The moment had come, which was good, because the thermometer by the window of the rustic cabin insisted it was 10 degrees below zero here in this wilderness, wind was blowing lake-effect snow in my face, I was not a winter person, the dogs seemed willing to do this thing, so was I, and standing around wasn’t doing any of us any good.
I stepped onto the runners behind the sled, felt with my boot for the brake, firmed my grip on the handlebar (or whatever it’s called) and quietly said to Andy, my guide, “OK, I’m ready.”
Andy, by my side, did not yell “Mush!” Only in the movies do mushers yell “Mush!”
He yelled, “C’mon, Timmy–let’s go! Let’s go! Let’s go!”
Timmy, energized, took off with a surge, and so did the four dogs behind him, and so did the sled, and so did I. For about 25 yards.
Then Timmy had to go.
Andy, trotting alongside in the deep snow, yelled again.
“On by! On by!”
Timmy cut off the flow and, with clearly less energy, got the team and sled moving again.
“Let’s go! Let’s go!” yelled Andy. We went–another 25 yards. Then Thunder had to go.
“On by! On by!” yelled Andy. But Thunder, heeding what to him was a more urgent command, was not about to move on by. Not yet. Timmy, not in a mood to press the issue, sat down.
Timmy, the leader, had lost interest. The entire team had lost interest. Timmy looked back at us, I looked at Andy, and Andy’s frost-trimmed eyes communicated the sense that this ride was doomed to dudness.
What was supposed to be a 2-mile ride on a dog sled wound up shorter than a Brett Favre pass.
So went my first attempt at dog sledding.
There would be another.
– – –
It had been a lean season for dog sledding in Bayfield. Snow, which normally buries Wisconsin’s northernmost county by Christmas time, had come this winter in minor teases, much of it melting quickly and leaving mere patches of tired white on bare ground. A week into January, Mt. Ashwabay — the county’s only downhill ski hill — had yet to open. Cross-country skis rested unused in garage racks next to useless snowmobiles.
“When you’re geared to winter and it doesn’t happen,” said Jack from behind the bar at the Cantina del Norte in neighboring Washburn, “there’s nothing to do.”
Gas station signs along Wisconsin Highway 13 urged that residents “Pray for snow.” Begged one: “Will someone please press the snow button?”
Evidently, someone did. By the time I reached Minocqua on January’s second Friday morning, it was snowing with a passion. By Ashland, 30 miles south of Bayfield, it was ankle deep. My car fishtailed through Washburn.
And when eight of us — three guides from outfitter Trek & Trail and five civilians — vanned north through Friday evening’s darkness from Bayfield toward our base camp on the Red Cliff Indian Reservation, the road was a matter of faith.
John, our driver and the No. 1 guide in this little adventure, also does summertime kayak trips for Trek & Trail into the Apostle Islands, off Bayfield in Lake Superior. John, 25, likes this cold-weather stuff better, which tells you all you need to know about John.
“I like the snow,” said John. “I like the lack of bugs.”
As John leaned over the wheel and pretended to see the road among the streaks of snow, he peppered us with information and the occasional question.
“Anybody,” he asked, “know any commands you use with dogs?”
It was a trick question. Too obvious. No one bit. John continued as if someone had.
“Most people don’t use the term `mush’ to get their dogs running,” said John. “Generally, they say `Let’s go!’ or `Hike.’ “
He gave us more. “Gee” means “turn right.” “Haw” means “turn left.” He never explained why we don’t just yell “right” or “left,” but then again, no one asked.
To get them to stop, it’s a drawn-out “Whoooaaaahhh,” accompanied by a little pressure on the brake. A big “Eeeeaasyyyy” plus some brakeage works too. Inflection is important, John said, but it isn’t everything.
“Well-trained dogs know the words,” he said.
The nervous drive to the trailhead took less than an hour. There we were met by a second guide named Andy, a sled and a team of dogs. Together, through the snow, we would haul our gear and ourselves about a mile to our home for the next two nights, a cabin that the company literature promised would be “rustic.”
To most of us, “rustic” means there’s a dead fish mounted on the wall behind the wet bar.
This cabin was the purist’s “rustic”: Logs, one room, no water, no electricity. Bunk beds. Wood-burning stove. An outhouse. No stove in the outhouse.
