by Brian Keenan
‘Mush’ was the word to say to get us moving, but it felt so foolish and so childish an expression, which indeed was exactly how I was feeling at that moment. I was master of nothing. No part of me was connected to the animal engine that was driving us. My hands held me to the sleigh, but that’s all they did. There was no ‘hands on’ manipulation from me. I had no steering wheel to direct our passage, no clutch, gearbox or accelerator to control the speed. A pilot in the air has his joystick and a whole bank of computerized controls to draw on. I had nothing, not even a pair of reins to connect me and give me power over the creatures that were now charging ahead at breakneck speed. Even a sailor in his small yacht has more control, for he can shed sail or manually position himself against the wind. I had nothing but a pack of mad dogs working with one mind, setting its own course to the tune of Ben the lead dog, and plunging precariously through this snowbound outback. I was simply hanging onto their tails, letting them drag me where they wished. Stupefied, I clung on, trying to replay Dan’s instructions, but my mind could not compute as fast as the team could pull.
Then Dan roared out something short and inarticulate to the dogs and almost simultaneously rotated his head in a half turn and told me to ‘Lean hard left, Brian, lean hard left!’ Without questioning him I squatted on the runners and pitched my upper torso as far over to the left as I could. I dared not be too inhibited. In Dan’s language, hard left meant hard left, so that’s what I did. Part of me imagined a downhill slalom skier weaving between markers down a sheer slope. It worked! My weight-bearing lean seemed to correct the rolling tendency of the sleigh as the dogs made a hard right. I was mesmerized and flushed to selfcongratulation, but had little time to relish it. Dan was roaring orders again.
‘Two more turns. Wait till the lead dog has made his move and drop your foot to slow us into the turn. After the second turn it’s open country. They will see it before us and go into a fast run. Make sure you give plenty of foot brake and then lean, then brake, but lighter this time.’
The instruction, as always, could not have been simpler. I did as Dan demanded and we travelled in and out of the turns with an effortlessness that made me feel like grace revealed. The dogs must have felt it too, at least I wanted to think so, for they ate up the open ground as if each of them had grown another set of legs. I was riding on the crest of their enthusiastic yelps, wanting to yelp myself. Then the cabin loomed and in no time we were sliding up to the dog enclosure with my foot and sleigh anchor guiding us up to the porch. Dan soon had the team tied up securely.
I watched, wanting to pat some of the dogs, but that seemed as silly as wanting to shout ‘Mush!’ at the team. Dan called out a few words of praise to two of his dogs, Samson and Caesar, then ushered me into the cabin. For a second I wondered about these names. I only knew of the lead dog, but to me Samson and Caesar were characters out of a childhood memory of history, and I wondered if the names Dan had chosen indicated something about the man himself. Inside the cabin I suggested to my host that he might have named some of them Beethoven or Bach. In response, Dan explained that most of the animals had come to him with those names. ‘Just like you,’ I remarked, hinting at Dan’s secret past. He just laughed and answered, with good-natured dismissal, ‘Just like me!’
I moved out onto the porch again, not sure whether I had been probing Dan’s past a little too much. He joined me and didn’t seem bothered by my remarks. We both stayed on the porch for a while musing over nothing of significance. The dogs sat and watched us without making a sound. Only a few of them displayed the classic husky-like appearance.
‘Few mongrel bloodlines in some of them boys,’ I said, feeling comfortable and familiar.
‘Yeah, just like me,’ Dan said again, looking at me with the same wry smile on his face.
I smiled the same way and looked out at the timberline, thinking to myself that whatever I might learn about Alaska and Alaskans, Dan was a closed book. He was enjoying his evasion too much, and anyway, I was fast coming to the conclusion that his past didn’t really matter much and could not be half as interesting as his present.
‘Well, what did you think about your first sleigh ride?’ he asked.
‘Wee buns,’ I said. Then, noticing his perplexed expression at my Ulsterism, I translated it into his own vernacular: ‘Piece of cake!’
