Here's a little preview of what's there.
Working on a Glacier
This summer I was lucky enough to work for a company called Alaska Icefield Expeditions, doing sled dog tours on the Denver Glacier near Skagway, Alaska. I got a ton of amazing pictures. You can check out my photo album by following this link:
Here's a little preview of what's there.
Here's a little preview of what's there.
Snow and Shadows
This is a post I wrote in my blog sevenjourney.blogspot.com while I worked for Mitch Seavey in 2009. That winter was one of the hardest, most instructive winters I've spent mushing! This is a post about repetition and endurance.
Snow:
The downfall. End of a kind. Kind of an end, better a beginning. Wake up, smell the dark, hit the snooze, roll and flop and grumble in your bed. Another day. Maybe the fiftieth in a row. Blends, though. Except darker, every day. Waking up not in sunlight, but in shadow. (Reading every night, and Left Hand of Darkness was a trudge. But it had moments, I'll give it that. Moments.)
Parents here today. A distinct and scary change in the pattern. A good change. A sweet moment, familiar, familial faces, smiling and proud of what you do. Your dog in the car, three times bigger than when you left. Not fatter (well, no, he's fatter, but not just), just bigger. Growing up. And you missed those five months. Weeks. Fifty days? Life-boat stranded time.
Same patterns.
Here you are, at this part again.
Here I am, at this moment of rest again. Like waking up. Out of some constant, constantly forgotten dream. Oh. I'm here. You're here. On the four wheeler. With the dogs. In your room. Listening to music.
It's all the same thing.
And it's all a good thing.
But this is how survival works.
You just scoop the shit in front of you. Just do the job before your hands.
Enjoy it.
Store it. Maybe your mind does this unconsciously, because you're going to look back in seven or eight months and wish for it, long for it, miss it like a metal nail piercing that present moment too.
Don't worry.
It will probably happen again.
Blink, and you're scooping.
It's snowed.
Snowed four inches. Not enough though.
But the sky is thick unaccountable gray, a wash, a shadow-eraser. The world is a little room, cushioned by the snow, and scraped clean too, emptied, turned over. Drained. Everything solid-- the few things left-- two trees, some ravens, the dogs who aren't white dogs-- everything floats. Blank box, without distance or dimension. A dog comes towards you, big as a mountain, but maybe as far away. Intelligent eyes. You realize you dream dog eyes, dog expression. Realize you communicate like that somehow, too.
Your own dog, today. Coby. Is stupid. Big and dumb. A lab. No, there is a difference afterall. His lion yellow eyes are dull and thick compared to clear bright blue husky looks, asking and telling and sure. Hyper in a way Coby never knew how. Still, he trusts you when you say lay down, and in the brief ride back from the restaurant, he lays his head on your lap and promptly falls asleep. Eyes don't matter. You miss him.
You blink. You're massaging some kind of homeopathic oil into the shoulder of a dog who doesn't care. Who endures it patiently. Unpleasantly. Boston doesn't like it. But he limps. Maybe it's because someone ate half of his tail when he was a puppy. Blood against the snow.
The snow starts piling up. First when you are scooping. Shallowing in the holes your shovel makes. Then it's a race against the white, trying to get it all done before it's all covered. Your parents are coming today. You hope they drive safe.
You are feeding. Scoop, an onomatopoetic word. The noise your half-thick soup makes as it plops into a can. Each dog a coffee can from which to eat. The most important part of their world. Except maybe trails and sleds and open glaring moons.
Blink, you're in a coffee shop near Girdwood. Waiting in line for half and hour, praying you don't get delayed, kind of hoping you do. Wanting just one moment of amenity. Service. Before fifty days.
No, that's a memory. It's fifty days. Fifty days in a row, but it doesn't feel like anything. It feels like everything now. It is everything. What else could there be? Choices and the sunny Minneapolis past fade into the snow. Like the shadows. You sing to the dogs while you feed.
In the sky, there is a gathering flock of snow. You barrel your way through the foot-high ground, the widening snow, extending snow. Everything is snow. If you look up, it doesn't stop. No end to the exodus of the sky. Hello sky. Welcome to the ground.
Don't even hope for sleds.
Now the trail must be packed.
What's worse than an unsteerable, complaining, gas-and-oil-belching four wheeler?
Of course a snow machine.
A slow laborious yearling run. It is smoother. It is louder. It smells much worse. Exhaust flying up into your face. Light pollution spilling to all sides. The dogs run. Wonder if they are trying to just escape the monster at their heels.
Blink and you're sitting. Waiting for dinner. Trying to make it.
The music never stops. You plug in every morning and charge up every night. Wonder if it's ironic your desired escape from machines. Electronics are elegant: machines are heavy-handed red necks with indelicate smashing fists and throaty furious yells. It's a good excuse. But you and I, we tell ourselves too often to believe it any more.
