Day 4 in Dawson...into the Dredges

So I've been trying to find a pipe and tobacco since I got here. I know it a small town, and perhaps thats my problem, I think I can just find things on my own and not have to ask. So today once I got going I decided to find a couple of things: the pipe and tobacco, and a bike lock/chain. They provide us with a bike each at the residency, lots of folks get around by bike up here. The roads are all dirt/gravel except for the asphalt highway that runs across front street, but their really compacted and most folks zoom down them at a good click. I venture towards the only gas station in town to see if they have either or all of these things. They direct me to the Trading Post on Front Street or the Hardware Store. So I make my way to Front Street heading south. This takes me past the visitors information center, which I hadn't visited yet, so I decide to go in. I don't notice much and try not to make eye contact, I just want a city map with businesses on it, etc. There are some on the counter, so I stealthily gab one to avoid questions. I guess I'm afraid of being perceived as a tourist, which is always double edged...Tourists of course bring commerce into a city like Dawson, but can also be leeches or buffoons - pulling stupid shit, getting drunk, taking exceptions, expecting to be treated like royalty, etc, etc, etc.
I figure out that I need to turn around and go the other way on Front Street, but the Hardware Store is basically around the block and there are still parts of town I haven't seen, some in the south end, some in the north, some at the rear near the trails (hope to hit those tomorrow or the next day). So I wander around to get to the hardware store and see the more residential areas (which the residence house sits in, but I usually make a pretty direct path either west towards the river and 'downtown' or south towards the confluence). I make my way to the Hardware Store and ask about a bike lock. They have them there hanging on the wall just inside the door. So I look for a bit, again the prices are a little higher, but I'm surprised to find that the stronger bar locks are less expensive. So I buy one of those and inquire again about a pipe and tobacco. Again the answer is the Trading Post....and possibly Maximilian's which is just a few doors down from the Trading Post. I thank them and walk the few block to Maximilian's. Its a gift shop, of which there are a few of those up here (I would group the small drug store in with them as well, because half of the place is filled up with useless tourist crap: lots of plastic toys/guns for the kids, T-shirts with smart saying that are specific to Dawson or the North in general, etc.). I keep myself busy, remembering that I do want to get and send postcards to my family, until the shopkeep is free. I ask him about the fabled pipe and tobacco, and he informs me that he has tobacco, but they should have pipes next door at the Trading Post. So I decide to find out about the pipe first before purchasing tobacco (don't put the cart before the horse). The Trading Post is just that, a real trading post!! It has camping goods, winter clothing, inexpensive non-commercially marked water bottles (I've been looking for one of those too), found mining artifacts, books (old and new) about Dawson and camping, firearms, ammo, MRE's, canoe and raft paddles, etc. And there in a little case with some artifacts are some gently used pipes!! There are about 6 more modern ones and a white clay pipe. I ask the young lady behind the counter if I can see one or two. She unlatches the back and hands me the ones I ask about. I pick a nice one that has a carved tan/brown bowl and bone draw.

I inquire about tobacco just to make sure, and yes I'll need to go back to Max's to get it. So I buy the pipe and a decent water bottle, for hiking, biking, etc - its easy enough to get dehydrated with the sun never really setting. I go back to Max's where I stashed some post cards in a grouping so I wouldn't have to find them individually again and buy them and some cherry cavendish Borkum Riff pipe tobacco.

With this mission accomplished I decide to head by the gallery to do some measuring in preparation for the building of another Polypropylene Cycle installation for my exhibition up here. The space overall isn't huge, its about 3/4 the size of the main part of the Hunt Gallery at Webster, it measures about 30' long by 22' wide with about 9 1/2' ceilings. I have a few ideas of how I want to approach the exhibition. Firstly the wall that divides the little office area from the gallery is a 3/4 wall, its measures 8' exactly, so there's a about a foot and a half gap at the top.

I want to start a Polypropylene Cycle from the top of this 3/4 wall with a 'waterfall' formation, I was thinking about fastening vertically placed topographically layers materials onto the walls beneath and surrounding where the 'waterfall' happens to box it in and to adapt the architecture to the piece. I see the pellets spilling from the water fall down a series of 'cascades' into a pool that would help collect and recycle them throughout the piece. I was thinking that it would go most of the way through the gallery, but that might change...

I'm still deciding on what will happen in the other parts of the gallery, fortunately I have a few avenues I can go down, and more are being added daily!!