‘Oh, yeah,’ Dan said, wanting a little more.
But it was my turn to tease, and I could not resist. ‘I really enjoyed that, but I reckon I could do it blindfolded.’
I thought Dan would enjoy my cool-hand-Luke approach, but his response completely stunned me. He turned his head towards me and with a throwaway smile said, dryly, ‘You got a deal.’ It was the first truly serious expression I had heard from my friend in the time we had been together.
I was busy trying to work out just what Dan was thinking, and more importantly just what I had set myself up for, when he said, ‘You go and pour us both another drink. There’s coffee on the stove and whiskey in the bottle. I’ll hitch up the other team.’ I thought he was joking until he got up, went around to the rear of the cabin, pulled another sleigh from under a great sheet of heavy-duty plastic and dragged it round. The sight of the second sleigh sent the dogs into a howling cacophony. I wanted to believe he was bluffing, but his dogs knew he wasn’t. I was intrigued, but more than a little worried. Dan ignored me and disappeared into his cabin, returning with an armful of harness. He walked to the front of the new sleigh and led out the line in obvious preparation to hitch up the new team.
One by one he detached the dogs from their kennels and brought them to the sleigh, and after some gruff words and a lot of pushing, shoving and cursing, his fresh team was hitched to the second sleigh. He removed two dogs from our original sleigh of eight and looked at me. ‘Think you can handle a team of six on your own with no cargo?’ Before I could answer, he informed me he would take the fresh team and lead and I would follow with the second team, and there shouldn’t be any problems. ‘The sleigh will be a lot lighter so you will only have to worry about yourself. At least you won’t have to do any running.’ There was a pause. ‘Unless you fall off, that is. Come on, let’s get some coffee and a warmer.’
Without responding I followed my companion into the cabin. ‘I’ll pass on the whiskey,’ I was about to say, but realized it was useless as Dan had already fortified my steaming mug. Instead of returning the bottle to the table he packed it into an ex-army canvas bag, informing me that we might need it later. I was too unsure of what was happening to ask anything except where the bathroom was. Nerves always activate my bladder at the most inconvenient times, but I was hoping that Dan would not realize the cause of my urgent need. If he did he didn’t show it; instead he remarked how dogs have to do their business on the run while we two-legged creatures are a bit more fussy. He pointed to a small shed about ten or twenty feet from the cabin with the words, ‘Can’t put much plumbing in the permafrost, you’ll have to take us as you find us.’ Feigning macho indifference I replied that I had been in some shitters in my time so nothing would surprise me. Dan passed me a roll of toilet paper, explaining that he didn’t read many newspapers so he didn’t keep a ready supply for the ‘bathroom’, he said, mocking the use of the word. He concluded with the remark that it was always better not to be carrying more weight than is necessary.
I returned from Dan’s primitive amenity, which was little more than a few planks of broad timber with a hole cut in them and an even bigger hole underneath them. As I re-entered the cabin I placed the toilet roll near the kitchen counter but was too shy to ask about hand-washing facilities, having already convinced myself that real men would shun this, and anyway, in a place with no plumbing water was not to be wasted on such trivial matters. I could have saved my embarrassment. Dan had already gone outside again to put the final touches to our sleighs. I still wasn’t sure what he was planning but felt I needed to confess some anxiety on my part.
‘I wasn’t really serious about doing it bl
indfolded, you know,’ I said, half sheepishly.
Dan continued to make further adjustments to the two teams’ harnesses. ‘Didn’t think you were, but we still get a few hours of night light up here. It’s the best time to see the country. No snow glare from the sun and the moon lights up the place in its own peculiar way. Now, listen.’ He ushered me over to the team of six. For a few moments he rehearsed what he had already explained about using my foot as a brake and leaning on the turns. ‘Remember, you have no ballast on board, which makes the sleigh very light, so you are going to have to create your own traction. You are travelling over the snow, not through it, and don’t forget this.’ He placed the small anchor within easy reach. ‘Now, don’t lose it.’ It was his final command.
