Dogsledding the Great White North

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The winter! the brightness that blinds you,
The white land locked tight as a drum,
The cold fear that follows and finds you,
The silence that bludgeons you dumb.
The snows that are older than history,
The woods where the weird shadows slant;
The stillness, the moonlight, the mystery,
I’ve bade ‘em good-by, but I can’t.
- Robert Service, The Spell of the Yukon

The severed human toe splashes into my glass tumbler, spilling drops of sweet Yukon Jack whiskey on the bar counter. It sinks, the nail still attached, scraping the glass with post-amputee growth. Brown and withered, there’s no doubting that this-here toe once belonged to some not-here person, and all these years of being kept in salt and soaked in honey whiskey have kept the skin intact. I’m in the Downtown Hotel in Dawson City, lost in the Great Canadian North, and the weather outside is a balmy - 30C . That’s minus thirty, in case you thought that was a dash. Captain Al, tonight’s Toemaster, has a creepy grin with coffee-stained teeth. As I look on in a blend of one third disgust, one third morbid fascination and one third fear, he commences the ceremony, reading from a prepared text with great fanfare. Although there is nobody in the bar, this freezing night in the north, he draws the attention of the unimpressed bartender, along with the ghosts of the saloons’ former gamblers and whores. Finally, he reaches a climax. “Drink it fast, or drink it slow, but either way, your lips… must touch… this gnarly looking toe.” Never one to shy away from a challenge, even when it involves what might be considered cannibalism, I raise the glass, and tuck my head back. I’ve been to bars before in the hope of meeting a nice girl and getting her digits, but this is just outrageous.

Gonzo Gallery for Dogsledding the Great White North

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