ohio. It was awkward for a few days, but we both got over very quickly the novelty of it.

For a number of years I had been teaching my eighth graders The Call of the Wild at the end of the year (it was in our literature anthology), and I was already in the grip of a Klondike/Jack London obsession that would not diminish until, oh, the late 1990s when I published some books about London and Wild.

We had also recently learned, via my father, that his grandfather Addison Clark Dyer had gone on that very gold rush that London deals with in Wild. I like to think that they met in a bar--had a few--though A. C. Dyer did not mention it in his diary of his journey (a diary that I have).

That summer of 1986 I decided Steve and I would go to Alaska, then into the Canadian Yukon and see what we could see. I'd never been there before. (Joyce, by the way, could not go for various reasons.)

We first drove to Toledo, Ohio (flights were cheaper from there), then to Seattle, where we spent the night with my dear college friends Claude and Dorothy Steele; he was teaching at the University of Washington. We had a wonderful time with them--then flew the next day from Seattle to Juneau, where we waited for a little plane to fly us to Skagway, Alaska, one of the launch points for the tens of thousands of gold-rushers who arrived between 1896-99 (one of whom was Jack London).

Our pilot seemed about as old as Steve (14), but it was a beautiful day, and we landed on Skagway's little airstrip (from the air it looked like a sidewalk!), where some bald eagles were sitting nearby.

We went to the little rental car place (Avis? I think so), where they had two red cars waiting for us. One started; the other didn't. So we decided to take the one that did start.

We had some fun looking around the waterfront, walking around the old town.And after spending a night in Skagway's wonderful Golden North Hotel we drove up into the mountains to begin our 440-mile drive to Dawson City, Yukon, the center of the gold rush.

We crossed the border into Canada, which was protected only by a sign. (Times have changed!)

We had decided not to drive the whole thing in one day--a good idea, for the road was not all that great, and the scenery was wonderful. So we spent a night in Whitehorse, once the scene of the Whitehorse Rapids (now tamed by a nearby dam), rapids that figure in Wild, rapids that London himself had shot on his trip to the Klondike. Steve and I took a boat ride through what was left of the nearby Miles Canyon rapids--whoopee! And that night at a local cinema we saw that masterpiece Howard the Duck.

Next morning it was off to Dawson City, and we arrived safely to our little hotel, and we spent a couple of days wandering around, looking at things London mentioned in the book, locating my great-grandfather's claim (still being worked, by the way) on Bonanza Creek (it had been Rabbit Creek before the Rush!). Warning signs were all around (KEEP OUT! and the like)—so we took a couple of quick photos and then Kept Out.

The picture at the top of this post shows Steve and me atop nearby Midnight Dome--Dawson City below us (its population during the Rush reached 30,000!), the Yukon River flowing toward the west, and the little Klondike flowing into it.

Back in Skagway, we did some more exploring (I bought some sourdough starter which I'm still using every week).

We also drove over to nearby Dyea [die-EE], Alaska, a town that had flourished in the Gold Rush (it's where the dog Buck comes ashore in Wild) but is long gone.

I got a picture of Steve at the head of the Chilkoot Trail (now maintained by the National Park Service and Parks Canada), the trail that figures so prominently in Wild, a trail I returned (alone) to hike over in 1993. (I made it!)

Then it was back home with more wonderful memories than a human head can hold.

Steve was always a great youngster to travel with--from the time he was an infant, really. And I still look back on our Yukon adventure together with a bursting heart.

Happy Birthday to Steve, who today turns 48; I was 41 that day we posed atop Midnight Dome.