Yellowknifers may have seen a monk walking along the Ingraham Trail or in downtown Yellowknife. This is Bhante Andrew, a Theravāda Buddhist monk, who has been camping 16 km outside Yellowknife since the end of April.
Andrew says he travelled from Alaska with the assistance of an acquaintance he knew in the United States.
The two originally intended to camp during their drive to the Northwest Territories, he said, then Andrew was going to kayak the Mackenzie River up to the Dempster Highway. But because it was a colder and longer winter in Alaska and the NWT, Andrew decided to stay in Yellowknife.
“Coming up above the 60th parallel, there’s a whole different level of intensity that really draws me in,” said Andrew when Cabin Radio travelled out to spend time with him on Wednesday.
Theravāda Buddhism is “the oldest monastic tradition in the world,” said Andrew. He is a forest monk, practising a form of Theravāda Buddhism that uses the wilderness as a monastery rather than a building.
Advertisement.
Advertisement.
“The wilderness that is up here, like the bush, that’s where you’re going. That’s your domain of where you’re practising,” he said.
Andrew must walk into Yellowknife daily to collect alms – food offerings – and he can only eat one meal a day before solar noon, which Andrew says is currently 1:35pm in Yellowknife. (Cabin Radio purchased Andrew alms when we spoke with him.)
This isn’t Andrew’s first time in the NWT, he said, and he is no stranger to northern living.
He began travelling to Alaska in 2019 and moved there in 2022. In 2023, Andrew said, he travelled through the Nahanni, Nááts’įhch’oh National Park, Mackenzie Mountains, Canol Trail and Yellowknife. He has also spent time in the Yukon.
Advertisement.
Advertisement.
“Between all three [Alaska, Yukon and the NWT], I got to say the Northwest Territories is my favourite,” said Andrew. He is particularly drawn to the Mackenzie Mountains, which he calls the “gold standard.”
Growing up in upstate New York, Andrew had some exposure to “people who were living differently” that left an impact in his teenage years.
He moved to Colorado at 18 and began meditating in the Rockies. This is where he learned that “anything that I was going to pursue in my life, and any kind of fulfillment, was going to involve some kind of meditation or contemplative practice.”
Andrew moved into a forest monastery in California when he was 20 and was ordained a few years later. This summer will be his 10th year as a monk. (While he provided Cabin Radio with the name of the monastery at which he was ordained, he requested that it not be named in this article. We were able to contact the monastery, which confirmed he had spent some time there and was ordained there.)
Andrew can usually be found on an alms run walking into Yellowknife or at the first pull-off along the Ingraham Trail. He said people are welcome to speak with him, offer alms and ask him what he needs that day.
He has also heard people’s concerns about camping alongside wildlife like bears.
”I understand I don’t really look like I spend a lot of time out in the bush,” said Andrew.
“I’ve been doing it for a number of years and I’m very used to it, and it’s part of practising up here.”
