Maybe I should stop writing “if I get stuck here…” John and Gail are desperate for restaurant help. Last night, while watching John’s poker game at Gertie’s and wondering how long it would take me to pick up some of his skill, he came over and asked, “What would it take to get you to stay a couple of weeks just to help us get through the season?” I thought about it for about five seconds and told him I’d trade him a week or two for some poker tips. When you’re at a crossroads in an adventure and a direction so clearly identifies itself, you have no choice but to follow it through. “The river knows the way,” said a German girl at the hostel the other night when I asked how she and her partner had navigated around islands and estuaries and tributaries from Whitehorse to Dawson in a canoe.

Maybe now I’ll get up the Dempster somehow in mid-August to catch that astonishing firey orange rolling carpet in Tombstone… And maybe now I’ll have a chance to meet “Cave Man Bill” who lives in a cave on the other side of the river, and “Two by Four Joe” who got the name when he hit someone over the head in a poker game with a two by four, and “Johnny Caribou” who was flattened by a stuffed caribou that fell off a wall… “If you stick around awhile, you’ll get a nickname, too,” someone told me yesterday. Ha!

I find it so amusing that I just wrote yesterday about constant movement and nothing sticking. Letting go also means letting go of ideas.

I had an email from Ron in which he tried to articulate his idea of adventure being staying steady, committing, going deep. He promised an essay on the topic. Yeah. The Yukon is so not the last frontier… I agree with him. There might not be a better adventure than the adventure of a long-term committed relationship. Perhaps all the lone adventurers I’m meeting out here, including myself, are using motorbike trips, kayak trips, and Unimog trips as the cowards’ substitute adventure, constantly moving, not staying anywhere long enough for anything or anyone to stick, happily awestruck by the views, yet unable to bear looking at the landscape inside commitment.

I just happen to believe that it should be as natural and effortless as lacing my canoe to my partner’s, cracking a nice bottle of Chardonnay, and kicking back to take in the marvelous view as the river floats us.