Really, you're scooping.
You've been scooping for fifty days. Non-stop. Never stop. This moment is an illusion. Somewhere you let your brain wander to keep away from the routine.
This is the routine.
Tomorrow it could all change.
The downfall. End of a kind. Kind of an end, better a beginning. Wake up, smell the dark, hit the snooze, roll and flop and grumble in your bed. Another day. Maybe the fiftieth in a row. Blends, though. Except darker, every day. Waking up not in sunlight, but in shadow. (Reading every night, and Left Hand of Darkness was a trudge. But it had moments, I'll give it that. Moments.)
Parents here today. A distinct and scary change in the pattern. A good change. A sweet moment, familiar, familial faces, smiling and proud of what you do. Your dog in the car, three times bigger than when you left. Not fatter (well, no, he's fatter, but not just), just bigger. Growing up. And you missed those five months. Weeks. Fifty days? Life-boat stranded time.
Same patterns.
Here you are, at this part again.
Here I am, at this moment of rest again. Like waking up. Out of some constant, constantly forgotten dream. Oh. I'm here. You're here. On the four wheeler. With the dogs. In your room. Listening to music.
It's all the same thing.
And it's all a good thing.
But this is how survival works.
You just scoop the shit in front of you. Just do the job before your hands.
Enjoy it.
Store it. Maybe your mind does this unconsciously, because you're going to look back in seven or eight months and wish for it, long for it, miss it like a metal nail piercing that present moment too.
Don't worry.
It will probably happen again.
Blink, and you're scooping.
It's snowed.
Snowed four inches. Not enough though.
But the sky is thick unaccountable gray, a wash, a shadow-eraser. The world is a little room, cushioned by the snow, and scraped clean too, emptied, turned over. Drained. Everything solid-- the few things left-- two trees, some ravens, the dogs who aren't white dogs-- everything floats. Blank box, without distance or dimension. A dog comes towards you, big as a mountain, but maybe as far away. Intelligent eyes. You realize you dream dog eyes, dog expression. Realize you communicate like that somehow, too.
Your own dog, today. Coby. Is stupid. Big and dumb. A lab. No, there is a difference afterall. His lion yellow eyes are dull and thick compared to clear bright blue husky looks, asking and telling and sure. Hyper in a way Coby never knew how. Still, he trusts you when you say lay down, and in the brief ride back from the restaurant, he lays his head on your lap and promptly falls asleep. Eyes don't matter. You miss him.
You blink. You're massaging some kind of homeopathic oil into the shoulder of a dog who doesn't care. Who endures it patiently. Unpleasantly. Boston doesn't like it. But he limps. Maybe it's because someone ate half of his tail when he was a puppy. Blood against the snow.
The snow starts piling up. First when you are scooping. Shallowing in the holes your shovel makes. Then it's a race against the white, trying to get it all done before it's all covered. Your parents are coming today. You hope they drive safe.
You are feeding. Scoop, an onomatopoetic word. The noise your half-thick soup makes as it plops into a can. Each dog a coffee can from which to eat. The most important part of their world. Except maybe trails and sleds and open glaring moons.
Blink, you're in a coffee shop near Girdwood. Waiting in line for half and hour, praying you don't get delayed, kind of hoping you do. Wanting just one moment of amenity. Service. Before fifty days.
No, that's a memory. It's fifty days. Fifty days in a row, but it doesn't feel like anything. It feels like everything now. It is everything. What else could there be? Choices and the sunny Minneapolis past fade into the snow. Like the shadows. You sing to the dogs while you feed.
In the sky, there is a gathering flock of snow. You barrel your way through the foot-high ground, the widening snow, extending snow. Everything is snow. If you look up, it doesn't stop. No end to the exodus of the sky. Hello sky. Welcome to the ground.
Don't even hope for sleds.
Now the trail must be packed.
What's worse than an unsteerable, complaining, gas-and-oil-belching four wheeler?
Of course a snow machine.
A slow laborious yearling run. It is smoother. It is louder. It smells much worse. Exhaust flying up into your face. Light pollution spilling to all sides. The dogs run. Wonder if they are trying to just escape the monster at their heels.
Blink and you're sitting. Waiting for dinner. Trying to make it.
The music never stops. You plug in every morning and charge up every night. Wonder if it's ironic your desired escape from machines. Electronics are elegant: machines are heavy-handed red necks with indelicate smashing fists and throaty furious yells. It's a good excuse. But you and I, we tell ourselves too often to believe it any more.
Really, you're scooping.
You've been scooping for fifty days. Non-stop. Never stop. This moment is an illusion. Somewhere you let your brain wander to keep away from the routine.
