YUKON TERRITORY, CANADA, 1990

Neither a high-stakes wager, nor a midnight ride to the Tombstones, were part of my plans that rainy Friday evening in Dawson City. When I knocked on the door of a cabin I had visited briefly a few weeks before, I sought only a warm place to sleep.

It was late September, 1990, and I was on my way home to Inuvik, NWT. Earlier that month, I had journeyed south to Whitehorse, hoping to patch up a troubled relationship. The trip had been a bust. A long week had passed, and the stiff shivers of flu set in, providing meagre distraction from the longing in my heart.

Cycling was my favoured mode of travel, but it was unrealistic to head back to the Mackenzie Delta, north of the Arctic Circle, on my own steam. Even if I’d been in good health, I wouldn’t have tried biking the entire Dempster Highway at the end of September. And I was not in good health, physically or financially. Lacking the cash for a plane ticket to Inuvik, I decided to pedal through the central Yukon, where the weather was still mild, and then hitchhike the last 500 miles to Inuvik.

The trip to Dawson City had gone smoothly, but the temperature that Friday evening was just above freezing, and I dreaded pitching my tent in the drizzle. So as soon as pedalled into town, I found the house of four heavy-equipment operators I had met just weeks before. They offered me a couch to sleep on, and I stepped in from the cold.

* * *

The miners were convened in a smoke-filled kitchen to discuss another week of working the sluices. Klondike gold is typically found in creek and river beds, and is recovered through a process called “placer mining. ” Muddy gravel is dug out of creek beds and washed, until only the flecks of heavy gold remain.

The first miners in Dawson City plied their trade by hand with shallow pans, but they were soon overtaken by big-money consortiums employing huge dredges. In the first decades of the 20th century, almost every creek bed in the region was tilled. Massive piles of tailings, which spilled out behind the dredges, still snake along beside the streams. When most of the gold appeared to be gone, the big mining companies left, too.

More recently, however, the price of gold has risen dramatically, making it worthwhile to sift through the tailings one more time. A small operator, equipped with a bulldozer and a tractor-powered pump, can work through the piles of tailings, and possibly recover enough gold to turn a profit.

My hosts worked most of the year for one small operation or another, tending sluices, moving equipment to new locations, and scouting piles that were open for re-washing. Sometimes they worked long hours and banked up their wages, and that night they were discussing the possibility of buying their own machinery.

Their lives weren’t all work, though. Books lay about amongst the over-flowing ashtrays and empty bottles. One had been published by the Theosophical Society in the 1920s. A new volume spoke about envisioning wealth, shaping one’s destiny through positive thinking. The books looked to be well-read, reminding me that in places where potentially fabulous wealth co-exists with arduous toil, the hard-bitten miner and the new-age mystic are often the same person.

I thumbed through a few books while sipping rye whisky, and my eyes grew heavy. One of the miners left the room; perhaps he, too, was ready to call it a night. I rejoiced at the prospect of curling up on the sofa and surrendering to sleep.

“Hey, do you think I’m lucky?” Fred walked back in waving a shotgun. “Think this gun is loaded?”

He held the barrel to his temple, glaring first at his housemates and then at me, before he pulled the trigger. The empty click ricocheted off the walls.

Fred was suddenly sullen – and his misery wanted company. “Who wants to gamble with me?” he asked with a menacing laugh.

I looked around and saw more firearms. But I also spotted some cards – and I placed my bet on a different game.

Now, I’ve never been much of a card player. In university, when my peers were honing their skills at five-card stud, I was busy in frivolous pursuits like philosophy. I had never even learned to shuffle a deck.

But I had been introduced to the Tarot in earlier travels. The ancient fortune-teller’s tool fascinated me, and I had tinkered with the classic Rider-Waite Tarot – the same version that lay on that Dawson City shelf.

As quickly as I dared, I reached for the deck and asked, “How about a hand of cards?”

The thought clearly intrigued my gun-waving host.

“You know how to read those cards?” Fred asked.

“I do,” I bluffed.

Fred hung his weapon on the wall, lit another smoke, and beckoned me to read his fortune.

Handing over the cards, I explained, “It’s important for you to shuffle the deck yourself, so that it’s your energy that goes into the deck. It must be your hopes and fears that make the cards fall into order. ” While he expertly riffled the cards, I prayed we’d be dealt a good hand.

“Okay, I’ll take the deck now. ” I methodically turned over the top 16 cards and arranged them in the Celtic Cross layout.

Only one card emerges from my foggy memory of that evening. I’d been hoping I’d see some of the “Major Arcana”, for immediate emotional impact. Perhaps “The Lovers,” or “The Magician,” or “The High Priestess”.

The deck obliged. I turned up “Death.”

The audience drew a single sharp breath as the Grim Reaper came into view. I tidied the cards while we all puffed soberly on cigarettes. Then I wove a story from the pictures before us, ending with the same homily I had heard in my very first Tarot reading. 

“And here, we come to Death. Of course, this could be literal. It’s possible that Death is waiting just around the corner, your own death or the death of someone close to you. This card reminds us that Death will come, for sure, sooner or later. Death can be a gift, a relief from struggle, a prize that no one can take away from us.

“But Death might be symbolic. It might mean that a dream dies, and is replaced by something better. Death might mean a change that we don’t think we want – a change that results in even more life.”

