Eliguk Outpost

Even though it doesn’t feel remotely like spring, I did the seasonal clean-up anyway, because apparently that’s the kind of optimism off-grid life demands. If you were already a paid member of this website, congratulations — you’ve just been upgraded to a free lifetime subscription. In plain terms: you can keep reading this blog for as long as it exists without ever paying again. The payment subscription setup had started to feel like one more squeaky wheel in an already overloaded wagon. I love writing, but creativity does not respond well to being marched around on a schedule like a reluctant pack horse. The stories come when they come, and…

Waiting for the Weather to Sit Still Yesterdays six inches of snow is already gone, with more on the way tomorrow... Life at Furthermost Outpost lately has been unusually uneventful, though the weather seems determined to make up for the lack of drama elsewhere. The wind rushes through the forest in restless waves—dragging rain one day, snow the next, sometimes sleet just to keep things interesting. Temperatures wander above zero, then slip back below, like a compass needle with a bad sense of direction. Being stuck in this in-between season—neither quite winter nor quite spring—feels like watching the sky shuffle through a deck of seasons, dealing out whatever card lands…

March at Eliguk — The Season Between Breaths Welcome to March. I don’t want to gloat—especially since the rest of the country might hold us responsible for sending our winter over to their place—but this may have been the shortest season I can remember here in the wild West Chilcotin. Normally, winter stretches itself across this country like one of those old trapper stories told beside the woodstove—slow to start, slower to finish, and determined to explain every step along the way. First, the traps get set. Then comes the waiting. Then the skinning, scraping, stretching, and the long business of tanning the beaver pelts before you can finally sew…

BROTHERHOOD BY THE BLACKWATER A Chilcotin Story of Survival, Grit, and the Quiet Strength of Home Otherwise known as Episode 17 on the Podcast. Suddenly, winter arrived, as expected, after months of abnormal mild temperatures that had lulled everyone into a false sense of security. It had been an easy season—too easy—one of those winters where the snow came late, the lakes didn’t freeze as deep as they should, and the cold never quite settled in. We talked about it over casual radio calls with the neighbors, knowing the land was only biding its time. Out here, you learn that a mild winter is never a gift; it’s a warning.…

Waking up in my own world. Hello out there! Seven years, that's how long I’ve been writing these Eliguk Journals now—long enough that the sunrises have begun to braid themselves into a single, continuous thread in my mind, each one familiar yet never quite the same. In the early years, I wrote them simply, as though naming the colors or noting the hour could capture the way morning arrives out here. But time has a way of teaching its own language. Slowly, almost without my noticing, the telling has changed—grown quieter, more deliberate, as if the prose itself has been maturing alongside me, learning how to stretch, how to linger,…

THE WOMAN BEHIND THE MOUNTAIN MAN A Four‑Seasons Memoir of the Wilderness Woman Who Lives at Eliguk Lake My years of journaling here at Eliguk Outpost have carried a simple message — not just escaping society, but choosing a different kind of life, one built from sweat, stubbornness, laughter, and love. If I had to sum it all up into an autobiography, it would be about a woman who learned to grow food in volcanic soil, haul water through winter, and find beauty in the hardest days. It’s about a Mountain Man with a moustache that deserves its own chapter, a man who can build anything except a boring life.…

Our cabin sat hunched beside the frozen lake, the sky above a flat sweep of darkness with stars clinging to it like frost. The moon rose slowly, thin and pale, and its reflection fractured across the ice with every groan. Each sound made the moonlight tremble, as if the night itself were breathing. I felt impossibly small — the last witness to a world that had grown too loud to hear its own heartbeat. Out here, with no roads, no towns, no other human voice for a day’s trek, the lake’s song felt like a secret meant only for me. A reminder that the earth still dreamed, even if no…

Where the Calendar Ends: A New Year Begins. The Carnegie Clan - wilderness neighbourhood men gathered by snow machine for New Year's Eve. The holidays leave a strange kind of echo when you live off the grid. In the city, January feels like a reset button—fresh planners with stiff spines waiting to be cracked open, new gym memberships, and the quiet promise that this year might unfold differently. Out here, the new year doesn’t arrive so much as it settles—drifting in the way snow does, quietly and steadily, until one day you realize the world has been rebuilt around you. There’s no countdown or clean slate, just the slow return…

Christmas Tables of Memories Past It's Beginning to Look a lot Like Christmas There’s something about this time of year that stirs nostalgia in all of us. December has a way of pulling us back—back into memory, back into kitchens that smelled of spices and gravy, back into living rooms crowded with cousins and laughter. It’s the season when reflection comes naturally, when the cold outside seems to sharpen the warmth of what we once had inside. As adults, we try to recreate it—the lights, the food, the rituals—but it never feels quite the same. Childhood Christmases live in a place we can’t return to, stitched into memory with a…

Exciting news! We've made a change to our website that I'm thrilled to share: check out the new 'PODCAST' tab on the right-hand side of the website page! The episodes are now beautifully organized for your listening pleasure. I'm also in the process of crafting a new journal entry, but I couldn't wait to celebrate this addition with you. Enjoy this new journey!