By Katherine Laidlaw

Last summer, I stood outside a party begging Tony Foliot, otherwise known as Yellowknife's Snowking, to rent me a houseboat. I swore I wouldn't leave Yellowknife without experiencing houseboat living, and I'd heard he had one sitting empty. "Pfft," he scoffed. "Even if I was going to rent it, I wouldn't rent it to a greenhorn."

A greenhorn?! Well, last night I proved him right.

By Katherine Laidlaw

Do you know how hard it is to keep a secret in a small town, where everyone knows everyone else's business? I sure do. Part of what I love about being a journalist is passing on information to other people. And, frankly, I suck at keeping secrets. So when we decided in early fall that Richard Van Camp was our man this year, keeping a lid on it was excruciating.

Up Here welcomed our new writing intern last week, fresh off the plane from Toronto. Here, she blogs about touching down in Yellowknife.

By Elaine Anselmi

In just under a week in this cold capital city I've decided: clouds, rain or wind, it's just awesome "up here." I've spent the past week, as well as the few weeks prior to my arrival, professing more "thank you's" and "I really appreciate it's" than ever before.

Flying high for an aerial tour over Yellowknife's golden fall landscape. By Patrick Kane

By Katharine Sandiford

Picking berries is how I wind down from my frenzied Northern summer. Every September, I plant myself in a patch of ruby-reds and fall into a deeply relaxed, almost meditative state, eyes and fingers crawling over the sphagnum moss, methodically clasping at the dangling jewels hanging off delicate green-leafed sprigs. Usually a friend comes along and we fall into that effortless kind of sewing-bee chatter. It starts out light, but before you know it, you’re addressing your most urgent concerns. You leave the forest pails heavy and hearts light.

By Katherine Laidlaw

The first frost arrived in Yellowknife this morning, which, to Northerners is likely no surprise. But this is my first fleeting autumn in the North, and next month marks my first Northern anniversary. It’s fitting, then, that this week is the first week we’ve started in earnest putting together the December issue of our magazine. While thoughts of mittens and snowshoes swirl around the office, my focus is on our annual Northerner of the Year profile.

By Peter Jickling

Yesterday, Justine Davidson knocked on my door, thrust a kilogram of ground moose meat at me (“it needs to be cooked in the next few days”), returned to her Honda, and pointed it toward Vancouver. And, with that, one more friend decided to try her hand at life post-Yukon.

By Peter Jickling

They couldn’t last forever. In November 2010, the era of cut n’ paste, do-it-yourself drivers licences came to an end in the Yukon when the government began to issue flashy provincial-style IDs. The new cards are undoubtedly more secure than the old-school ones, but they surely lack some of the homemade charm.

Our intrepid photographer hits the waves at the Slave River Paddlefest

By Patrick Kane

I have a buddy, Julian Morse, who’s head of the paddling club here in Yellowknife. For a couple years now, he’s been ranting and raving about Paddlefest: a whitewater kayak and canoe festival that happens on the legendary Slave River rapids near Fort Smith, a town on the NWT-Alberta border.

By Kirsten Murphy

If, as a recent Vanity Fair web exclusive says, there is no grass in Yellowknife, then what on earth is my neighbour (pictured) watering every night?