Starting In The Middle

Here is a secret: I read the last page of a book first. I know I am ruining an element of surprise for myself, but my preferences tend towards storytelling that justifies itself on every page, not just the last few. That said, I'm always bamboozled by the idea of traditional story arcs when trying to write on my own. The end of the story is where the is resolution, or evolution attained, or growth. The character moves from one place to the other, literally or figuratively, and at the end of this motion there is a peace accord with words.

I've never found that peace. And so I will begin not at the beginning or the end, but rather the middle.

Two and a half years ago, after almost a decade working as a music and pop culture writer in Vancouver, British Columbia, I decided I'd had enough. On my thirtieth birthday, I announced to friends that I was moving to Toronto, after a six-month stay with my mother in Powell River to financially steady myself. Somehow, I instead found myself in the Yukon Territory, some 2,700 km North of Vancouver and more than 4,000 km from Toronto.

For the past 22 months, I've been based in the government town of Whitehorse. With a population of 20,000-odd folks living in a constellation of neighbourhoods sprawled over 416 sq. km, Whitehorse is a bit like a massive suburb of a non-existent larger city. In the darkest days of winter, temperatures hover around -30C to -40C, and the city gets about five and a half hours of sunlight per day, with 10 a.m. sunrises and 3:30 sunsets. In summer, a half-hearted sunset brings on the dusk just before midnight, with the full light of the sun returning just after 4 a.m.

In one month, I will move 600 km north to Dawson City, the place that made me want to move here. I came North with the intention of living there right away, but was obligated to live in Whitehorse for my first two years. I will be giving up the sloping, rickety pink-and-white house I have rented for the past two years to rent a trailer near the confluence of the Klondike and Yukon Rivers, which is warm enough to dwell in only until September. I do not know where I will live after that.

This forthcoming venture, I figure, puts me at the natural "middle" of the story—on the last leg to where I think I want to be.

Since moving to the Yukon, I've experienced the highest highs and the lowest lows of my life, with a lot of not knowing where the hell I was throw in for good measure. I have fallen in love a dozen times over—a man, the way the light hit a curving wall of snow sliding off a rooftop, the way a cheap draft beer and warmed over grilled cheese tasted after 12 hours of highway driving; I have thought I lost everything—love, security, countless single mittens— only to realize I had just forgotten where to look. I have crawled under a house at -48 degrees Celsius to wrap a frozen pipes in hot-shots and insulation, and I have thrown a toaster clear across the room when a mouse scurried out from under it, weeping outside my home in jeans and a sweater at -25C, too afraid to go back inside.

I have become far less uptight about peeing outside.

I will attempt with this blog to tell the second half of the story as it unfolds, but also to fill in the first half as I begin to make peace with the words that describe the events. It is not an easy accord.


For now, however: now.

I live on the last block of Black Street, which dovetails at the end: into a staircase up 8 stories of clay cliff straight ahead, a park to the right, and trails leading to downtown and the Yukon River to the left. My block is unpaved, adjoining with the next paved block via combed dirt and gravel. When the slow melts and streams down off the cliffs, puddles ankle-deep form at the bottom of my driveway. The passing of the vernal equinox means there is now more light than dark in the day (today's sunset goes at 8:46 p.m.) and the speed of our winter thaw is accelerating. At today's at solar noon it looked as though the street were an awakening creek. Masses of mud now compete with the mountains of dirty snowpiles for the eye's attention. The snow mounds are revealed for all their ugliness—as much dog piss and dirt as they are anything else. It's a pleasure to watch them shrink, fleeing en masse from Spring, down the street in snakey paths, catching the light and glimmering as they run.


It is a good day for puddle jumping.