Buckwheat Donahue on The Spell of the Yukon

Buckwheat’s Introduction to The Spell of the Yukon

"This piece comes pretty close to describing why so many people choose to live here. I think it might be Robert Service’s best work. It’s something I think about probably 20 times a month—when I’m looking up at the sky, when I’m falling asleep and staring out my window at the mountains and glaciers that overlook my town."

"I can hear the river—just 300 feet from my front door. I can hear the wind moving through the trees. All of that is here. The peace, the quiet, the feeling that you’re somewhere bigger than yourself."

"One of my favorite lines in this piece is ‘the snows that are older than history.’ I don’t know what it is about that line, but I just love it—because it’s true. Out here, you see it, you feel it. The glaciers, the mountains, the rivers—they’ve been here for thousands of years, and I get to wake up to that every day."

"And it doesn’t matter where you live in the Yukon or Alaska—this kind of stuff is everywhere. The Spell of the Yukon is about that grandeur, that majesty. It’s about the Yukon River, flowing through the heart of Alaska and the Yukon Territory. It’s about the feeling this land gives you—the one that never really lets go."