Dear Vi,
Dawson City sits at the place where the Klondike and Yukon Rivers merge. 
The Klondike River is on the left, the much larger Yukon River on the right
In many ways, the town itself mirrors this merging. 
The rivers flow side-by-side for a ways, the line between the muddy Yukon and the (slightly) clearer Klondike easy to discern. 
And the city flows side-by-side, too. Old and new holding hands the way you did with your best friend back in kindergarten. 
Yes, Dawson City is a historic gold rush town, fun to visit.
The community library is located within Robert Service School. How cool is that?
But it’s also a town where people live and work and raise their kids. 
Old and new are side by side everywhere you look.
This is where I buy my groceries:
And the liquor store (in the old harness shop!):
My favourite restaurant:
The local community radio station (with proud show hosts):
The Gold Rush, past and present, all coming together where the rivers meet. 
And the First Nations…don’t assume I’ve forgotten them. Their story is the oldest of all. But I’ll save that for another time, another letter.
We are living in company-provided housing…a very comfortable 26-foot travel trailer on the company lot in a residential industrial area (that’s an oxymoron if I ever saw one!) four kilometres outside of town.
As you can imagine, it’s a dusty place.
This is our little home-away-from-home. 
That’s us on the right. We share the outside space with our neighbours, fellow pilots also working for Great River Air.
It didn’t take long to settle in. Throw a handmade quilt on the bed and it’s quite homey. This is a scrappy maple leaf quilt with blocks from the We Bee Canadian quilting friendship group I belong to. I finished it just in time to travel north with us.
There’s another handmade quilt on the back of the couch: 
It’s astounding, really, how easy it is to live in such a tiny space.
That’s not to say I don’t appreciate or miss the luxuries of home!
Home is where the laundry dries in the sun. No matter where I am living, I still avoid the electric dryer, lol. I’m such a hippie girl.
Doing without certain conveniences for a period of time reminds me to include them on my daily gratitude list.
Things like internet access and not having to conserve water, for example.
Our weather reports come from Kelowna, BC, over a thousand miles south. 
And this morning we had the news feed coming in from Yellowknife, about 1,000 miles to the East. 
Serious distances.
So how would they know the weather was completely wrong , way over here? Heh heh heh.
Well, such a beautiful day requires pictures of flowers, don’t you agree? 
My neighbour brought me a bouquet from her lovely flower garden:
And I even have a few pots growing beside our travel trailer home.
One of the things I’ve always loved about Dawson City is the flowers. 
Along fences and other creative places…
Summer is short in the Yukon.
The first leaves come out in mid May and they start to change in late July.
Mother Nature has a lot to do and not much time to get it done.When you live in a landscape where you’re always dealing with winter or preparing for winter, colour is very important.
Dawson City used to be known for its beautiful vegetables. I remember walking the side streets and alleys, gasping in admiration of the back yard gardens, the giant cabbages and lush trellised peas. 
But times and priorities change, along with the population. 
The old timers are mostly gone, and the new people moving in aren’t here for the long haul, and so don’t garden. That’s my guess, anyway.
But thank goodness the flowers remain as bright and plentiful as always.
The city was preparing for the annual Dawson City Music Festival. Facing the river, we could hear the echo of a band bouncing back at us from the opposite shore.. 
It sounded as though the very rocks and trees were singing.
Above the trail is another: a double -decker trail along the top of the dike that protects the town from spring flooding. It boasts some lovely places to sit.
Life is slow at the moment… these past weeks…these past months. 
Here at the top of the world I search out the internet in interesting locations. The library, the airport, parked in my truck before the laundry at a motel down the street.
The internet up here is as slow as I am. It takes several long minutes to load each picture.
I’ve decided it’s time to start querying for an agent to represent Holding Space again.
What have you let languish?
