Mushing & Poetry: Trail to Braeburn

I stopped on a wide swath of trail in smallest hours of the night, digging into the sled bag for the cinch sack with peter heaters-- fleece bands with velcro ends sown on either side of foxtails or scraps of coyote fur that we used to protect the dogs’ privates from frostbite. The exhaled breaths of the dogs rose like a heavy blue smoke, hanging leaden in the darkness without dispersing. It was -60. Air acts in strange ways at that temperature. I felt my fingers numbing through the process until by the wheel dogs I was relying on muscle memory. Pulling the hook, the wooden sensation stretched past my fingers, through the meat of my hand, into my wrist. I clenched & unclenched my fist, swinging my arms vigorously to push the blood to my extremities, calling Solo up & heading towards Braeburn through the appertaining fixture of ice fog & frozen breath tunneling around us in our passage. 

I had camped trailside fifty miles from the start line, pulling my team into a little recess right behind Brian Wilmshurst & his brightly appareled dogs. Starting in Whitehorse affords fewer opportunities for revelers & supporters along the way than a Fairbanks start does, but nonetheless, we had passed bonfires of cheering families holding tin mugs in gloved hands, photographers crouched low at the bends in the river, snowmachiners pumping their fists in the air, all smiles. The people filter out & then it’s just the dog teams & their drivers in that odd jockeying that happens at the beginning of a race, when the sense of urgency collides with the stark reality of how slowly time moves over a thousand miles. Teams pull over for one another, only to leapfrog again a few miles along. Most are cordial, one or two are not. 

The snow in 2019 was low enough that officials chose to have us start with smaller teams, run to Braeburn, skip the section between Braeburn & Carmacks, & restart from Carmacks with our full fourteen. My nine dogs negotiated the frozen soil & threadbare tussocks better than I did. The sled was knocked in every direction, sloping & bouncing over exposed rock & root, careening over slick compressed ice. When we made our first camp it was not without a feeling of relief, in spite of the cold. 

I had to borrow Brian’s bowls & ladle, having misplaced mine in the wild unpacking & repacking session attending to the altered race rules. After our dogs were fed & strawed, he & I stood between the teams, our chatter turning from the trail & the dogs to the challenges & wonders of starting families, the curious compulsion towards racing without any thirst for winning. The dull glow of stars muted through ice fog enwreathed us.  We both knew it would be our last Quest, at least for the foreseeable future, & we wanted to take our time & revel in the texture & trial of it, its incomparable & essential northerness. We both intended to run alone, to avoid conversations like the one we were having, to focus on the thrumming cyclical energy between ourselves, our dogs & the vast world we traversed. But it was intensely cold, & we knew we wouldn’t be sleeping, & the Quest has a way of replacing your plans with memories forged with incredible people from which the world might otherwise estrange you. The trail makes time & shows you how to fill it. That may have been the only place in the world Brian & I would have that conversation, given each of our natures & proclivities. Standing there, kicking the snow with our thick-toed boots, pumping our arms & doing the parade of personal calisthenics one unthinkingly does to ward off the cold, it felt as casual as meeting an old friend for a cup of coffee. He took off before me, & I did not see him again until Carmacks. 

That second run, also a fifty, the dogs had metabolized the energy of the start line & had settled into race mode, measured & fluid & strong, one lean muscle spilling over the sinews of the landscape. The trail wove through sections of dense puckerbrush, up through tall-canopied forest with yawning space in the understory, over the double-wide sections of the well-worn Overland Trail, until a soft orange light in the distance & a quickening of pace in the dogs presaged the checkpoint nearing. I snuck a quick piss from the runners, thinking to better prepare myself for Braeburn, when the trail took a sharp ninety & I wound up decorating the front of my bibs with a pattern that froze immediately into place. Two minutes later, we pulled under the checkpoint banner. Diesel engines in their slow, viscous grind against quitting. People in every available layer like dark wraiths floating toward their idling trucks or slipping through the door of the restaurant. Everyone awake & jittery with coffee, hustling dogs into their strawed boxes, securing sleds, talking with their hands over the burn barrel, looking uptrail for the next headlamp. All of these people inhabiting the world of this race as if it were the most perfectly normal choice one could make. These, these were our people.