Voices from the Flats – Iditarod and Re-Entry
RE-ENTRY
By LoveMyDogs
Dedicated to all of my friends in the race but especially Colleen…
You are nearing Nome, running on the beach, straightening your racing bib that you picked up in Safety so you don’t look quite such a mess for the cameras as you feel. You find yourself crying and thanking your dogs over and over. You get off the sled and give them each a snack and a hug. You can’t believe you are almost finished with this thing and know you couldn’t have done it without them. You love them to the depths of infinity and you are so proud of them.
You approach the finish line. Everything is a blur. There is a sense of relief, tinged with regret that you cannot just keep going. You know that you will soon be enfolded in the arms and congratulations of the people you love. You can take your first shower in days, eat hot food, sleep in a bed. But it is the dogs, the dogs that you are bound to now and your loved ones, who rush you off to all of the above mentioned amenities, do not quite understand where you are mentally and emotionally right now. Physically you limp off the runners, hunched forward, arms bent in by your sides and hands cramped in front of you-looking for all the world like some kind of giant squid- and accept their hugs.
People, relationships, work, the human world makes no sense. For 9-12 days you have lived with your dogs and the wild world. None of the rest of this makes sense and it is, at times, an unwelcome incursion on your sense of what you have experienced out there. You have a far-off look in your eyes and trouble connecting with others. You want silence. You want peace. You want time to rest and reconnect. You don’t want to come back from the meditation, the pain, the highs and the lows and the beauty that you have just endured. Everything around you seems trivial. Sometimes you bark or snarl at the people you love. You talk and tell trail stories but you don’t want to talk, because how can you ever describe it?
You are glad to stop but you want to go on…you can’t ever give this crazy thing up because, as Gary Paulsen says, “How could it be to live without the dogs?”
Oh, gosh. I see now. I really do. Thank you again.
You know what? I have followed this. I have read the web sites. I have read posts here. I have read your words, and I have learned.
“…and your loved ones, who rush you off to all of the above mentioned amenities, do not quite understand where you are mentally and emotionally right now.”
Just beautiful.
thanks for making it real
It’s all about love.
The world could have changed, and the mushers wouldn’t know for days. Nor care much!
How could you not just pile into a soft bed somewhere (not too warm, you aren’t used to it!) and invite the whole team up for a well deserved, long dreamed of, group nap?
AKM, you brought another great writer out of the woods, or kennel, or wherever! I’m enjoying lovemydogs’ posts and comments more than anything else right now. I’m not even listening to the news during the race – seems like i want to experience the tiny bit of “the world could have changed” myself, and dedicate some quiet time during each day to the teams on the trail.
Thank you, lovemydogs. I think I understand I bit better now.
“a bit”
Well put, Love My Dogs.
A little life that means so much a puppy dog.
#4 Martha UYS: I am sure you captured it all… all the way around.
#5&6 the problem child: You said it for me in more ways than one.
LoveMyDogs: You are a poet who captures the moment…
Pease give my cyber love, hugs and fluffles to the furry persons… and all of you who love them…
Another Alaska treasure. I hope Lovemydogs keeps telling her stories and those of her loved ones. They give us a glimpse into a world we are not privileged to experience.
I will never race..but have lived with Dog..forever. .and this IS..what it is like..not just the race..but moving forward..into each day..with the ..’wolf children’..at our hips. Thank you for helping so many people to understand what breathing, leaning..are like when your animals are there..translating realworld life…into the humans …plastic-shadow world.
Colleen should be finished about now. I am so proud of her!!! and her dogs (rescues that they are)!!! To put it in perspective, I believe that the first time Lance ran the Iditarod he came in 35th.
They haven’t updated the site yet but by my calculations she should either be there or almost there.
Hurray Colleen! Hurray Penny and Team!
can’t wait to hear all about it
If you asked her right now, I would bet that she would say “Well, it was challenging”. Ever the mistress of understatement.
ACK! They are so slow to update things….drives me NUTS.
Lovemydogs your words touched my heart and soul. Please keep writing. Just Beautiful !
Thanks everybody. Right now I am screaming at the Iditarod website on my computer screen, “COME ON, come on, come on” They haven’t updated the standings for 41 darn minutes!!! Come on people, some of us can’t get on with things until we know where our people are. ARGHHHHHHHHH.
Oh no, I think I just channeled Joseph. Heh
I’m annoyed too; shouldn’t she be in by now? I notice that other than “our” Scotsman who is still running with all 16 dogs, Colleen has the highest number left of her start team. To reach the end with 14 is awesome! Only one other musher finished with 13 and one still on the trail has 13. Everyone else has 12 or fewer.
OK, from the Iditarod’s main page, it’s clear that she’s in, as she’s not listed as still on the trail. However, if you click on the link to get the full standings, that page hasn’t been updated to show that she’s made it in. URGH!
Lovemydogs, you knocked it out of the park again. Thank you for bringing the beauty and magic alive. And all of the info. Wow. Just wow!
You are so right, we are bound to our dogs and they are our loved ones. My girl and I will soon be spending time in the whelping box. I look forward to the mentally and emotionally exhausting time that is ever so sweet and further bonds us to each other. Ahhh, puppy breath!
