Epic Solitude
Page 24
The priority for mushers is the safety of their own dog team, but we always assist others in crisis situations, and this is one of those times. With help, the first team breaks loose and careens down the extreme downhill trail. Sebastian, a rookie Quest musher, is next, but his team is overexcited. As he pulls his hook to get under way, his sled wraps on a tree that tips it. He frees the sled, tips it on its other side, then hits another tree, dragging the entire time. Freeing the sled again, his dogs pull with force over the last curve. Sebastian’s sled bounces off the left-corner tree, while Sebastian himself flies over the edge, followed by his sled. The dogs manage to stay on the trail because a little sapling, perfectly located, serves as an anchor to the gang line, but the entire sled, trailer, and Sebastian are hanging off the cliff.
No time to waste, Matt Hall and I run up and form a chain of arms to pull Sebastian and his sled to safety. The instant the sled is back on the trail, the frenzied dogs take off, but Sebastian isn’t ready. Caught off balance, he pinballs down the steep descent. Halfway down, he bounces off another tree; he and his sled disappear over the edge again. Sebastian sorts things out by himself this time and makes it to the bottom in one piece.
It is now my turn. Gulp. Not intimidating at all. Nope. No fear. This is the Quest: not a race for the weak-minded. I have learned through similar experiences that fear is inevitable but not insurmountable. Fear what can happen, and prepare for all outcomes. Running through all scenarios, I strategize about how to reduce risk to the dogs and to myself. Analysis calms me and helps me focus. Learning from Sebastian’s experience, I take the tug lines off all but the front four dogs. This reduces the team’s pulling power—I want to be in total control.
Their excitement is insane. Pulling the hook, I bounce off trees until we get stuck on the last tree on the dead man’s curve overlooking the cliff to my right. I keep my hook secured to a tree so the team can’t take off without me being ready. The brush brow is bent but not broken. Fifteen miles into a thousand-mile race, and the sled already has damage. I work to free the sled, then, ready, we fly down the hill. With only a few tugs attached, my speed is far less than Sebastian’s. At the river bottom, we remain unhurt and in good spirits. Only 985 miles to go (see fig. 41).
This race is unique in having a thirty-six-hour mandatory rest in Dawson City. John Balzar, in his book Yukon Alone, remarks on Dawson: “The capital of the Klondike, with its Wild West facades and stovepipe chimneys, is recognizable from the black-and-white photographs of the Gold Rush.” The Klondike Gold Rush brought more than fifty thousand prospectors into the area by 1900. We get to set up tents for dogs and mushers in the Dawson Creek campground.
I don’t often, or ever, see mushers carrying tents to camp in. But last year on the Iditarod I came upon Lars Monsen, the Norwegian musher and explorer, who camps out with a tent. I pondered the scene. Why carry six more pounds to sleep an hour in comfort? Over the course of that race and the throughout the following summer, I contemplated that tent.
It takes several long minutes for body heat to radiate throughout a sleeping bag full of forty-below air. For me, I never get warm. I’ve tried multiple avenues to fix this. I’ve carried a Therm-a-Rest pad, which I blew air into, for a thermal barrier. I’ve put it on top of a pile of straw. My sleeping bag slid off the pad, leaving me to lie in snow and, yes, shiver. I’ve also tried using a Norwegian sleeping bag that acted like a thick bivy sack in which I’d put my Therm-a-Rest and my sleeping bag. While I had greater success with this approach, it weighed at least twelve pounds and still the issue of having frozen gear remained.
Enter the tent. Well-designed four-season expedition tents have a vapor barrier, which removes the warm moisture generated by breathing, perspiration, and evaporation from damp clothing that would otherwise build up in the tent and condense, keeping the inside of the tent dryer, and its occupant more comfortable.
I get one as a test, and find I get better rest when sleeping in a tent, with increased warmth versus lying on the snow. I bring a change of clothes into the tent, including a face mask, hat, socks, and inner layers. After cooking the dogs’ food, I prepare my own, take three minutes to set up the tent, and throw in the Therm-a-Rest pad, sleeping bag, dry clothes, headlamp, foot and hand warmers, cooked food, two thermoses, and a pan of melted snow for hot water to make fresh coffee with.