This is the routine.
Tomorrow it could all change.
Mushing with Mari circa 2002
This is a cute video I made when I was in high school. Old-school quality... You can tell how much I loved epic music. My dad, Jerry Troshynski, narrates.
Boots
It was twenty miles from the Kennel, the apex of my forty mile run. I'd been across this lake many times, my team hugging the shoreline in a well-coordinated line of pairs. The dogs were seasoned now, at least more seasoned than they had been. Every dog in the team was only one year old, except Poydras, my reliable leader, my good boy. Putting up with all the hooplah of nine doofusy, excitable yearlings, with a stoic disposition, one ear up and one ear down. In the February air the breath of my team gathered up and clouded. I was a yearling, too, really, only fifteen and no more seasoned than them. It was my first winter that way, and I was learning. I had sat through tangles that lasted three hours. I'd worked night and day with the dogs, even camped under the moon and stars with them. I scooped and fed and watered. I cared for them. It was the best winter of my life, and this was the last run before the end.
I felt confident, which was the first of my mistakes. The next run I did would not be a run, but a race. Not training, but the real thing. My team was fast and together and unbeatable. I was right about that in some ways. I wouldn't be the one to prove it, though. But that is a story for another time.
On this day, this last run, I knew I was coming up on a lake. A frozen white I knew well. The trail was burned into the back of my mind, Gee here, Haw here. Left turn off the embankment down onto the snow-covered ice.
But one more thing I knew well, too, was the right hand turn I always saw, just before the Haw that took us onto the lake. This right hand turn went into the woods along the shore, up a hill and who knows where. I'd seen this trail over and over, and I was curious. I knew it met up with the lake trail on the other side of the hill. I saw the exit. It was a little trail option, less than an eighth of a mile, if that. I wondered what it looked like, up that hill, through those trees.
And since I was confident, and since I was curious, I didn't pay attention to the fact that there were no fresh tracks along that trail, not even from a snow machine. I didn't look up to where the trees were closer in. I was unbeatable, after all. I Gee'd my team over, and they took the right. We began to climb the hill.
In any good disaster, there are a few elements leading up to the climactic crisis.
When I came to the kennel that morning-- early enough to help with 5 am chores-- someone had taken the boots I normally wear. The boots we use on the trail are monster boots, puffy concoctions to put Frosty and the Michelan Man to shame. They come from Northern Outfitters. Mushers swear by them- Certainly my mentor, Martin Buser, did. He's run and won a few more Iditarods than I have, so his word on this holds water. The whole insulating system is a one-layer beast, made of thick synthetic foam that requires next to nothing underneath. With the boots, no socks. With the bibs and parka, maybe a set of long johns, but nothing more. Everything I wore mushing belonged to Martin and his family. Since his young sons (who were about my size) were just getting into mushing too, the family had invested in kid-sized arctic wear, including boots. They generously shared the gear with me. Today, though, one of the boys was using the smallest set of boots, the set I normally wore. For this run, I'd need to wear the only other pair available, another size up.
That morning, too, the kennel handler, Andy, had packed my sled. He had run the race I was about to four times himself, and he was fanatic about getting ready. "You have to pack like it's for the race," he told me, so he set up my sled full of everything I needed: sleeping bag, axe, snow shoes, dog food cooker, dog food, people food... And a pair of polypropylene socks he said he swore by. "But I don't need socks," I pointed out. It didn't matter: he stuck them in a ziploc bag and stuffed them into my sled.
When I set out on my run, the temperature was cold, but not too cold. Fifteen above, a comfortable cool. My dogs were happy and wired: my run was set to be fairly short, compared to the eighty mile treks we'd been taking. Why shouldn't I explore? Why shouldn't I take the right turn?
The dogs lunged up in speed to hear a new command. They are explorers, too, and a new trail is a thrilling one. We began to make the climb. Maybe then I noticed there weren't tracks on this hill, just fresh snow. A little trail breaking: good for them, I thought. And a little ahead were trees. It was the woods. What could I expect?
What I didn't expect, when I reached the top of that short climb, was the overgrowth. Every fall, as the snow begins to build, mushers go out into their trails and tend the routes. Trails that never see summer foot prints must be "brushed out." Willows and poplars crowd in during the warm months and try to take back the winter courses. Old trees fall and bar the way. Undergrowth springs up and remains dense and prickly after autumn kills it off. Snow machiners will sometimes clear the main paths; but it's the mushers who must tend those back woods trails that no one else will travel.
No snow machiner had come here. No musher cleared the way. This was a little turn option no one bothered with. At the top of the hill, it was no longer a trail.
