Getting on Down that Trail, with your help

Why did I choose late January and February to leave Alaska and travel in South Africa?

I am going to miss my Seahawks play in the Super Bowl, the Fur Rendezvous Championship sprint dog races, and most of all, my favorite dog musher run the Junior Iditarod Sled Dog Race for the first time!   I would not have let my precious dog sled go live with her if she weren't my favorite.

The next great female dog musher!

Dang!!!

I've done a couple small things to help support Ashley in her dog mushing career.   Below is a letter circulating around Moose Pass and elsewhere, written by a neighbor.

Gullible verifies and approves the following message:

******************

Dear Friends Near and Far:

I would like to share a story with you about a fourteen year old teenager from Moose Pass named Ashley Guernsey. Ashley is the oldest of four children of Russell and Melissa Guernsey.

Since Ashley was six years old, she has wanted to be a dog musher. The movie "Season of the Sled Dog" was a favorite of hers when she was little. By age nine, Ashley had her own two sled dogs named Abigail and Spot. She devoted her time to training her dogs.

Dan Seavey, who ran in the first Iditarod in 1973 and who is patriarch of the Seavey mushing dynasty, introduced her to mushing by letting her run some of his dogs. At the ceremonial start of the Iditarod, he let her handle dogs and ride with the him. Dan also helped shape Ashley's love of mushing by letting her help with the Seward Mayor's Cup Race for several years. Ashley's mentor, Victor Creek musher Rick Tarpey, is one her favorite mushers. Tarpey is on a long list of  Ashley's favorite mushers, including the distinguished elder Seavey, Mitch Seavey, Rachel Scodorris, and Dee Dee Jonrowe.

Living in Moose Pass as a teenager is no easy task.  Seward Middle and High Schools are over a one hour bus ride away...twice a day!

Ashley must juggle her commute, her honor level studies, and athletics with training time. Ashley will run dogs anywhere from five to 100 miles per week. I asked Ashley what she hopes to be when she grows up. Her reply was she isn't sure what she will become once she grows up, but she knows that she will run the Iditarod.

Next month on February 22nd, Ashley will run her first Junior Iditarod, a 150 mile endurance race including a 10 hour layover. The Junior mushers are responsible for all aspect of this event, including dog care, food preparation, and outdoor skills. [WITH NO ASSISTANCE!]  You can read more about the Jr. Iditarod at http://jriditarod.biz/

Now, those who know me, know that I am not a big fan of dog mushing. My dog sport of choice is dog agility. But, that being said, I am a big fan of children setting goals and striving to achieve those goals. Ashley Guernsey is a fourteen year old girl who has set a goal and plans to achieve a dream.

I was thinking about her the other day. I know the Moose Pass Sportsmen's Club gave her a substantial donation. I also know how much dog sports cost and there are more cost to be incurred. Ashley has earned money making and selling crafts. But, I know she needs more help. I want to make donation but I wondered, "Would I look cheap if put $5, $10, or $20 in a card?" I also know we are all being "squeezed" from so many directions.

I just thought if folks knew about Ashley they would surely help. I am helping to spread the story about Ashley, her goals, and dreams. I asked her parents if I may tell everyone about Ashley and my idea. They are just overwhelmed, already, by the generosity of people. I think we can overwhelm them even more!

Please join in this fundraising event:

 NO-BAKE BAKE SALE

For Ashley Guernsey

(That's right...no baking involved)

Here's how it works. You think about what you would bake and how much it would cost. Now, ask yourself how much you would spend at that same bake sale if you attended. Well, rather than do all that work, just put that donation toward the goal of getting Ashley down the trail!  A little bit goes a long way when we all pull together like a team! (a sled dog team to be exact)

It's the No-Bake BAKE SALE for Ashley Guernsey!

Thank you for reading my letter and do please consider helping Ashley get down the trail.

No-Bake Bake sale Donations and letters of good wishes for Ashley Guernsey can be sent to:

Ashley Guernsey

41658 Seward Highway

Moose Pass, Alaska  99631

Sincerely,

Erin K. 

Moose Pass, Alaska

So, there you are.   Even if you can't afford a donation of a few bucks, send her a "Happy Trails" note of encouragement.

Thanks, Gullible 

Life, Again

Ashley on my old sled

My reaction, when I saw the photograph on Facebook, surprised me.

First, I didn’t cry.

Second, though my breath did catch momentarily, a smile spread across my heart.

And third, great joy suffused my soul.

There she was, that neighbor of mine, pursuing the same dreams I chased almost forty years ago. She was chasing them as I had, on the same stack of oak and ash that had been seemingly magically transformed by the hands of a skilled craftsman into a beautiful dog sled.

Me, long ago

Though current dog racing sleds are almost wholly composite materials, this sled is traditional. It was not built for sprint racing, though I have raced it. When the time comes, my neighbor Ashley will no doubt have a more appropriate lighter weight sled behind her team of yelping, jumping, totally excited team of huskies as she waits for the “go” signal at the starting line of the Junior Iditarod Trail race.

Heading for McCarthy with dogs and Nancy

For now, the sled will serve her well. She’s only eleven, three years too young for the Junior Iditarod, and one of her dogs can easily pull her around her yard on this sled. However, she can stop the dog, if need be, by setting the snow hook or throwing the sled on its side.

Leaving McCarthy, Kennicott Glacier in background

For now.