Once inside, I throw my boots off and put them to the bottom. Staying dry, and thus warm, in sleeping bags and Arctic traveling gear is tricky. I take off my Gore-Tex outer layers and jump into the bag. Most critical is a dry face mask. Having an icy, frozen face mask made soggy by my hot breath does not make my day. I put dry gear back on because the bitter cold is dangerous. Now dry, I eat hot, delicious food while cuddled in my bag. Life is awesome. I make my coffee with the remaining melted snow water and open two hand warmers to hold close while sleeping.
I carry my five-pound Hilleberg Soulo tent from Whitehorse to Fairbanks, and I am forever in love with it. This increase in comfort is a luxury that goes a long way five hundred miles into a race.
The Quest summits don’t disappoint. A storm passes through on my way over American Summit, and I freeze six fingertips during the climb up and over the summit in total-whiteout conditions. A first ascender of Denali’s South Peak, and one who knows, Hudson Stuck, wrote in Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled that “the Eagle Summit is one of the most difficult summits in Alaska. The wind blows so fiercely that sometimes for days together its passage is almost impossible.” Climbing up Rosebud isn’t terrible but the very steep descent through burned timber and rock is jaw-dropping.
Finishing in Fairbanks, this race is a total triumph of spirit—free of trauma, and full of the purity of a long, hard, and cold dogsled race. I do not win authenticity without a fight. By the finish of the Yukon Quest, as Rookie of the Year, there is no going back. I’m in love with the Far North and the adventures it offers (see fig. 42).
Two weeks later, we are busy preparing for the next thousand-mile race: the Iditarod.
New Dreams
Kotzebue, Alaska | 2018
You are never given a wish without also being
given the power to make it true. You may have
to work for it, however.
—Richard Bach
I spent the first thirty-five years of my life searching for the truth. Wilderness adventures and spiritual questing helped me find it. Searching is an ingrained habit, and for the last five years I continued to search, but I didn’t know what for. Standing in your truth takes discipline and rejuvenation. It is possible to lose sight of your truth. Eager to give back to others, I jump with full attention into work and forget the basic tenants of self-care. I throw myself into coaching, family care, nonprofit work, and I forget my truth and who I am. We all find our truth in different ways. I find mine in the wilderness, meditation, and many other ways that bring me joy. Truth is the pivot point between searching and giving. To live a life of balance means standing solid in your truth. It also means knowing when we need to glide back and forth, between searching and giving, with grace.
I learn to dream again and commit to follow my dreams. I want to experience this life with a hungry passion that lay dormant after fifteen years of neglect. I want to travel to the north and south poles with a team of dogs; I want to climb the seven summits, starting with Denali; and I want to share with others that life is worth living even when it hurts.
I work to be a light in the darkness for people who are struggling to take the first step in saying yes to life every single day because of all that weighs us down. I run the 2018 Yukon Quest, only to scratch from it because of a wrist injury that renders me unable to care for my dog team. Refusing to back down, I gear up to run the 2018 Iditarod in a few weeks.
Amelia, now fifteen years old, has also learned how to dream for herself. Wanting challenge and diversity, she gets accepted to a boarding school on the East Coast—a brave girl making
her own way in this big world. She inspires me daily with her courage, strength, compassion, beauty, humor, aptitude, empathy, wisdom—and I can go on forever, much to her embarrassment (see fig. 43).
Before the 2018 Iditarod, I visit Amelia, if only to hug her for a few days straight. Empty-nest syndrome does not sit well with me, so I fly out at every available opportunity. While there, I receive a call from Dave’s sister-in-law, Sarah, in Ellensberg, Washington. Our young, happy-go-lucky, dimple-faced Alan shot himself in his grandparents’ home, losing his battle with mental illness. Not all of us can face the overwhelming magnitude of creating new dreams. Untreated trauma can cause mental illness so severe it leaves no hope in its wake. Alan received treatment but still felt out of options.
I am there in person to tell Amelia. Her upcoming spring break allows me to take her out of school. I consider not running the 2018 Iditarod, but I want to honor Alan’s memory and be strong where he couldn’t. I barely remember the race, focusing so intently on keeping the team safe mile after mile. I write a eulogy while swimming through deep snow in my snowshoes.
We take an eight-hour break in Kaltag. My leader, Blondie, doesn’t eat his first meal, and hours later, his breathing becomes labored. Blondie dies from hemorrhagic pneumonia ten hours after I leave Kaltag. The vets can’t fly him out due to the blizzard conditions. I don’t find out until I am in White Mountain, seventy-seven miles to the race finish. I ride the runners into Nome, numb and crippled by the loss of Alan and the sudden loss of my loving and fearless underdog leader.