To the dogs, this meant nothing. They stand two feet at the shoulder, at most, and to them it was just a new game to duck under the sapplings weighted down by snow, bowing and crowding over the only way to go. I, too, tried to duck, but even at my modest height of 5'2", I couldn't crouch low enough to avoid the whip smack of the hundred branches clawing out. Brush hit my face, my arms, my eyes. I had to keep my eyes open-- where were we going? I had to see! And there was nowhere to stop, and no way to stop. The dogs were too excited. Too revved on this new type of game. All I could do was dig in and hang on and--
A branch hit me square in the face and somehow the shock of it knocked me back, off the runners, off the sled--
But the number one rule in mushing, the first, second, and third requirement, the mantra you chant in the back of your brain is "Never Let Go of the Sled."
So as my feet and head and body went flying back in shock and disproportion, my hands clamped down with all the life I had.
Then I was dragging.
I've heard it called "Super-Man"-ing. I thought of it (even as it occured) as being Indiana Jones dragging behind the Nazi Military Jeep in the Lost Crusade. Either way, my iron grip hands were clinging to my upright sled, and I was dragging behind. Snow pounded, clung, dug at me. I scraped along the scraggy trail at a fifteen MPH clip. My dogs were in ecstasy, the joy of running wiping clean any care they might have had for their stupid two-legged pack-friend struggling along behind them.
There's a weird moment when you are dragging, without the ability to pull yourself up, where you have time to think of many things. The comparison of your present situation to super heroes and movie stars. The stupidity of the choices leading to this moment. And now, the feel of the trail tugging on your feet. Especially at your boots, which are too large.
There was little I could do. The speed of the dogs picked up: I could feel us begin to head down hill. The friction and G-force working against me defied my fifteen-year-old abs and arms, no matter how muscled they'd become since I started working with dogs. My boots were beginning to be pulled off my feet.
It happened fast, then. There was a distinct popping feeling, and my boot was gone, sucked off my foot and taken by the trail.
Maybe this powered me; maybe I knew if I didn't stand up my other boot was gone too-- However it happened, the next thing I knew I was standing again, wearing one boot and staring at a bare foot riding a runner on the snow. It was a ridiculous sight. I looked behind me. No boot to be seen. Nowhere to stop still-- I had to be able to tie the team to something solid, and these woods were all sapplings and brush. We were still careening down the hill at car-chase speed. I was using my bare right foot on the drag to slow us down, mindless of the cold against my toes, but mindful of the sheer stupidity of this whole situation.
The hill came down, hard, onto the lake. Still there was no where to stop, certainly no trees big enough at which to tether a team. No chance I'd try to hook down into ice and hope that would be enough. I wasn't going to make that mistake too.
The lake was big. The trail crossed the middle, here. I wasn't about to deviate from the set course, now that I had rejoined it. I had enough of exploring. But it was below freezing and my foot was remarkably bare to the world. I was twenty miles (two or three hours) from home. I needed my boot.
The team had settled down a bit, trotting at a sedate ten MPH. Still there was nowhere to stop, not reasonably, and every foot I traveled I knew was a foot I'd have to walk back. I thought about turning them around-- And thought of the disaster trying to U-Turn nine yearlings on a lake would be. I couldn't walk without being crooked. That wasn't going to work.
"Hello?" answered Martin cheerfully. I imagined him in his office, taking care of daily paperwork.
"Martin?" I said. "I lost my boot."
There was a pregnant pause.
"What?" he finally asked.
I explained what had happened.
There was another small silence as he absorbed this.
"Well," he said. "You better go get it!"
He told me to tie out the team and feed them, to make sure they couldn't run. I was able to say I had done that much at least.
This was the tricky part. A dog team, given its own means, will happily take off without you. The team could really care less if you are attached to or involved with the sled. Thus the mantra: Never Let Go of the Sled. Now I would have to break the second most important mantra: Never Step Behind your Sled. Step behind the sled, no matter how attached or hooked or anchored the team may be, and inevitably your dogs will chose at that moment to break all bounds and disembark on a trip of their own, leaving you alone and bootless on the trail.
Then again, I couldn't mush twenty miles home without a shoe. That was asking for trouble, and throwing away a pretty expensive piece of equipment besides. As the man said... I had better go get my boot.
Lucky for me, Andy had ignored my protest about the polypro socks.
There was no way I could clunk my way back up the trail with one boot on and one boot off. To move fast, I had to remove the other boot. To try to give myself some kind of barrier from the cold, I'd need to use the socks. I pulled them out of the sled and looked at them dubiously. "These better work as well as you claim, Andy," I thought, and took off my other boot.
The socks were thin. Remarkably thin. Light; and warm. My one bare foot was grateful for a cover, little though it may be. I didn't have time to luxuriate. Both socks on, I began to run.
