Good Morning River

We are starting the month of March with about eleven hours between sunup and sunset. To me it is a sure sign that spring is on its way.  I can start my morning by watching the arrival of daylight, a pleasure that is sadly missing during the dark winter months just past.  On a good morning I can watch the day arrive with a fanfare of colorful smears in red, orange and yellow preparatory to the sun peeking over the Hancock Hills on the east shore of Lake Laberge.

These mornings also bring to mind a conversation I had with a woman that told me the story of “Good Morning River”.  This happened some years ago when I had to attend a government office on a licensing errand and a pleasant elderly woman came out to help me, the kind of person with whom a conversation is the most natural thing in the world.

During the course of the writing and issuing we swapped some river tales and she told me about her childhood spent along the Yukon River.

As children, she and her sister spent the summer months with her grandparents who lived on the lower river below Dawson City. Early each morning, before the children awoke, the grandfather would walk the short distance from the cabin to the riverbank where he would sit quietly to watch the day arrive.

“What are you doing here grandpa”, the girls would ask when they found him there.

“I come here as soon as I get up to wish the river good morning,” he told them.

He told them how the great river brought life to the land and the people. He taught them to respect the river that was such a large part of their daily lives. Laughingly she told me of the many times that she and her sister would try to be the first to greet the river and beat grandpa to his early morning perch. Always they found him already in place. Sitting there, he taught them to respect their natural surroundings, the fish, the birds and the land around them. To this day, when out camping near a stream or lake, she invariably takes that early morning walk to the water’s edge to say: “Good Morning River”.

I will forever remember that short conversation I had with her especially as I sit here enjoying the sights and sounds of another day arriving on Lake Laberge.