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Bill Watterson's "The Yukon Song" · The Daily Poem

• 0:00
  [music]
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to The Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Friday, August 14th, 2026.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: Today's poem is by Bill Waterston, and it's called The Yukon Song.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: A few weeks ago,
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  SPEAKER_00: I featured a poem by Robert Service about the Yukon,
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  SPEAKER_00: the hardships of the Yukon,
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  SPEAKER_00: the way that the Yukon takes only the strong and rejects the rest.
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  SPEAKER_00: Today's poem is a little different.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's all about the world and the life that
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  SPEAKER_00: a young boy named Calvin imagines finding out in the Yukon along
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  SPEAKER_00: with his stuffed tiger, Hobbes.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's got a little bit of Big Rock Candy Mountain to it,
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  SPEAKER_00: maybe a little of Parents Just Don't Understand.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: Never thought you'd see those two worlds colliding, but here it is, the Yukon song.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: My tiger friend has got the sled and I have packed a snack.
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  SPEAKER_00: We're all set for the trip ahead.
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  SPEAKER_00: We're never coming back.
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  SPEAKER_00: We're abandoning this life we've led.
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  SPEAKER_00: So long, Mom and Pop.
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  SPEAKER_00: We're sick of doing what you've said, and now it's going to stop.
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  SPEAKER_00: We're going where it snows all year, where life can have real meaning.
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  SPEAKER_00: A place where we won't have to hear, your room could stand some cleaning.
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  SPEAKER_00: The Yukon is the place for us.
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  SPEAKER_00: That's where we want to live.
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  SPEAKER_00: Up there, we'll get to yell and cuss and act real primitive.
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  SPEAKER_00: We'll never have to go to school,
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  SPEAKER_00: forced into submission by monstrous crabby teachers who will make us learn addition.
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  SPEAKER_00: We'll never have to clean a plate of veggie glops and goose.
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  SPEAKER_00: Messily, we'll masticate using any fork we choose.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: The Timberwolves will be our friends.
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  SPEAKER_00: We'll stay up late and howl at the moon till nighttime ends before going on the prowl.
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  SPEAKER_00: Oh, what a life.
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  SPEAKER_00: We cannot wait to be in that Arctic land where we'll be masters of our fate and lead
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: a life that's grand.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: No more of parental rules.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: We're heading for the snow.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: Good riddance to those grown-up ghouls.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: We're leaving.
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  SPEAKER_00: Yukon ho.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: This has been The Daily Poem.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: We'll be back next week with more poetry for you.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: In the meantime,
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  SPEAKER_00: find us at dailypoempod.substack.com to listen to past episodes of The Daily Poem,
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: to join conversations about each day's poem,
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: and to subscribe and become a supporter of the show if you aren't already.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: For all of us at Goldberry Studios, I'm Sean Johnson wishing you happy reading.