All mushers know the deep connection found between them and their leaders. The loving dogs fill my empty heart and protect me from the raw edge of sorrow found in the indifferent solitude of the wild Arctic.
I’ve lost people I loved: Dave, Alan, Madi, Auntie Pam, Gramma. I’ve lost dogs I loved: Summit, Blondie, Flash, Rambo, Velvet, Penny, and many others as they grow old and move on to the great beyond. Each loss is as difficult as the last and tempts me to close my heart for good. Then Blondie’s puppies play with me and beg for the unconditional love of my heart, and I can’t hold back. Yes, to love is to risk. Scratch that. To love means you will feel pain. It is inevitable. Each time I face a choice to open up and love or to walk away, I always take that step toward being vulnerable. I owe it to those that came before me or that are no longer here to love and live fully (see fig. 44).
After completing the Iditarod, we leave the next day to attend Alan’s funeral. His ashes now join the graves of Dave and Madi at our camp overlooking Kobuk Lake. Amelia and I brought him home again. No words have the power to take away the pain and emptiness all people carry from the impact of loss. I share my story to empower others to search for their way to live life to the fullest despite that pain. Find the beauty. It’s epic.
Northern Lights
Kobuk Lake, Alaska | 2018
Every end is a new beginning.
—Proverb
On my final training run of the season, fifteen miles outside Kotzebue, I am stunned into silence by an aurora borealis light show. I ride alone—just me and my dogs in the expanse of frozen wilderness I’d dreamed about my entire life. Snow crystals glittering in the moonlight fall all around me, as if I were inside a giant snow globe.
“She saw God everywhere in the natural world and her love of nature came first, even before her children. She was a wild spirit, and she fretted being shackled, as she saw it, to the demands of two small children and poverty in city heat, away from her beloved wilderness.” When I was ten, I’m sure I skipped right over this passage in Arctic Daughter where Jean Aspen explains her mother’s fealty to the wilderness above all else. But when I read it decades later, the words made me cry. Putting myself in remote situations, where I too find God, where I need to be to exist, has exacted a high cost.
The trail brings me across Kobuk Lake, where Dave, Alan, and I had embarked on our first boat trip together in search of mammoth ivory; where I’d watched the sun rise and set every day from the windows of our camp high on the hill while cradling Madi in my arms, consumed with the bliss of new motherhood; where I’d taught Amelia how to drive a boat, run dogs, and drive a snow machine; where the dogs and I love to sing, loud and out of tune; where, with every love I’ve gained and lost, my heart is most at peace.
At three in the morning, an almost-full moon shines in triumph, even as a tingle of orange sunrise peeks out over the mountains to the east. Green flashes outlined in red ribbon dance in utter abandon across the deep black sky. The lights seem to be hanging so low in the atmosphere I can almost touch them. I watch in awe. I look forward to describing tonight to Amelia, who shares my wonderment at the night sky.
All my life I have chased the northern lights, which always provide the brightest illumination during the deepest, darkest night. Tonight I say a prayer of thanks for the three-minute display that ends without warning, just as it began, filling my heart with gratitude as I realize that my daughter, now a courageous, independent young woman, will one day soon be hungrily chasing down her own northern lights. Then, I continue mushing toward home.
Acknowledgments
To all those on the other side of the door:
Of course, Mom and Dad; my stepdad, John, and stepmom, Linda; J.T. Gleason; Cassie Thill; Cindy Foster; Katie Nordahl; Judith Ragir; Cheryl Knight; Autcha Kameroff and Ruth-Ann Zent; Dickie and Sandra Moto; Tracey and Chuck Schaeffer; Eric Smith; Bill and Sue Rimer; The Keith Family; all of Team Baker; John Baker; and last but not least, Amelia Keith.
Then there are those who helped turn this book from concept to reality:
Matt Crossman, whose journalistic talents first put my truth on paper; Katie Orlinsky, who can make one photo speak louder than a book; Jonathan Lyons of Curtis Brown LTD, for believing in me; Vikki Warner of Blackstone Publishing, for believing in my story; Alenka Linaschke of Blackstone Publishing, for her stunning designs; Jessica DuLong, for helping me find my voice; Michael Krohn and Peggy Hageman, for making sure that voice was grammatical;
And all the others along the way whose actions, small and large, kept me searching for the next stake.