As I trotted back over the trail, I looked down. Amongst the pawprints and sled tracks, over the snow machine tread, I left size-seven bare foot prints in the snow. I laughed and laughed in my head. What would someone think when they came this way? "The smallest sasquatch in the world came walking over the lake today. I saw its footprints in the snow."
I came to the far shore, to the hill my team had flow down. A steep climb now. I dug in, a steady pace. The top of the hill, looking left and right. Ducking under brush and trees. And then... Down hill again? I had reached the beginning of the trail. No boot. I stood breathing hard, hands on my hips. This wasn't good. No choice-- I turned around and made my way back. Had to look again. Slower this time, walking now. Looking hard... And there. Off the trail, ten or fifteen feet. In a big clump of devil's club, of course. Thorns prickling every direction. I tip toed my way in, reaching with bare fingers for the very edge of the boot. Reclaimed. Victory. And of course I yet again only had one boot, so I couldn't put it on.So I carried my boot back to my team, who had mercifully stayed put. They wagged their tales in happy confusion and greeting, and barked to know if we could go again. Both boots on, my sled re-packed. I hooked the team back up and headed home. This time, I stayed on the trail.
A Morning with Dogs
The musher wakes up to her alarm, looks outside. Stars glare back through the picture window in the living room. The moon makes five am silver, and she can see down in the dog lot: twenty-six brown houses, dogs hidden within. Milky, as always, is curled into a white letter Q on top of his. The musher smiles. Moving to pull on gear, to fight her way into a cover-all suit with the zipper stuck, and a pair of boots which are so worn out the sides collapse and refuse to be pulled up—this wakes her up, a little. The rhythm of warm water is soothing, lulling. She is still tired. When she walks out the door with two steaming buckets, gloves on, hat pulled low, the sharp force of cold hits her in the face and she is instantly alert. Behind her the door closes on the interior yellow-glow of warmth. She is in the blue.
The noise of the door closing, and the flickering lights of the house, have woken some of the dogs. They stand like wolves, leaning forward with keen eyes, until they see the musher step out of the shadows of the house toward the shed. A dog whines, low. In an instant, the quiet of the world is shattered into a raucous choir, a breaking chorus: the dogs bark. They howl.
Over the din, the musher fumbles with the latch on the shed door, and when it releases, moves a bucket aside to pull open the door. Her right hand is bare, the glove in her teeth. She needs to feel what she is doing. The shed doesn’t have a light, and she curses herself again for not putting one up this summer. If she can keep the shed door from swinging closed on its heavy hinges, the moonlight will be enough this morning to show her the food and supplements, the buckets and scoopers and little packages of additives. The truth is she doesn’t need the light. She knows it all by feel, just like she knows the path down to the lot, and the feel of each dog’s ruff, distinctly. But before that—and they howl for her to arrive—she has to mix the food. She puts the water behind her, finds the empty food buckets, crusted with a very little bit of last night’s dinner, near the garbage can of kibble. Her life is measured in buckets. Only eight scoops of kibble today, they’ve been getting a little heavy. Her hand gets cold against the worn wooden handle of the scooper, even colder touching moisture to unscrew the lid to the plastic bulk container of vegetable oil. She douses the kibble in it. Chips out frozen lumps of chicken fat, adds some to each bucket, and the supplement energy/vitamin powder over that. No meat today—raw and half-frozen—but the mix is repulsive enough as it is. The dogs can smell it and scream for it. She would stop and shake her head for a moment, but they are hungry and there is work to do. She pours the steaming water over the food: it melts the fat and mixes in the oil and powders. The kibble floats and moves, the whole mix a sudden rising stench. Somehow beautiful in its familiarity. Again, the second bucket. Food and water, mixed and ready. Breakfast.
A bucket in each hand, bumping against her legs and spilling over onto her already stained knees; she kicks the shed door shut, and makes her way to the rioting pack down below. A berserk excitement, not feral, but nearly: This is what they live for. This and running.
In the lot, the dogs lean, jump, wait for her with eager tails. Drool collects at the corners of their mouths, freezes in the fur of their lower jaws. Have they forgotten the last time they were fed? They chomp down their full bowls of food in three bites, so fast they forget again they’ve been fed, and clamor for more. But in all of this, never do they forget that the musher is boss, that later she will run them, and now she feeds them. They look at her with worshipping eyes. With intelligent, conversational eyes. Their excitement is the manic excitement of friends. They never forget she is a friend. A boss. A brother wolf, in the pack which is what the dogs understand themselves to be.
