Mush!

This spring has really gone to the dogs.  I had expected that our earlier mushing adventure would be the only one, but I was clearly wrong.  A bishop in our church allowed the young men and women to come out to his house and exhaust his dogs--I mean, experience dogsledding first hand. This excursion apparently happens every year, but this was the first time I was invited along.

The adventure began with the drive.  This particular driveway is infamous--looping randomly up a hill of varying grades, the shadowed places deep with snow and the sun-exposed portions slick with ice.  I knew better than to even attempt it with Big Bertha.  Even with the truck we had some challenges navigating the trail; it was only wide enough for one vehicle, and several times we had conflicting traffic.  Luckily, there were pullouts plowed into various points, and the oncoming vehicle was always generous enough to do the backing up--including, at one point, uphill.

We could hear the dogs before we saw them.  It's hard to ignore forty huskies who are just happy to see you.  A couple of teens were harnessing dogs and prepping a pair of sleds.  It turns out some of them had been mushing since they were kids, even running a 50 mile race alone at 10.  Alaskan childhoods can be intense.

After a short talk about mushing and the dogs themselves, we headed down to the track--an 1/8 mile oval trail cut through the snow on a small pond.  A lot of the teens piled into a pair of massive sleds behind snowmachines, but the rest of us walked.  Echo, who had come with me, was tucked securely into the knot of teenagers, pleased to be mistaken for one of the big kids.  

A brief sled-anatomy lesson.  Everyone knows you stand on the runners and hang on for dear life.  There is a curved bar that is the actual brake, and you step on that to stop the sled.  There is also a flat rubber mat with small spikes on the bottom that serves as...well, not a brake, but something to provide a little bit of friction and drag to slow the dogs down a bit.  Now, this mat only works if you're over a certain weight or have well trained dogs.  It doesn't make any difference at all to a pack of fresh pups who just want to run.  One girl found that out the hard way. A little wisp of a thing, she stood on the mat the whole first two loops of the track and the dogs didn't even notice; even with her stomping on the brake the team blew past the starting point for a third loop.  The only thing that stopped them from running a fourth circuit were the three handlers that threw themselves against the sled when they came around.

Of course, after twenty kids and several adults, the dogs had lost a little of their zip.  Only a little, though.  Remember, these dogs are bred and conditioned to run over a hundred miles a day in frigid temperatures.  They were fine.  The mushers were not without their casualties.  Several people were dumped unceremoniously into the snow, and one teen fell hard enough to snap his glasses.  The dogs didn't care in the slightest, trotting on with their heads down, tongues out, their tails waving merrily at the passengers they had abandoned.

Before my turn, Echo got cold.  Despite having lived through five Alaskan winters and being explicitly told we were going to be outside for a couple of hours, she had failed to wear socks and her feet were cold.  She had managed to make it for over an hour, but her feet were now cold enough that she was trying not to cry as she asked to go home.  You can only allow natural consequences and object lessons to go on for so long when it's 5 degrees out, so I took her back up the hill to warm up in the car.  We couldn't leave yet--not only had I brought the hot chocolate and given a couple of rides, I was firmly blocked in on all sides.

Luckily, one of our friends had also gotten a little cold.  She volunteered to watch Echo so that I could get a turn.  Echo spent a happy half hour video-chatting with our friend's son and I trudged back down the hill to the track.

Since everyone else had already gone once, I was ushered to the head of the line. I stepped on the runners, clutched the driving bow, and called out to the dogs. "Right on!" (not "Mush!" in this particular case, if you were curious) and we were off.  It was surprising how natural it was to lean into the turns and shift my weight to accommodate for dips and bumps in the trail.  It was also so much quieter than I expected.  Even though I could see a couple of dozen teenagers on the other side of the pond, shouting and goofing and throwing each other in the snow, all I could hear was the jingle of harnesses and the soft shirr of the sled over the trail.  For a brief moment I understood the appeal of dogsledding..  There's a serenity found in the wild quiet; there is nothing that matters besides you, the dogs, and the trail ahead.  The simplicity of purpose is attractive.

As the dogs rounded the last turn, I lightly stepped on the mat to start slowing them down.  Since my wisp-of-a-thing days are twenty years and six kids behind me, I didn't need help slowing and stopping the dogs.  I relinquished the sled for the last few mushers, and we all trekked back up the hill.  (Seriously, if you want a good workout, pick a hill in Alaska during breakup.  It doesn't need to be particularly long or steep.  All it needs is six to ten inches of snow that's starting to soften and sag under the increasing sun.  The burn is real.)  We all enjoyed some hot chocolate and thanked our hosts, then, fortified, braved the narrow, twisting driveway again. 

What a blessing to live in a place where a little casual adventure on a Wednesday night is nothing special.