Summer is short in Dawson, but it is never quiet.
Looking back on this one, it feels like a lot of life got packed into a few months. There were some very good days and some hard ones. We celebrated weddings and remembered old friends. We lost people we weren't ready to lose.
At the same time, life carried on. People came through the studio. I painted outside when I could. There were commissions to finish, a birch bark canoe taking shape, dinners with friends, and all the usual coming and going of a Dawson summer.
That's the way summers seem to go. Everything happens at once.
This summer seemed to establish that rhythm early.
In May, one of my paintings sold for $20,000 at the Klondike Placer Miners’ Association auction. I’ve been painting a long time, but moments like that still mean something. It was a good night, surrounded by people I’ve known for years, and I was grateful for it.
The next day, the Westminster Hotel caught fire.
I had painted murals inside the Pit over the years, and there were framed paintings of mine on the walls. Some had been there so long they had simply become part of the room. By the following morning, they were gone.
There probably couldn’t have been a clearer reminder of how quickly things can turn.
But summer kept moving, as it does.
I didn't paint very much for a while. There were other things to do.
I built a birch bark canoe, and before long started another. The ice had taken away part of the shoreline in the spring, exposing roots that would normally have been buried. Digging roots is one of the worst jobs in building a canoe, and suddenly, for once, it was the easiest.
I spent a lot of time doing mechanics with my kid. There were things to fix, things to build, people coming and going. Painting was there, but I wasn't in much of a hurry to get back to it.
That changed toward the end of summer.
I started taking small boards out with me and painting wherever I happened to stop. Once I got going again, I couldn't seem to get enough of it. I've been out painting whenever I can — creeks, hillsides, the river, whatever catches my eye.
There is something different about painting outside. You don't have much time to second-guess yourself. The light changes, the weather moves, the bugs find you. You put down what you can while it's there.
Some of those little paintings will stay exactly as they are. Others might turn into something larger in the studio later. I don't always know which when I'm making them.
And around all of that was life.
There were weddings to celebrate, meals with friends, people passing through town and people coming home. There were also funerals and celebrations of life. Some losses were new and some were people we had been missing for a long time.
Maybe that's what I remember most about this summer. Not one particular event, but how closely everything seemed to sit beside everything else. Happiness didn't wait for sadness to be finished, and sadness didn't disappear because something good was happening.
Now the leaves have turned and the hills are changing almost every day. The studio is quieter again.
There are paintings underway, more ideas than I'll get to, and work that will carry into winter. That's familiar territory.
A summer can feel endless while you're in the middle of it. Then one morning you look up and it's over.
This one was full.
