Jim Crabb and Gus Lindquist review the Crabb's photo collection—and the stories beind them— in Central during Gus's trip to Interior Alaska for six weeks in July and August of 2007.
Gus had driven up earlier on Saturday, August 4th, to attend the Miner's Picnic that afternoon at the Circle Mining (District) Museum.
There was plenty of roasted pig to feed the crowd of hungry miners and their families and friends.
I wanted the gold, and I sought it,
I scrabbled and mucked like a slave.
Was it famine or scurvy -- I fought it;
I hurled my youth into a grave.
I wanted the gold, and I got it --
Came out with a fortune last fall, --
Yet somehow life's not what I thought it,
And somehow the gold isn't all.
No! There's the land. (Have you seen it?)
It's the cussedest land that I know,
From the big, dizzy mountains that screen it
To the deep, deathlike valleys below.
Some say God was tired when He made it;
Some say it's a fine land to shun;
Maybe; but there's some as would trade it
For no land on earth -- and I'm one.
-from The Spell of the Yukon by Robert Service