With my purchases in tow and a sketchbook full of gallery dimensions and blooming ideas in hand I head back to the residency to get a bike in working order. Once there I fasten the mount for the bike lock and adjust the seat. Its a fixed gear bike thats pretty used up, but still has some life in it. I choose the one with fenders over each tire, just in case of mud (which is pretty much a given here). The tires can use a little air, and I ride down to the gas station in town to see if they have any, but they don't. Also, I've packed my backpack to journey out to the dredge piles that are about a mile or so out of town. I have my camera gear with microphone (no tripod though, its a little unwieldy to carry just yet on a bike that I'm sure I'll be unsteady on), small sketchbook, writing/drawing devices, water bottle, bear spray, sheath and pocket knives, wallet/cash/passport/phone (more like just a watch while I'm here), rain jacket (the skies look foreboding), Pipe/tobacco/matches, plastic bag for berries or other interesting things, first aid kit and some other small camping/survival gear. I probably have too much with me, but I'm still a stranger in a wilderness area, so don't want to be unprepared. I head off south out of town, which takes me past the confluence, the bottom of the mount that becomes 'the Dome' above Dawson, across the bridge that goes over the Klondike River before it joins the Yukon. I stop at another gas station and tire place just outside of the city. They fortunately have free air, so I put some in my tires. It hadn't been a long journey just yet, but I don't ride very often and with not full tires my butt was already getting a little sore!! So with fresh air I pushed on. I found it easier to ride the large shoulder of the road rather than the gravel path next to it, it's flatter and smoother, there can be large rocks in the gravel path and with only one gear moderate hills aren't conquerable. While biking I take note of my surroundings - there are several helicopter tours/charter companies just outside of town, some loosely organized groupings of large artifacts (steam shovels, buckets, gears, etc,), dredge subdivisions (housing built on top of flattened dredge piles), mining operations off to the west, and the Dredge Piles. 

To make a long story short, the dredge piles were left along the banks of the Klondike River in the 40's by a huge dredging machine that had been built and rebuilt several times in several places in the klondike. Its purpose was to dig up the banks and river itself and sift through the rocks for gold, and it was mightily successful - at both finding gold and at dredging and digging up the earth. Up here there isn't as much soil as back home, its very thin or contains permafrost. Much of Dawson sits on non-permanent permafrost - permafrost that changes or melts due to the seasons. Further north its more permanent. This can cause the structures in town to shift over the years, and there's quite a few that have been left to naturally erode and break apart:

A pair of buildings at Third Avenue and Princess Street in Dawson that are being allowed to heave and break apart naturally...

Anyway, back to the dredge piles....the dredge went for several miles back and forth along the river piling up rocks in semi-organized hills with ridges along them based on the speed of the machine. Needless to say this caught my attention on the way in to town from the airport!! And they certainly didn't disappoint! I rode about a mile out from town to where the piles were only partly dotted with domiciles. I'm sure they extend further, so it just means more trips as I build up my bike riding legs!!

A view of the dredge piles from above (via google maps).

I had seen these shapes while planning for my trip and hadn't known what they were. Tara had filled me in on the way in my first day here. From the road the piles seem like naturally occurring long rock hills, and from above it was hard to tell if it was just sand bars left by the shifting course of the river or what??

 There are patches of plants and trees growing here and there on the piles, and little ponds and channels where water collects or flows. The water in them was variously colored, some red/yellow, green, bluish, and they varied in size. Tara had told me that they were the one thing that was supposed to be disturbed - houses and subdivisions could be built on the rocks, effectively flattening them, but the water couldn't be filled in.

There were plants growing in the ponds and streams, though I really didn't see any fish...and it was apparent that they were the color they were because of the tailings of minerals and heavy metals that still existed in the rocks in the piles.