It is after, when they have quieted with the realization there is no more food for now, and some of them are still snuffling around the corners of their houses and circles for stray kibble, that she takes a moment to breathe, to enjoy. She has a shovel in one hand, another bucket in the other. The apparently untenable occupation politely referred to as “scooping.” It is not an undesirable job. Despite the mechanics of the operation, the actuality of collecting shit into a bucket and moving it away from its producers, the rhythm of it is calming. The service to the dogs: this is how she repays them for their kindness, their warmth and simple beauty. Their heart and their love of pulling. This is how she washes their feet.
They are comfortable with her. They watch her, and if they don’t watch her, they know where she is. Some of them play with each other, stretching to the ends of their chains and gnawing affectionately at the fur of neck and ear. Some growl, but it is playful. They are well-fed, cheerful to be up this bright moonlit morning. And gradually, as she scoops and listens to their noises, a quiet settles on the lot. The dogs, one by one, sit back on their haunches and watch her, each other. It is the silence of the final dark before dawn. The coldest moment of the night. The dogs watch. And then—it is difficult to tell who starts it, and the musher doesn’t want to look and ruin the rhythm—a dog looks up at the stars. Opens her jaw, to the moon and to god, and sings.
It is not the riotous desperate cry of “Feed me!” that came earlier. It is as silent in its chorus, when the others begin to join, as the quiet just broken. A rising cry, a keening choir. One by one the dogs join in, fade out, join again. Together the lot reaches one climactic note. The musher sings too, in her human voice as much as she can. It hits the peak of its chorus, and stops. Suddenly. The musher, once, may have been caught singing in the abrupt, dead quiet. But she has sung this song before, every morning and every night. The lot is more utterly still that it was when every dog but Milky curled up inside its house. The musher looks at them all looking at her. She breathes. The world begins again. The dogs move, subdued now. They are full and want to sleep. She keeps scooping, stopping now and again to pet whoever it is she cleans after.
When she is done, has dumped the full buckets of crap into the rapidly filling hole in the woods, she trades them for the empty food buckets, and carries those up to the house. She enters into a warmth that is more suited for her frail humanity. In silence, she builds herself a breakfast. Hot coffee, eggs, toast. Warmness seeps back into her fingers, painfully. She is grateful to be out of the cold. But her attention is preoccupied, as always. She sits in the living room and stares out the picture window. She thinks she might watch the sun rise as she eats, but part of her is hurrying too much. She eats quickly, watching the dogs move in and around their houses, washes the dishes quickly, and with her mind thinking three steps ahead, has pulled her gear back on before she remembers. Now she grabs heavier stuff, a pair of Cabela’s snow pants, weighted down in the pockets, and Northface boots. Layers over her polar-fleece shirt, and then a thick overcoat with a ruff. She is out the door before the sun has crested the rocky horizon.
The dogs half-ignore her now. They are always aware of where she is and what she is doing, but for now they have been fed, so they do not feel the need to explode into excitement. It will be hours before it is time to run. She will let the food settle in their stomachs. They listen to her work and are content. Above the kennel, the musher preps the snow machine. She wrestles a drag toward the back of the Yamaha, hooks it on and sets the clip. It will be a cold ride this morning. She pulls up her face mask and goes to the shed to fetch the helmet. It is less for protection from possible injury than from the cold. Straddling the machine, she chokes the throttle and then pulls the start. It revs to life. A satisfying noise, but she doesn’t understand the craze some people seem to feel for it. This is nothing like running the dogs. This is dirtier and heavier. This is polluted.
But she needs it. There are trails to clear. She checks to make sure her two axes are in place. Again, she curses herself for not picking up a chainsaw when she was in town last. It will take longer with the manual tools, but she has been working on these trails, trying to keep them clear. The machine is ready, and she has what she needs for the morning. She fires out of the lot.
The dogs wait for her; she thinks of them while she is working. They sleep soundly for a while. At one point after the sun has been up for a short time, a cow moose and her calf make a rustling path far across the field. The dogs rise and watch, and eventually Jabba barks, setting the whole lot off. The cow is perturbed. She moves her calf away. The dogs settle when the two “other” creatures are gone.
The musher returns, goes into the house to warm her fingers and eat again. It seems an irrelevant activity, and she might have avoided it if she hadn’t had to go to the bathroom so badly.
This time, when she steps into the dog lot, the yard erupts into frenzied noise. They know, and she knows: it is time to run. She smiles, and whistles, and the yard goes silent: it is a straining, edgy silence, as they watch her pull out the sled and get the lines ready outside the gates of the yard. A few whine low under their breath. She throws Jabba an arching glance and he grins at her and is quiet.
She begins to harness them, bring them to line. One by one they fill out the team. Only 12 will go today, because the trails are a little rough for any bigger team. The remaining dogs seem both about to burst with hope that they will be next, and to sag with the possibility that they will stay. They stand on their houses to get a better view of the line, and strain with all their might against their chains. Some of them lean so that they are hanging out in the air, supported by their collars and chain and panting.