Lordy, it’s great to see that sled hooked to an enthusiastic dog and equally enthusiastic musher again. Much better than it being the garage ornament it’s been since my last sled dogs died of old age.

And, I’m as happy for the sled as I am for sweet Ashley.

Dogs and Jeanne at Nizina River, basking in spring sun.

Jeanne and hubby with dogs, leaving Kennicott Mine ruins

Deja Vu Day

I was taken by surprise last Sunday afternoon. A few moments of inattention and WHAM, I almost doubled over from the pain in my stomach.

It wasn’t an illness, a perforated ulcer, or anything like that. It was a memory that got me, a memory of the loneliest day of my life. That’s an odd thing to say when you consider I was heading home from my parent’s house where I’d spent the day with them and my younger siblings.

And yet the loneliness was over-whelming, a physical pain that was devouring me from the inside out, a loneliness caused by myself, by a decision I’d made. While that particular loneliness has lived with me to this day, it never again bit with the shark teeth that it did on that that Christmas Day in 1963. And yet, forty-seven years later, the shark was back in an instant.

Two tears seared my left cheek before I realized what was happening and took back control. I wasn’t going there again, yet it took a few hours of butt-kicking and determination before I righted my boat and beat back the shark.

Now, a week later, the day after Christmas, a tornado swept me up in its vortex and dumped me in Oz. Actually, it was more like three different Ozes, each one wondrously comfortable, and rather than a dead-eyed beast shredding me, I was suffused with nostalgia.

***

I was riding the rails once again, my hands grasping the curved wooden handlebar, my feet planted firmly on the runners of the classic dog sled. The temperature was zero, the perfect weather for running a dog team. Not for the human—but for the dogs.

I'd stepped on the runners to test the flexibility of the sled, and for an instant I saw before me six silver and white huskies, tongues flapping allegro to the music of sled runners crunching hard-packed snow.

I wasn’t going anywhere, actually, because the sled was on a concrete garage floor and there weren’t any huskies in sight.

It was the sled that going somewhere—to a young girl turning eleven years old who has known for several years that she was “Born to Mush,” just like the title of her home-schooling blog. A few days ago she reminded her parents that in three years she will be old enough to run the Junior Iditarod sled dog race. The parents gulped.

I gathered up all the gear I’d been reluctant to part with for the many years since my last husky died of old age. The gear had been impossible to part with. It was hard to admit that part of my life was over.

Now it seemed right. I adore that young girl and, as her Daddy reminded me, I know where the sled is going and I can always go visit it.

***

The second part of the journey to my past came because I’ve been trying to find room on my books shelves for more books. More than two hundred lineal feet of book shelves in this house are lined with books, some two deep, and yet I don’t have enough room. I started pulling the ones I would part with, and came across a guitar course for the rank beginner, complete with chord chart and two CDs.

After I returned home from delivering the sled, I got my guitar out of the corner where it’s stood untouched (except for the occasional dusting). The A string was broken. I got my sister’s guitar out of the storage closet. It’s A string was broken. In another closet I found the Ziploc bag with assorted guitar and dulcimer strings and found an A string. It has to be at least thirty years old.

I opened a cardboard box and took out the pages of instruction and music that I’d collected long ago when I took lessons from Wayne, a New Zealander who taught finger-picking for folk guitar.

It took two electronic tuners, a pitch fork and a pitch pipe before I got the darn thing in tune. The C chord is the only one I remember, and the gut strings bit deeply into fingers that have softened after too many years away from a guitar. These fingers have a lifetime of feeling in them, a lifetime of burns and cuts, of heat and freezing, of gentle and firm.

Some of the joints are swollen with arthritis. The ring finger of my right hand has a tendency to lock up, and that will be critical to whether or not I can continue with a guitar course for rank beginners.

***

An e-mail from Walter inspired my next time travel adventure. He’d been on the trip to China and Tibet that I’d made in September and October. He wrote that he’d just re-read “Seven Years in Tibet,” an account of the time Heinrich Harrer spent in Tibet during and after World War II. Harrer became a mentor to the young Dalai Lama, leaving only when Chinese troops were taking control.

I downloaded the e-version to my Kindle. A couple days later I was sorting through some video movies, intending to give some away to neighbor kids, and I came across an unopened VHS tape of the movie by the same name, starring Brad Pitt.

This evening, after the dog sled, after the folk music, I was looking through the TV schedule and found “Seven Years in Tibet” was playing on Showtime. Momentarily forgetting that I owned a copy of it, I planned to watch it on TV to refresh my memory of the story and also to gauge its location authenticity. An announcement before the movie noted that the film was shot in Argentina because of objections from the Chinese government to shooting on site in Tibet.

After the movie’s release, critics laughed at the “inaccurate landscape.”

Years passed before it became known that a camera crew had gone to Tibet “undercover,” and photographed the buildings and landscape. The landscape was accurate.

And, OMG, was it ever. Shortly after the action placed Harrer in Lhasa, Tibet, I was there, too. The costumes, the Potola Palace, the harnesses on the ponies, the decorations on the yaks, the brooms, the fur hats, the prayer wheels and white prayer shawls—it was all there, even the yellow headdresses of the Yellow Hat sect of Tibetan monks that served the Dalai Lama.

There I was again in the land I’d dreamed of visiting since I was a small child, and now I know I can go back anytime by simply slipping a VHS tape into a small machine and pushing a button.