January 2

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 followed it with 16 miles yesterday from home while it was hovering between -30 & -40, depending on where I was. My run took me around the Intertie, along hills & trails, sliding down a long slope after the moose pond, & most dramatically through the two hours of gloaming wherein the light fought brilliantly against its waning. I stopped at one point along the Intertie, turning from Carlo to Panorama, across the Nenana & then northwards, to the Healy Ridge that will play such a monolithic role in our coming years, over to Musher’s Monument, toward Fellows, to Pyramid, & all of them awash in a fulgent pink glow that dulled just so as I kept along, muting, muting, until the soft gray dusk enveloped it entire. I have been running so much in the dark that those hours of stunning beauty compelled me pleasantly through those frosty miles, obscured though they were with the ice gathering in clumps on my eyelashes. & with the Little Su coming up, this weekend’s runs were a tremendous boon to my confidence. Sometimes I forget that if nothing else, running plain old lets me adventure & explore in places I’d never otherwise see. It’s what I love about mountain running, & what distance provides in the winter when mountains are less capably accessed. Next week my long runs will take me past Harold’s Cabin, where local lore demands that users keep the stock of atomic fireballs replenished. They’ll show me the backside approach to Panorama, show me new lakes & meadows, read me narratives of caribou bedding down, or wolves along a creek, or coyotes in uniform single file. They’ll tell me where dog teams have ventured, where the traplines run, where a fine stand of aspen might be. & all the while that long yawning silence of the wilderness here. How better to know your place.

& in the dog team arena, we took the pups out for another successful run a few days back. I was honored to have Salem as the lead in my team. Salem, for reference, has won the Iditarod as a trusted leader & takes commands & intuits a driver’s needs better than any dog I’ve ever witnessed, hands down. What a privilege for our young ones to learn from such a seasoned & passionate veteran. Littlehead was in Kristin’s team & pulled like an old pro, relentless & focused. Kabob did the same for me, steady & smart. T-bone did well to begin & then decided he preferred to lull melodramatically in the deep snow & cast woe-is-me glances back at me. He ran the remaining miles loose, between our teams or behind us. & for me, another chance to get on the runners, which feels so goddamn good it’s frightening. Now that Hey Moose! Kennels boasts a racing veteran, our shared level of impatient thrill has skyrocketed. One day, one day.

& so, likely I will be looking back at this post in 364 days. To that future me, I say this: you started the year happier than ever you’ve been before. Delight in its memory, but delight more in what grows from it yet.

Happy New Year.