December 22

The manufacture of all dreams goes forward unabated still, in spite of the long silence. We are back from the Sheep Mountain 150, in which Kristin ran happy, healthy dogs through 150 miles of winding, altitude-laden, blizzard-touched trails down off the Glenn. I was her handler, along with Jess O, which meant helping get everything prepared, dropping dogs the night prior, axing meat into snacks, lining out the team, laying underneath the stars with K after her first run, watching the dogs while she slept inside, standing on the break at the appropriate times & generally worrying a bunch while she was on trail. I suppose that what it really meant was getting to witness something absolutely beautiful & awesome & ridiculously wonderful, which was K fulfilling a dream. & like any good dream, it meandered from stunned terror to mild confidence to intransigent doubt & again to a kind of joy that I think could rightly be called incandescent, or exuberant at the very least. It was a wild kind of dog joy when she crossed the finish line anyway, for all of us. I’m not sure I’ve been prouder of anyone. & then add in my pride at the dogs & Jeff’s victory & the general happy cohesion of our team of folks & you have a picture perfect beginning to a sled dog racing career. I am simply amazed with Knight & those dogs.



Hard to cull other strands from beneath that flame, brightly as it still shines. The rest is good, is lovely, is wintery & hushed. It was solstice yesterday & no sun licked the snow—just the same grey smudge we usually see in those few hours of pseudo-light. The dogs all laze in the cabin, or bite at each other’s necks playfully, or look bewildered at our pups when they are brought in for hour-long stretches. We bought a dog sled, some harnesses, some old mushing gear from a Cantwellian who has retired from it entirely. We’re thinking of building another, a smaller one so I can harness up the pups & kick around my home trails. We look at cabin costs for the property. We look at other races, think of what it would be like to run them, dog or foot or both. & always, that compass seems to point to places seemingly unattainable—places upon which, over & again, our lives find steady anchorage.