As each dog comes to line, the world begins to fill with yammering howls. In harness and hooked up, the dogs may speak. They do, and the chorus builds from Jabba’s single whining yelp to Dejo’s low grumble.
The team is ready. She walks up the line once more amidst the yowling, checking that lines and harnesses and clips are in place; when she comes back to the sled, she zips her overcoat around her and pulls up her face mask. The motions are practiced: she pulls the sled back so she can reach the snub line (not that she can actually physically meet the dogs’ power here; she gains an inch, perhaps). With a bare hand on the metal quick-release and both feet heavy on the brake, she looks up at her team. They feel her standing there. One or two look back.“Ready?” she asks. They pound into their harnesses, and she says, “All right!” at the same moment that she releases the line. There is an explosion of movement forward, out of the lot. The time has come to run.
The noise of the door closing, and the flickering lights of the house, have woken some of the dogs. They stand like wolves, leaning forward with keen eyes, until they see the musher step out of the shadows of the house toward the shed. A dog whines, low. In an instant, the quiet of the world is shattered into a raucous choir, a breaking chorus: the dogs bark. They howl.
Over the din, the musher fumbles with the latch on the shed door, and when it releases, moves a bucket aside to pull open the door. Her right hand is bare, the glove in her teeth. She needs to feel what she is doing. The shed doesn’t have a light, and she curses herself again for not putting one up this summer. If she can keep the shed door from swinging closed on its heavy hinges, the moonlight will be enough this morning to show her the food and supplements, the buckets and scoopers and little packages of additives. The truth is she doesn’t need the light. She knows it all by feel, just like she knows the path down to the lot, and the feel of each dog’s ruff, distinctly. But before that—and they howl for her to arrive—she has to mix the food. She puts the water behind her, finds the empty food buckets, crusted with a very little bit of last night’s dinner, near the garbage can of kibble. Her life is measured in buckets. Only eight scoops of kibble today, they’ve been getting a little heavy. Her hand gets cold against the worn wooden handle of the scooper, even colder touching moisture to unscrew the lid to the plastic bulk container of vegetable oil. She douses the kibble in it. Chips out frozen lumps of chicken fat, adds some to each bucket, and the supplement energy/vitamin powder over that. No meat today—raw and half-frozen—but the mix is repulsive enough as it is. The dogs can smell it and scream for it. She would stop and shake her head for a moment, but they are hungry and there is work to do. She pours the steaming water over the food: it melts the fat and mixes in the oil and powders. The kibble floats and moves, the whole mix a sudden rising stench. Somehow beautiful in its familiarity. Again, the second bucket. Food and water, mixed and ready. Breakfast.
A bucket in each hand, bumping against her legs and spilling over onto her already stained knees; she kicks the shed door shut, and makes her way to the rioting pack down below. A berserk excitement, not feral, but nearly: This is what they live for. This and running.
In the lot, the dogs lean, jump, wait for her with eager tails. Drool collects at the corners of their mouths, freezes in the fur of their lower jaws. Have they forgotten the last time they were fed? They chomp down their full bowls of food in three bites, so fast they forget again they’ve been fed, and clamor for more. But in all of this, never do they forget that the musher is boss, that later she will run them, and now she feeds them. They look at her with worshipping eyes. With intelligent, conversational eyes. Their excitement is the manic excitement of friends. They never forget she is a friend. A boss. A brother wolf, in the pack which is what the dogs understand themselves to be.
It is after, when they have quieted with the realization there is no more food for now, and some of them are still snuffling around the corners of their houses and circles for stray kibble, that she takes a moment to breathe, to enjoy. She has a shovel in one hand, another bucket in the other. The apparently untenable occupation politely referred to as “scooping.” It is not an undesirable job. Despite the mechanics of the operation, the actuality of collecting shit into a bucket and moving it away from its producers, the rhythm of it is calming. The service to the dogs: this is how she repays them for their kindness, their warmth and simple beauty. Their heart and their love of pulling. This is how she washes their feet.
They are comfortable with her. They watch her, and if they don’t watch her, they know where she is. Some of them play with each other, stretching to the ends of their chains and gnawing affectionately at the fur of neck and ear. Some growl, but it is playful. They are well-fed, cheerful to be up this bright moonlit morning. And gradually, as she scoops and listens to their noises, a quiet settles on the lot. The dogs, one by one, sit back on their haunches and watch her, each other. It is the silence of the final dark before dawn. The coldest moment of the night. The dogs watch. And then—it is difficult to tell who starts it, and the musher doesn’t want to look and ruin the rhythm—a dog looks up at the stars. Opens her jaw, to the moon and to god, and sings.