The room was quiet as the sermon ended. The Tarot had worked its magic. The mood had changed, and the guns were forgotten.

“Christ! we’re out of booze!” someone announced. “Let’s go to the bar!” The others heartily agreed, and we sauntered into the rain. 

It was a relief to get out of the house, but another drink had no appeal. I was gun-shy. I was spooked. I wanted another place to spend the night. As soon as we passed through the swinging doors of the nearest saloon, I excused myself to go to the bathroom. Slipping through a side door, I hurried back to my bicycle outside the cabin, and I pedalled away.

This was no time to look for an ideal camp site – any quiet hiding place would do. At the outskirts of town, the long, high windrows of tailings began. I turned onto a sideroad and found a more-or-less flat spot behind a rock pile.

But the night’s troubles weren’t over. As I hurried to erect my tent, one of the poles snapped, the jagged end ripping a hole in the rain fly. The tent still stood, but water dripped in steadily. 

Curled up on my air mattress on the stones, I shivered myself to warmth – and told myself I must not straighten out, must not push the bottom of my sleeping bag into the puddle growing beyond my feet. 

• • •

The morning dawned cloudy. I was hungry, but postponed breakfast, not wanting to linger behind the tailings pile in case a landowner came by. The Dempster Corner seemed a worthy first stop.

A truck-stop-hotel-restaurant occupies that intersection, at the foot of the gravel strip known as the Dempster Highway. I decided to spend a few of my last dollars on a hearty meal there. With that incentive – and a stiff breeze behind me – the 25-mile ride to the Dempster Corner passed easily.

The steak-and-eggs, hashbrowns, toast and coffee went down easily too. With hunger sated, it was time to try my luck at hitch-hiking. I took up my post at the end of the Klondike River bridge, next to the sign that says “Inuvik 735km. ”

There are only three towns along the Dempster Highway, and the first of them is 340 miles north of the Dempster Corner. The chances were excellent, I thought, that anybody going north was going a long way. No doubt at least one of the long-haul truckers would like some company.

But there weren’t any truckers, and only one other traveler was going to Inuvik.  Shortly after I’d taken up my station, a young man pulled up in a small pickup camper with Massachusetts plates. He said he’d be glad to give me a ride, but he didn’t plan to arrive in Inuvik for three or four days. In fact, he only intended to go as far as Tombstone Campground that day; he wanted to spend the afternoon hiking the foothills of the Tombstone Mountains.

Foolishly, I turned down his offer. I was bleary-eyed from a short night of sleep, I was still feeling the effects of the flu – and I wanted one ride all the way to Inuvik.

As the day wore on, there were a half-dozen more passers-by, all of them going to favored moose-hunting areas just a short drive up the road. Hour by hour, that single ride to Inuvik seemed more remote.

By mid-afternoon I was restless. The thought of a four-day journey to Inuvik, in a warm, comfortable pickup camper, in the company of a new friend from Massachusetts, grew more attractive. He had said he was stopping at Tombstone Campground, eh? Forty-five miles north? If I pedalled hard for a few hours, I ï¬Âgured, I could meet Mr. Massachusetts tonight, and ride in climate-controlled comfort tomorrow.

So at four in the afternoon, I pedalled north over the Klondike River bridge and left Dempster Corner behind. 

The rain-washed gravel was rough and sloppy – but there were big hills to climb. With any luck, the higher elevations would bring colder temperatures, and the road would be nicely frozen.

I pedalled along in low gear for a couple of hours; things got worse. The road remained soft, but the air got just cold enough so the slop stuck to my tires and then congealed in ever thicker layers. When frozen silt jammed against the bike forks, I had to find a stick and knock off the mud to free the wheels, before creeping forward to collect another layer of icy muck.

At eight o’clock, I was tuckered out — and Tombstone Campground was hours away. But finally the clouds lifted, the temperature dropped, and the road became blessedly solid. As the moon and stars came out, with a fresh snow cover reflecting the night’s light, I picked up the pace, rolling up and down the hills in perfect quiet, moving steadily north, steadily higher, steadily closer to my rendezvous with Mr. Massachusetts.

Gradually the distant peaks of the Tombstone range came into view, their sharply chiseled faces softened by snow. Then a familiar sign appeared: “Tombstone Campground – 1 km.” With a burst of anticipation, I pedalled through the gate. The moon was high and bright over the fresh coat of snow … and there was not a single tire track or footprint in sight.

Mr. Massachusetts clearly had decided not to stop here. There wasn’t going to be a rendezvous, wasn’t going to be an easy passage to Inuvik. I had just pedalled through 45 miles of freezing mud to spend another night alone. The glories of this campsite – the whisper of a breeze through spruce needles, the mountains rising to meet the moon – these were mine to behold in solitude.

Wearily, I fired up a stove, melted snow, and cooked a supper of buttery porridge. By midnight, with bed rolled out atop a picnic table, I crawled into my sleeping bag.

There was no telling if the morning would bring disaster, good luck, the death of a dream, or a new beginning. But after my evening ride in crisp cold air, sickness had given way to the sweet ache of hard work. When sleep settled in, it was soft as the light on the Tombstones.

Thanks to Dawson City photographer Igor Plenicar for five of the photographs used in these illustrations.