How I fell under the spell of the Yukon, a vast, humbling place where humans are outnumbered by wildlife

Pelecyn, who hails from Belgium, moved to the North during the pandemic to be closer to nature and lead visitors like me into its vast wilderness. He picked this hike along Thunderegg Creek, on the edge of Kluane National Park and Reserve, because the route constantly changes from summer’s glacial runoff. It necessitates trail finding — and poles. It is, in a word, “Yukonish.”

We soon come across a tree tinselled with grizzly hair from a territory-marking bruin, coyote poop and a large pile of moose droppings — reminders that humans are outnumbered by wildlife in these parts. In a world long since mapped, entering a natural landscape untapped and untamed is both humbling and inspiring.

I first visited the Yukon in 2021, on a trip to Dawson City and Tombstone Territorial Park. Like British-Canadian bard Robert W. Service, who wrote the poem “The Spell of the Yukon,” I soon became “stuck on it all,” plotting my return.

This time, I’ve brought my husband, a geologist who relishes mountain eye candy. Compared to the summits we’ve seen, though, the Yukon offers a seemingly endless cornucopia of peaks and valleys. With a population of just about 44,000, the territory is overpowering in magnitude, and especially so in Kluane National Park, which is almost as big as the state of New Hampshire. It feels boundless and without comparison, but despite its unnerving size, the unspoiled landscape leaves me with a sense of calm.

Part of a UNESCO World Heritage site that includes adjacent parks in Alaska and B.C., Kluane helps hold the world’s largest non-polar ice field, a network of massive glaciers wedged between Canada’s tallest peaks. All of the ice field is inaccessible except on foot (or by landing a tiny plane atop a glacier). Rather than venture into the wild on our own, we’re relying on guides to take us off-road, on-river and into the air.

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The next day we’re soaring above the park’s 2,000-plus glaciers in a Cessna 172 — our aerial tour with Rocking Star Adventures is an ideal way to grasp Kluane’s size. Glaciers surge down the valleys between peaks, with Mount Logan peeping above the clouds behind a horizon of lesser pinnacles. I fear that a sudden gust of wind could hurl our tiny four-seater plane into the ice — like a fly swatted onto a black granite counter, never to be seen again.

After a safe landing at the Haines Junction airport, we head south toward Kathleen Lake to spend time on the water. Colin Preston, a guide with Dalton Trail Lodge, takes us out in a boat on the Kathleen River and Lower Rainbow Lake to go fishing. A Newfoundlander who’s led ocean and lake fishing trips all over Canada, Preston couldn’t pass up an opportunity to guide inland in the Yukon, surrounded by forests and wildlife.

“You get a more complete natural immersion in the Yukon,” he says. As if to prove his point, we motor past a cow moose happily grazing on grass in the middle of the river, and see numerous bald eagles perched on white spruce trees.

I fall into a rhythm of casting and reeling in, a meditative flow that keeps me firmly in the moment, another of nature’s psychic balms. I soon feel a bite on the line and reel in madly, and Preston helps me net a rainbow trout. We release it back into the water, a practice that he says “helps connect people to nature.”

It works. Instead of taking from the land’s bounty, I’m maintaining an equilibrium. That balance is evident in the Yukon, where humans are but a tiny presence in this enormous place. It’s no wonder people are compelled to follow their wanderlust north or, like me, return to make sure those feelings of serenity and possibility are as real as they remember.

Lisa Kadane travelled as a guest of Tourism Yukon, which did not review or approve this article.