It is not the riotous desperate cry of “Feed me!” that came earlier. It is as silent in its chorus, when the others begin to join, as the quiet just broken. A rising cry, a keening choir. One by one the dogs join in, fade out, join again. Together the lot reaches one climactic note. The musher sings too, in her human voice as much as she can. It hits the peak of its chorus, and stops. Suddenly. The musher, once, may have been caught singing in the abrupt, dead quiet. But she has sung this song before, every morning and every night. The lot is more utterly still that it was when every dog but Milky curled up inside its house. The musher looks at them all looking at her. She breathes. The world begins again. The dogs move, subdued now. They are full and want to sleep. She keeps scooping, stopping now and again to pet whoever it is she cleans after.
When she is done, has dumped the full buckets of crap into the rapidly filling hole in the woods, she trades them for the empty food buckets, and carries those up to the house. She enters into a warmth that is more suited for her frail humanity. In silence, she builds herself a breakfast. Hot coffee, eggs, toast. Warmness seeps back into her fingers, painfully. She is grateful to be out of the cold. But her attention is preoccupied, as always. She sits in the living room and stares out the picture window. She thinks she might watch the sun rise as she eats, but part of her is hurrying too much. She eats quickly, watching the dogs move in and around their houses, washes the dishes quickly, and with her mind thinking three steps ahead, has pulled her gear back on before she remembers. Now she grabs heavier stuff, a pair of Cabela’s snow pants, weighted down in the pockets, and Northface boots. Layers over her polar-fleece shirt, and then a thick overcoat with a ruff. She is out the door before the sun has crested the rocky horizon.
The dogs half-ignore her now. They are always aware of where she is and what she is doing, but for now they have been fed, so they do not feel the need to explode into excitement. It will be hours before it is time to run. She will let the food settle in their stomachs. They listen to her work and are content. Above the kennel, the musher preps the snow machine. She wrestles a drag toward the back of the Yamaha, hooks it on and sets the clip. It will be a cold ride this morning. She pulls up her face mask and goes to the shed to fetch the helmet. It is less for protection from possible injury than from the cold. Straddling the machine, she chokes the throttle and then pulls the start. It revs to life. A satisfying noise, but she doesn’t understand the craze some people seem to feel for it. This is nothing like running the dogs. This is dirtier and heavier. This is polluted.
But she needs it. There are trails to clear. She checks to make sure her two axes are in place. Again, she curses herself for not picking up a chainsaw when she was in town last. It will take longer with the manual tools, but she has been working on these trails, trying to keep them clear. The machine is ready, and she has what she needs for the morning. She fires out of the lot.
The dogs wait for her; she thinks of them while she is working. They sleep soundly for a while. At one point after the sun has been up for a short time, a cow moose and her calf make a rustling path far across the field. The dogs rise and watch, and eventually Jabba barks, setting the whole lot off. The cow is perturbed. She moves her calf away. The dogs settle when the two “other” creatures are gone.
The musher returns, goes into the house to warm her fingers and eat again. It seems an irrelevant activity, and she might have avoided it if she hadn’t had to go to the bathroom so badly.
This time, when she steps into the dog lot, the yard erupts into frenzied noise. They know, and she knows: it is time to run. She smiles, and whistles, and the yard goes silent: it is a straining, edgy silence, as they watch her pull out the sled and get the lines ready outside the gates of the yard. A few whine low under their breath. She throws Jabba an arching glance and he grins at her and is quiet.
She begins to harness them, bring them to line. One by one they fill out the team. Only 12 will go today, because the trails are a little rough for any bigger team. The remaining dogs seem both about to burst with hope that they will be next, and to sag with the possibility that they will stay. They stand on their houses to get a better view of the line, and strain with all their might against their chains. Some of them lean so that they are hanging out in the air, supported by their collars and chain and panting.
As each dog comes to line, the world begins to fill with yammering howls. In harness and hooked up, the dogs may speak. They do, and the chorus builds from Jabba’s single whining yelp to Dejo’s low grumble.
The team is ready. She walks up the line once more amidst the yowling, checking that lines and harnesses and clips are in place; when she comes back to the sled, she zips her overcoat around her and pulls up her face mask. The motions are practiced: she pulls the sled back so she can reach the snub line (not that she can actually physically meet the dogs’ power here; she gains an inch, perhaps). With a bare hand on the metal quick-release and both feet heavy on the brake, she looks up at her team. They feel her standing there. One or two look back.“Ready?” she asks. They pound into their harnesses, and she says, “All right!” at the same moment that she releases the line. There is an explosion of movement forward, out of the lot. The time has come to run.
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