The Last Nine People (and One Dog) on Earth

This is part 2 of the story. If you missed it, you can read part 1 here.

On Wednesday the 5th of April, I woke up at Yellow Dog Lodge in the Northwest Territories as one of the last people on earth. Only a few miles away from the cozy, off-the-grid lodge and cabin complex where we resided, the world as I knew it cut off, dropped away. Frankly, it just ended, like the edge of a flat-worlder’s map.

I don’t know what happened to the people beyond the end point, but I came to terms with it pretty quickly. There was there, and here was here. And I was here. One of the last people on earth.

My phone didn’t vibrate, the screen didn’t flash with notifications. The electricity surging through the lights above my head was solar. The water flushing through the toilet was pumped from the lake, captured in a container, and later composted, bacteria breaking down the unmentionables like we were never here. The warm air radiating from the fireplace came from hungry flames devouring dry logs and the bread I chomped on for breakfast was fresh baked.

We still had our creature comforts–coffee and tea, crackers and cheese, chicken soup and salad dressing–and we weren’t worried about running out. And it was good that we had what we had, because with the snows still thick on the ground, scrounged meals would have consisted of fish, fish, and more fish.

I was with my family, thankfully. For some people, being surrounded by family at the end of the world might be worse than the actual end of the world–but not for me. It was pleasant. Perfect, actually.

No distractions. No internet. No constantly wondering if I’d closed the garage door, or when I’d next need to go to the grocery store, or if I could wait one more day to buy gas.

There was a dog too. He would have been ok with eating fish, fish, and more fish for the rest of his life. A burnished gold creature with the softest ears and a coat thick enough to rival a polar bear’s. His name was Joey and he was always smiling, tongue lolling, because there is a distinct pleasure in being the only ones left in the entire world. Alone, but not lonely.

Along with myself, my parents, my brother, and my aunt, there was Gordon. A jack of all trades, an encyclopedia of Northwest Territories knowledge, and a steady presence, like no matter where he stood, he was at the center of it.

K was quick to smile. She was always bending down to pet Joey and grinning as we recounted the tales of our day. She saw the beauty in everything, and especially in this vast, savage land.

M had the beard of a lumberjack and the friendly, sparkling eyes of Santa Clause. “Yeah… we can do that,” was his standard response, in German-accented English, to everything. Mostly, he wore a red flannel, and he was always busy.

And P would try anything, approaching challenges with typical French bluntness. Right now, she was grinning as we all fell off the edge of the world together.

So there we were, the last people in the world.

In the Moment

And what did we do at the end of the world?

We lived.

We battled with the straps of our snowshoes, then trekked through the snow up to the crown of a hill until all around was blue sky and bluer sky.

We sat before holes in the ice, lifting and jiggling a line that disappeared into the dark water. Some of us fished. And some of us caught.

We read books in front of the fire and raised our hands in victory over cribbage upsets. We even faced down a thousand-piece puzzle, though the puzzle won. We drank beer and wine and asked the same questions again and again: “So how far ahead can the aurora be predicted? When does the solar flare have to occur?” And no one Googled the answer.

We glided over the snow-covered lake on cross-country skis. We also fell and wind-milled our arms and wobbled back and forth on cross-country skies. But I prefer to remember it as gliding. And I prefer that you remember it that way too.

We stopped and breathed and tipped our heads up to the sun like a cluster of sunflowers. We scooted to a stop to study animal prints and the wing-prints of birds, and though we were the last people on earth, the land belonged to far more than just the nine of us.

And we remembered those to whom the land had belonged before.

Before

The Dene, Inuit, Tłı̨chǫ, Métis, and 23 other peoples rooted in the land of the Northwest Territories, still remain the majority in this vast land (51% of the population). Before the rest of the world disappeared, that is.

When you are the last people left on earth, perhaps you might think about the future with some trepidation. And so, instead, we thought of the past.

The long gone past, when only the indigenous people roamed the area. Back when the city of Yellowknife was merely a migration spot for caribou and bushes once burst with bright berries in late summer. Back to when fur traders with European ancestry arrived and dubbed the local people the “Yellowknives” for the raw copper tools they used.

In reality, it’s not so far back.

In the 1930s, gold was discovered in the area. Before, only the occasional trapper and fur trader wandered through, but with the prospect of getting rich, the town of Yellowknife formed. But even then, it was a world among itself. It wasn’t until 1960 that a highway finally connected Yellowknife with the rest of Canada. In 1967, Yellowknife became the capital of the Northwest Territories. Then, when gold began to run dry, diamonds were found in the Barrenlands (past the tree line) and diamond mining became the largest industry in the Northwest Territories.

But the traditions of the indigenous are still alive. The grandparents of kids my age were still heading north with sled dogs to hunt caribou and constructed parkas and pants from polar bear and caribou hide. Much remains the same: now they use snowmobiles to head north to the caribou herds and synthetic dyes brighten the decorations on their seal skin gloves. In the north, they hunt Beluga whales in boats with motors instead of paddles.

And I wonder, if in the north where the whales come year after year, and to the east and south and west and all along this beautiful territory, if those communities don’t also feel like they are the last people on earth. And prefer it that way.

Now

The moments that meant the most were the ones when we were together. And, by choice or by design, those seemed to fall most often while we were under the aurora.

Even though we were far south of the North Pole, that too, ceased to exist as we lay there with our shoulders touching and our eyes glued to the sky and the world spun around us like a top, and we were the center.

After

Really, it’s quite a relief that the world didn’t truly disappear and that we weren’t the last nine people (and one dog) to walk the land. But it was a rough awakening.

Abrupt and jarring, like a bumpy landing after sleeping the whole flight.

And the world came back to us in a jumble. We scrambled to pack up and get in a last snow-shoe outing before the bush plane arrived several hours earlier than scheduled. And when we crashed back into Yellowknife (not literally, only metaphorically), it sure did feel nice to get in a long, hot shower, but I also felt like I’d been booted unceremoniously from a protected place. And now here I was back in the busy world missing that peace.

Of course, if we’d stayed longer, eventually it would have become too much. The aurora would have continued to enchant, but I would have missed my friends and the rest of my family and there are still more episodes of Ted Lasso to watch. The magic of Yellow Dog Lodge in the Northwest Territories is partially the magic of a moment. Precisely because it is limited, it is perfect.

More to the Story

Part 1: The Wonder of the Aurora at Yellow Dog Lodge

Part 3: Awestruck in the Arctic: an Aurora Borealis Gallery