Timeless Trails of the Yukon

Monika Rohlmann is an environmental consultant in Victoria, B.C.

Dolores Cline was the Yukon’s first female big game outfitter, sharing
the frontier and trapping lifestyle with husband, Louis Brown, for more
than three decades. Born and raised a city girl in Seattle Washington,
Brown moved to the Yukon in 1953 with far too much baggage and a useless
collection of 42 pairs of shoes. With her husband away at his trapline
or on hunting expeditions, she had to quickly learn to fend for herself.
Not only did she succeed in defending herself from wolves and grizzlies,
she challenged her husband by acquiring her own big game outfitter
licence, and proceeding to organize and guide her own groups of foreign
hunters.

This is Brown’s third book about her Yukon adventures. Twenty-five
chapters, each a short story previously published in newspapers or
magazines, describe grizzly, wolf, and other wildlife encounters, the
character and skill of Indian guides, the personalities of client
hunters, the cockiness of tourists, and the hardships (and humor) of
living without modern amenities. Several chapters written by Brown’s
husband relate animal tales and harrowing stories of death and survival
of fellow trappers. Twenty-two pages of color photographs depict details
of camping, horse care, nature interpretation, backcountry guiding,
ranching, and hunting.

The wilderness trail is an antidote to our modern city life, capable of
restoring faith in the goodness of life. Brown’s remarkable tales of
life in a bygone era will guide many of us on those trails and, for a
time, cause us to pause and dream.