Specimens, Days

They’re interesting feelings, both. Watching your dog team pull the hook & rush through the narrow sliver of trail lining down toward Fish Creek, the darkness of the -30 degree night enveloping them as swiftly as you can muster a futile, broken “whoa.” Or wrestling through a balled up bundle of dogs doing their best to rip one another apart, while your ankle is wrapped in gangline & the sled is unmoored. In the case of the former, I ran only 300 yards before seeing the glow of their eyes emerge from the oildark night—no tangles, no aggression, no miles-long dashes. You hear stories from friends about lost teams that end in unthinkable loss or injury or at the very least healthy dogs some dozen miles distant from their driver. For me, this time, they sat resting in the deep, unbroken snow &, with a leader change, called up as soon as I asked them to. Their undiminished spirit & enduring good health almost forgave Basin & Kabob’s shared commitment to exploring ever

Back now from three days in Eureka & scraping for the footholds of the normal life I have to resume after three days of dogs, dogs, a new alternator & more dogs. We loaded the kennel into the new dog boxes for the haul, puppies in tow in various states of sleepiness, sprawled across our coats or laps or bags, limp from exhaustion on the way home & sort of unfurled like loose ribbons. In Eureka, almost at the end of the Elliot Highway, there live four humans & roughly ninety dogs. Our visit was coupled with the visit of three other humans & their thirty dogs as well, so all in all, we had seven people & 130 dogs or so. Good numbers. Wind thrashed through our entire visit, though on the trails, for the most part, the trees socked us in & kept us warm enough to sweat up the hills. The trails suffer from a lack of snow compared to the embarrassment of riches we have on Stampede at present, but for me, they were endlessly thrilling for a number of reasons. Ru

There was a point there, sliding on my ass down a hundred-yard snowfield rippled with minute waves of ice & buried rock, when I wondered if perhaps I ought to reorient myself in order to avoid slamming into the jagged boulder looming below. & there was a point while loping across another pitch of snow sidelong wherein I noticed I might well slide a mile off course if I didn’t hit the footholds. There was incessant rain, beating down from the report of the starting pistol until the finish line, & a fierce firn wind weaving through the willows, the Devil’s Club, the sedge-green grass. & the feeling on the far shore of Eagle River of wholly numb legs wobbling underneath me. I completely ate shit a half dozen times, tripped & recovered a dozen more, stubbed my twice-broken toe, stepped knee-deep in beaver ponds, slid & slopped through mud, leapt over twenty piles of fresh bear scat & clutched looming thistles to right myself, committing the ensuing mile each tim

Wickwire was a mirror to Moose, his double, almost his twin. A little shorter, with ears only slightly smaller than our Moose’s, but he had the same coat, the same white fur along the eyes, the same ever-curious hazel eyes & the same genuine, self-possessed demeanor. He was every bit himself, uninhibited, fully realized, content unto the last. & yesterday, after a weekend of romping off the Denali Highway, our friends had the dismal & horrendous task of burying their dear Wickwire after he was struck by a passing RV. I cannot imagine their pain, nor the depth of questioning that transpires in such circumstances. Wickwire had been there underfoot when they began their lives in their cabin, camping with them in winter & summer, running in team, destroying the same massive, “indestructible” chew toys that Moose routinely guts. Everyone in the neighborhood knew him well, even if they only met him once or twice. When I first started frequenting Kristin’s old cabin, I mistook

In between downpours, the interstitial gleams of cleansed light bathing the broad shoulders of the mountains, in stark relief against the bruised purple-blue patchwork of massive clouds roiling endless through the canyon. & in the mud now instead of the snow, the pressed soles of various shoes, the quick puncture work of dogs’ claws, the deep clefts of moose cows & calves. Up Bison Gulch, pockets of rotting grey snow cling still to the undersides of overhangs, rich green lichen spotting with white & pale blue specks stretching from underneath, giving the appearance of delicate china smashed & scattered over a rough moss. & the smell of the wet rocks, the slow slide of talus & scree underfoot in running. It is perhaps the one thing I miss the most in the winter, that feeling of solid earth & that damp soil smell it emanates. & it will come very soon to release instead the sweet, dry tundra smell that appertains to our dogs in their free running. But for n

Rain has been falling here, almost relentless. Stampede was covered in a series of chained, small lakes, & the rivulet that usually peaks as a trickle parallel the road cut a formidable bank a few days back, the water white capped, roiling, overburdening the culverts. The rivers, too, gnash & tumble. Strong brown gods, said Eliot. & in our yard, welcomed to our home amidst the thunder & clamorous downpour, our new friend Zigzag has joined us from up in Akiak in hopes of breeding a litter with Solo. She floated down the Kuskokwim, flew to us from Bethel & drove back north from Anchorage. She’s taken well to the place & runs the bluff free with our other seven dogs, doting on Solo, Kristin tells me, like an infatuated schoolgirl. Free walking the dogs out to the bluff has become one of our favorite things. Littlehead leads every charge, darting in & out of the spruce that lines either side of the trail, emerging suddenly to check in before sprinting off aga

It’s an odd thing to mourn the loss of a dog not your own, to confront that pain circuitously. Our friend’s gargantuan & idiosyncratic & incredibly well-loved buddy, at rest & gone from us down in Palmer. & Solo in the meantime with three staples in his head where T’s teeth gnashed & gnawed. In wrestling them apart in a willow copse mottled with snow to see his eyes stretched back under the ceaseless pressure of jaw. A dog’s screaming is nothing you forget. & in the end, it’s another in a long series of dog fights we’ll break up & the wounds are relatively small & will heal fine, but there is the part of me in which these things coalesce to demand an attention to inevitability & time. You forget with dogs sometimes, when they are pleased & you are pleased, when you all fall into your natural cycles together, that their care is such an earnest & ongoing responsibility. That you will pour your love into them & that it will crush you when th

We read our respective blogs from the beginning of last year to measure their breadth, to see how the year began & think about where it ended. Suffice it to say, our happiness & our rootedness have both continued in their exponential increases, & this New Year’s Day finds my heart at brimming, my enthusiasms all engaged, my life in general pitched at a ludicrously & wonderfully fine height that I would scarcely believe but for the fact of its daily living. It happens with considerable regularity that I will of a sudden take stock of our endeavors here, or our love, or our property & its plans, or a team of dogs, or the painted alpenglow on Pyramid Mountain, & I am left breathless at where I’ve ended up & who I’ve become in the process. There is novelty in each slow dawn, richness in the most mundane of things. I love viscerally here. What a thing. I brought in the new year with a twelve mile run on the 31st in -10, windy Palmer, along the Knik River. I follo