There many other rocks that were even 'rusting' on the outside due to their high iron content.
I should back up a talk about getting on top of the piles in the first place. I pulled off the east side of the road and tucked my bike into a grouping of little piles where a power pole had been planted. no one would be able to see it there unless they walked into the crevice where it was hidden - I didn't want to lose the bike on my first excursion!! While there I noticed pieces of scrap wood lying about, some small and one largish piece, I tucked these next to the bike for transport later. I then set my sites on scaling the nearest pile to get a vantage point of the landscape. This sounds easier than it was, and in the processI nearly caused myself to get buried in a landslide...as you climb the side of the pile you dislodge rocks, and with only more rock beneath and on top of it it doesn't take much to start the rocks a tumbling... The piles aren't very high, maybe only 20' tall in most places, they're pretty uniform in height. It took me about 20 minutes to get to the top, and I learned pretty quickly that you couldn't just go in a straight line vertically, you had to shuffle sideways and up unless you found a region of vertically aligned larger boulders, these seemed to stay put longer. Otherwise the rocks beneath and in front of you would give way and you lost ground,  with the potential of getting smacked with a big rock or two on the way down. I finally scrambled to the top, and of course discovered that people had been up here before and had left pink tape to mark a 'safer' path of ascension, which ran along the ridge to where it met the ground. Point taken, this is how I would tackle each pile from here on in, unless they combined with each other somewhere (which some did...).

After reaching the top I surveyed the landscape and began to traverse the ridges in the piles.

It was harding going than I thought with the rocks shifting as I moved, and very little flat ground to stop on, plus each ridge was about 6' long from crest to crest which made them little rocky valleys that had to be traversed carefully so as not to fall while holding my camera, etc. It also became apparent that it would be difficult to convey the ridges via photography up close due to their similarity in value and color...I'd have to wait for the right lighting/spacial opportunity. Meanwhile I made some sketches in my little sketchbook and walked around mentally mapping my experience. As I waked I also encountered objects that had been left on the piles either by humans or by natural circumstances - trash (of course), drift wood (wondering how old, or if left by a flood), and animal bones...

A detail of a piece of 'drift wood' atop a dredge pile, what caught me was how square or pixilated the cells of the wood became as it broke down. 

A rock with a perfectly circular depression worn into it, but how?? 

I'd also found this rock with a near perfect square chunk missing from it. Not really sure how that could happen, but going to check it out?!?

This was in a small pile of animal bones that looked to be from a small deer or moose? While the pile was small , the condition of the bones was relatively fresh - not brittle.

This bone was by itself and looked to have been there for a while, it was very bleached and brittle, not like the bones from the pile found above.

While walking around the sun had shifted and wince I had moved a few dredge piles into the mass I was able to start getting good images of the ridges:

While taking note of the striations in the piles in general I also started taking note of the striations of individual rocks and their similarity to some images I had printed out and brought with me before I left for Dawson. I've been thinking about humanity at a glacial/volcanic process for a while now, and one system of ours in general that fit this perfectly is our system of highways and roads. If you look at them from above they mimic patterns of rivers, glaciers, and lava flows - dendritic lines flowing across the landscape. I had printed out overhead images of most of the major highway intersections in the St. Louis metro area and brought them with me for potential subject matter for drawings or collages. Now I was thinking about how I could make 'rock' sculptures that mimicked the rocks I was seeing in the dredge piles:

I brought this one back with me, the lines also create raised textures on the surface of the rock.

I had been out on the dredge piles for about 6 hours by this time, and it looked like a storm was headed my way so I decided to head back to the bike and go home. Once back at the bike I had to figure out how to lash my the wood pieces I had found to its frame. Fortunately there was a rack over the back tire and the bike lock I had bought fit perfectly both over the wood and large bone fragment and the rack. I fought with it for a couple of minutes while insects buzzed me and the rain approached. Finally I got it to clip in successfully and well enough to hold the pieces in place. I jumped on the bike and took off for the city. It was a little smoother sailing going back in, with the wind at my back and the road sloping mostly downhill. I got back to the residency just in time to dodge the rain, which didn't come down as hard as I thought it would, and sorted my scrap and pries while downloading my photos. 

I fixed some dinner (tacos...yum!), and watched the rest of the movie 'Mermaid" that I had started earlier over breakfast. It's billed as the Russian 'Amelie', and was good for the most part, but the ending seemed a little too Russian for me...its an ironic tragedy. My hips were hurting from the trek (riding a bike with a pack on over uneven terrain, scaling and traversing super rocky terrain again with a pack on), so I ay down for a bit and then showered to loosen things up. Afterward I hung out with Andrew and smoked my pipe while we chatted. I finished the night (at about 1) by watching a DVD compilation of the Grizzly Man (only watched a few minutes I couldn't handle that guy's kind of crazy very long), and The Grizzly Project, which is about this other kind of crazy Canadian Patrick Swayze looking character and his obsession to make a grizzly proof suit. you gotta watch this if you haven't seen it, he's just the kind of 90's neurotic that you can't peel your eyes away from!!

Alright, enough crazy, now off to bed!