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.