Colleen is in Nome!!! Hurray!!! She got in at 14:56. It took them until now to tell me this…..Oh well. HURRAY anyway! They are all safe now.
Well, if you look at her musher page, it does show that she made it in at 2:56:10 pm today!
http://www.iditarod.com/race/race/musher/racemusher_356.html
Congrats to all and thank you, Colleen!
That was extraordinary.
Quyana, thanks for sharing it that way.
Yeah Colleen, Penny, and Team – good job. You made it. That’s huge!
*in tears*
Lovemydogs -
I think you misunderstood the import of my little poetic venture on the Iditarod thread. It is not I, but the dogma of religions that proclaims animals have no souls.
Lest you assume wrongly, I am quite accustomed to living with many dogs although admittedly mine are not sled dogs, but working dogs in another sense. Unfortunately my profession requires me to spend long periods of time away from them, but I am assured of their welfare because their caretaker is the woman whom I have lived with for the past 35 years. She loves them as much as I and as much as she loves me, and vice versa.
It is true, I personally do not invest much credibility in the idea of souls, whether for dogs or us, or snails, or bacteria. What I try to venerate and respect and preserve and enhance, is life.
It is not my intent here to start an argument, you may have your view and I may have mine. I just wanted to correct the impression that you seemed to derive that I had some condescending attitude towards other life forms. On the contrary I esteem them mostly, higher than myself.
What great imagery. I can imagine coming in, the cheers and loved ones running forward, but, still, they’re somehow transparent, out of focus. The noise of the sled runners and the backs of the dogs are still what you would see and hear.
Dogs are smart. They pick to do for their “careers” what they love. Many people could learn a lesson from that. It’s not the money or comforts that are most important, but doing what you love. They’re only unhappy if circumstances keep them from what they consider their true profession!
The “wild world.” What a perfect term. That’s what it is.
Love ya, LMD!
Hey — have you ever written for Mushing magazine? Or, as I think MUYS said, considered something even bigger?
From our house, big huge HOWLS (well, the best they can do) for the **RESCUE DOGS** !!!!!!
@28 Krubozumo Nyankoye:
Can’t speak for LoveMyDogs, of course, but I think I understand your point of view. We live on a big planet, with many age-old traditions, customs and knowledge. We learn to live together. I’m glad you wrote.
@28 Krubozumo Nyankoye:
I didn’t mean to come across as harsh. I just get mad when people say that dogs don’t have souls. It’s that imposing religion thing…and…. I am really tired. So, I hope that you weren’t offended and I certainly understand your point of view.
On a “higher” note, I just ran into Lance’s daughter at the post office and she said that he is in High Times magazine. My hubby says “he’s rollin’ now”. Cracked me up.
@28 And I liked your poem-other than the soul part.
Yes, I agree YBG! Lots of howls for Colleen and team! My neighbors are used to it – broke ‘em all in a long time ago. Now one of my mutts is a coonhound, and the little bugger is as loud or louder than howling sled dogs. He says if he were bigger, he’d pull, too!
@34 MUYS:
Aww, just give him a little plastic sled and he’ll have a great time. Ours think it’s great. (Can just imagine what’s going on their heads … Hey, we’re pulling just like those sled dogs … )
@32 LMD:
“he’s rollin’ now”
Good for him! So well deserved, especially after those new rules.
KTUU tv ran a story about March 1st about a little fellow, Jacob Takak of Shaktoolik, Alaska. He is four and has muscular dystrophy. Then he was diagnosed with Acute Myeloid leukemia. He went to Seattle for treatment. He returned and requested one ‘last’Christmas celebration in Shaktoolik with family. The Make A Wish Foundation went one better and made it village wide with appearance by Santa in February. This valiant little guy touched students/folks in my village and we gave the Iditarod checkoint a handmade card, Flat Santa and Jeff Brown’s Flat Stanley books. We asked for a few mushers to autograph it and send this four year old their best wishes.
Roughly 50 (Fifty) racers signed it and an Iditarod judge, Kevin, made Jacob’s story known to each in a sensitive manner. This packet with stamps was put on the sled of racer/big hearted teacher Trent Herbst. He is carrying it on the traditional village to village route of travel-the Yukon River from Ruby to Shaktoolik and bringing this dog driven mail to the Iditarod checkpoint. Athabascans are reachng out to their Eskimo neighbors and this little one that needs the example of individuals and dogs who survive many challenges despite the odds. Pray for Jacob. Kudos to Iditarod for cooperating with this simple gesture among villages which emulates the origins of the serum run to Nome.
(((Jacob))) and dogspeed for Flat Santa.
hip hip hurrah for our mystical, magical LOVE MY DOGS !!
LMD your words touched me in many ways. thank you.
lovemydogs -
Thanks, we share a lot of emotions I am sure, you just characterize them a bit differently.
To me the most important thing is simply this, my dogs have an affection for me. That strikes me as kind of exceptional, being able to have a bond with a totally different being.
Whether it be soul or sentience I cannot say, but I can say there is devotion in both directions. I too, love my dogs.