He manoeuvred his team in a direct line in front of my sleigh. ‘We’ll take the first few miles easy so you can get a feel of it, but remember, save the sight-seeing until we stop and you’ll do okay.’
Dan lifted his anchor and was about to set off when I called out, ‘How do you get them to turn?’
Dan stood still for a few moments trying to make out what I had said from behind my muffled mouth. ‘Gee for the left and haw to turn right, that’s all you need to know, but call it out clearly and repeat it until the lead dog begins to turn.’
‘What about stop?’ I asked, my panic rising.
‘Don’t worry, they’ll stop when I do.’
Dan suddenly remembered something, fumbled around in his sleigh, then turned and threw something in my direction. It landed at my feet. On retrieving it I saw it was a headlamp like the type you see cave explorers wearing as they climb through their gloomy enclosures. ‘Don’t put it on in case you lose it,’ Dan said. ‘It’s only for emergencies, in case we get separated. There’s also a whistle in your breast pocket for the same purpose.’ And with no more fuss, Dan called out to his lead dog, ‘Away, Cou-caisse!’
I ran the first few yards, following Dan’s example, then jumped onto the rear running board. The dogs barked and snapped to assert their position and then we were gliding easily over the snowy tundra. The concentration had quenched my excitement, and I had already forgotten whether haw or gee had meant right or left. I would listen to Dan’s first command and that should sort out my confusion.
Everything at the beginning was perfectly pleasant, and I couldn’t understand why I shouldn’t sight-see; after all, there is no more original way to see Alaska than from your own moving sleigh behind a panting dog team. But once we’d left the clearing behind Dan’s cabin I quickly forgot about looking behind me. The land began to undulate and break up and all my attention was given over to avoiding being whacked by low branches. I quickly learned the importance of leaning gently to the right or left so as to glide the sleigh easily at the most appropriate moments. Just as I was becoming assured and was greatly enjoying my mastery of this primitive transport, Dan hurried the pace. I thought it was about time; I was eager to be flashing over the snow. Then, as suddenly as Dan had shifted up several gears, I wished he hadn’t.
There were fewer trees now, but the terrain was rougher and filled with sudden crevices then short but steep slopes. The dogs were in their element and charged on regardless. As we banked and rolled and plunged over this white nightmare I became all too aware just how light the sleigh was under me. Dan raced ahead heedlessly, his body as fluid as hot gelatin. I was dreading the growing distance between us and my team seemed anxious yet encouraged by it. They charged harder and faster, trying to lessen the gap. The sleigh bucked and leaped into the air, banging back into the land and causing the dogs to strain and snarl at my incompetence. I had not forgotten to use my foot as a brake, or about the necessity to lean, thus displacing weight and creating traction on turns, but the terrain was too rough and the obstacles came at me too suddenly. All I could do was hold on and hope. Within the space of a few miles I was bundled into the snow several times with no hope of tossing out my anchor. Every time I took a spill my team barked and yelped as if they were a team of hyenas and my comic performance was to their liking. It was a clear signal to Dan to come back and wait for me.
‘Do this blindfold, can you?’ he asked with gleeful sarcasm after my fourth tumble.
It was pointless to try to reply with any type of macho excuse. I picked myself up, dusted off the snow and got back behind the sleigh with the words, ‘I’ll get it, I’ll get it.’ I don’t know if my feeble affirmation convinced Dan, but he tried to be helpful, explaining that everything was about co-ordination and compensation. I understood what he meant but that did not automatically provide me with the skills to perform the bodily contortions demanded by the landscape. Dan suggested that if I could persevere for another few miles, we would then travel down a snow-covered riverbed that would be a lot easier to ride on. Otherwise we could double up on his sleigh, towing my sleigh behind. Defeat at this stage of my Alaskan adventure was too devastating to contemplate. ‘No,’ I stated. ‘It doesn’t hurt much, even if my ego does.’
‘Okay,’ said Dan, and we were off again without another word.
