Eagle -- Not far from the shore of the Yukon River, Kate Rorke chopped chum salmon with a worn butcher knife for her team of 17 dogs. They were good-quality chum this year, she remarked, just not enough of them made it up the river. Kate had sprained her right ankle recently, and she limped as she hauled the heavy buckets of salmon to feed her dogs.

Kate used to have 25 dogs, but a 1-year-old male named Skipper drowned when the Yukon River flooded in May. Then she had to sell seven dogs when money got tight. The flood and the resulting ice jams ravaged the cabin and land where she had lived with her boyfriend Andy Bassich, 12 miles downstream from Eagle's 129 residents.

Like Kate, the people of Eagle and the village site nearby have spent this summer rebuilding their homes and community. Federal agencies have assisted with housing aid, and volunteers have helped rebuild everything from cabins to fish wheels. The local power company is working to get the electrical grid back to normal. But as winter approaches, uncertainty is a constant for many residents.

I'd flown to Eagle, six miles west of the Canadian border, with federal officials and leaders of faith-based organizations who have been helping rebuild communities up and down the Yukon this summer. At the muddy tent camp where the volunteers slept, Kate dropped by to say hello before excusing herself to cut fish. I followed her back to the purple-trimmed cabin in town that Andy built 15 years ago, complete with a big satellite dish and noisy dog run.

At the cabin's doorway, Kate tells people to leave their boots on. This isn't a home, she said, it's just a shack. She pines for her real home, the one where she and Andy built a life and where now they'll have to build one again.

When the Yukon surged in May, it brought with it giant blocks of ice. And when the stew of water and ice and logs struck the shore, it severely damaged the couple's cabin and property.

Kate has recited this story before, the story of how she and Andy watched the river rushing into their cabin, and how they spent the night huddled in canoes. Andy lashed the fiberglass boats together with poles and tied them to trees, and they passed the night floating eight feet off the ground with their dogs curled around them.

It was surreal, Kate said, watching your whole life float away. The couple didn't speak much that long, cold night, and the dogs kept quiet too. In the morning something downriver broke free, and the calm lake they had been floating in turned into something like a Class-5 river, raging and trying to suck them under.

Kate credits Andy with leading them through the flood, and through the helicopter rescue that in five hours carried the couple and their two dozen dogs upstream to safety. He did it all with a knife, a piece of rope and two poles, Kate said, still amazed by Andy's endurance and skill.

The couple plans on moving out of Eagle and back to their cabin home, but it's going to be a hard winter. The flood washed away their guest cabin and all their sheds, ruined their snowmachines, and took their fish racks and about a thousand salmon.

On top of that, this winter will be colder than last. The flood soaked the cabin's insulation, ruined the electrical system, and knocked down all of the trees around the cabin that once broke the freezing wind. Those felled trees now must be cut and cleared. The problem is they got soaked during the flood, Kate said, and even now they are hard to cut. Nothing dulls a blade faster than river silt.

"You live by the river, sometimes you have to take your smacks," Kate said.