Whether it was stubborn determination or the ignominy of returning ‘in the pram’, as I had come to think of it, I stuck at it, trying to worry less about myself and somehow marry myself to the movements of the sleigh. After all, it was only a piece of wood and I was the brains in the operation.
Dan, of course, had lied. It was more than a few miles to the riverbed. Indeed, it felt like a few hours, but in that time I achieved some measure of accomplishment with only two minor falls that didn’t require Dan’s assistance. I was again becoming quite assured, but this time it was accompanied by an awareness that in this outback world you really have to survive alone, and will was just as important as skill. Sometimes one was the teacher to the other. And so I persevered, always watching the lead dog to see if it would disappear down a crevice or make some sudden turn to avoid what might be a deep snowfall. I was constantly trying to ride the tossing currents of this whitewashed land rather than fight them.
The snow-covered riverbed was a dream to travel down. My sleigh could have been a canoe. The large rock formations and accumulations of fallen timber were easily avoided with my new-found skill of leaning and dragging. Now I could gee and haw and my dogs were happy to oblige. Dan, too, seemed happy to allow me to chart my own course. Part of me wished that Jack and Cal were bundled up in the sleigh in front of me, but they would probably have deserted me for the certainty of Dan’s sleigh after my second tumble. I would not have liked that at all. I watched the dogs charge ahead joyously. These animals seemed to show little in the way of genuine affection. For these dogs, it took a long period of mutual trust, forbearance and appreciation to make a workable partnership. I wanted to think that maybe they had accepted me, or at least wanted to give me a second chance. Somewhere inside me I was sure that by seeking to overcome the failures in myself and accepting that they were in charge, I had been allowed to become one of their team.
Dan was right about the moonlight on virgin snow; it adds a lunar luminescence to the lift and fold of the land. In a way it had all the pristine quiet of an old Japanese print in black and white. Behind all the intimate softness was that immense sky, just beginning to colour up with approaching night.
As I continued to ride uncomplaining into the great white eiderdown of the river valley, I heard Dan call out to me. Obviously he wanted me to stop but I remembered he had not given me the word for this command. I let the dogs drift, desperately trying to think what the word might be. Then suddenly, I said, ‘Easy, Ben, easy, boy. Slow up there.’ I called out as clearly and as comfortingly as I could. Ben was a true leader, and the sleigh began to slow, allowing Dan’s sleigh to overtake and stop in front of us. I explained that I had no command for stop and Dan simply stated, ‘Well, you managed it more or less. The old Eskimo words for right and left are part of the tradition of dog mushing. Everybody uses them to honour that tradition. When you are out on the tundra you only need to instruct them right or left;
anything else is straight on and sleighs and dogs don’t do reverse. You don’t need much else except stop and go.’ Having communicated this Spartan logic, he announced, ‘It should get just a little darker very soon. But like I say, the darker it gets the brighter it gets. We’ll want to get down across the lake by then. Stick behind me from now on, I have a feeling you might enjoy this.’
As always, there was something in Dan’s words that left out more than he told me. I wasn’t too sure what it was, or whether it was simply my imagination breaking free in the limitless landscape, but something in me was thinking how difficult we sometimes find it to trust the moment. It was the way Dan said things, emphatically yet incomplete. There was no time for questions anyway. He was soon off at a gentle trot and I fell in behind, accepting that he too was part of the spell of the place and I shouldn’t question what I didn’t need to.
I wasn’t sure exactly when we reached the lake, but when the low banks of land defining the valley seemed to get further and further apart I sensed we must be near. In front of me stretched a great white plain, a phosphorescent quality about it. Dan’s sleigh stopped in front of me and he began checking his harness. ‘I really want to run this one hard,’ he announced. ‘We are probably on the outer edge of the lake now. It’s hard to tell, the wind keeps shifting the snow. The dogs know, and sometimes it spooks them a bit, but it seems to be okay. It’s only when they get really spooked that you need to worry.’