Marvin was already in the rustic cabin. On his face was a hint of smile. A Chippewa born in Chicago but raised on the reservation not far from our camp, Marvin — hired by Trek & Trail in part to remind us where we were — was clearly enjoying our reactions as we walked in and looked around, which didn’t take long.
“You hear `rustic cabin’ — there’s probably a hundred variations of `rustic cabin,’ ” said Marvin. He was not offering an apology, nor was one required. The cabin, built 25 years earlier by his tribesmen, quickly warmed us, we warmed to the cabin, and Marvin added to the coziness with stories of his people and culture. The best of the stories was about dogs and sniffing. You won’t read it here.
Oldest of our group was Bob, 58, a veterinarian (“mostly cows and horses”) from near the Twin Cities, an avid cross-country skier and jogger. Youngest was Claudia, 19, a local student who does some work for Trek & Trail and wanted to try this. Andy was 20. Scott, 30, the other guide, wasn’t exactly on duty but there because he wanted to be. Jill, 30, a consultant, and her boyfriend Todd, 31, a construction worker, also were from the Twin Cities and had a passion for scuba. I’m 51 and believe the best place for ice is inside a vodka martini.
Outside, the snow that had eluded the area continued to fall. Inside, a cheese and crackers snack was followed by more prepping from our guides. The most memorable line was John’s:
“Tomorrow morning, we’ll get up and see if we can open the door to the cabin.”
Sleep came easily.
Saturday morning, we got up and opened the door of the cabin. It wasn’t Kansas anymore. Everything was white and clean and fresh. It was absolutely magnificent.
It also was absolutely freezing. Which brings us inevitably to this: An outhouse in any situation can be daunting to those unaccustomed to the things. An outhouse under these conditions is beyond daunt.
But you deal with it.
Our breakfast was juice, pancakes and coffee. The dogs’ breakfast was ground something, frozen, broken up with an ax and softened by hot water. John, Scott and Andy did the dog-feeding, assisted by Bob and Todd. The rest of us left the cabin’s warmth just long enough to want to get back into the cabin’s warmth.
There were 13 dogs in all. Oldest was Timmy, 7. Puppies Dotty, Lightning, Bandit and Scout were born April 8. The others, of various ages, were Spense, Deuce, Yancy, Kenna, Flint, Fog, Thunder and Winnie.
All were huggable.
Seven had been surgically debarked.
According to Scott, 13 barking dogs in a dog-yard across the street from the Bayfield city limits was an invitation to being forced out of business by someone, even if actual jurisdiction was fuzzy.
“Unless the whole yard is pretty much barking incessantly all the time all day, they can’t do much about it,” Scott said. “At the same time, we want to keep good relations with the town.”
The seven worst had their vocal chords removed. They would bark, but nothing would come out. The guides compared it to neutering. Bob, the vet, suggested the dogs likely weren’t aware of what they were missing and it probably didn’t bother them.
It bothered me.
Later, we talked about the notion of abuse as it applied to dogs being trained to pull sleds.
“Anyone who thinks this is abuse for the dogs doesn’t know what they are talking about,” said John. “These dogs live to run. They don’t want to sit up and roll over and beg. They want to run.”
(From Jim Ryder, who also runs dog sled trips in the Bayfield area, on those who consider mushing abusive: “I say this to them: If they own a dog, do they take their dog for a walk on a leash? If you take your dog for a walk and he’s tugging you right down, its because he loves it. These dogs love to pull. That’s all it is. I’m walking my dogs.”)
The guides decided to spread the dogs among three sleds in teams of four, four and five. After some brief instruction, we all shared in slipping the dogs into their harnesses and connecting them to the appropriate spots on the sleds.
The trail was a 2-mile loop that cut through the forest to the main road, then back into the forest to a clearing near the cabin.
The guides were right: Judging from the dogs’ body language, they loved to run. I was content to watch and take pictures and talk. The people, judging from their body language, loved it too.
Jill found words.
“At first,” she said, “it was a helluva lot of work. But once I got a clue what I was doing, it felt . . . intimate.”
Intimate?
“Because the dogs did everything you wanted to do — something like a friend or a spouse would do. And when we got to a downhill, it was like skiing real fast.”
Did they respond to your commands?
“We only turned left,” she said. “So I could only `haw.’ “
Everyone had taken two loops when I decided it was time to stop observing and become a participant.
The dogs, it turned out, had other ideas. I had been warned.
“If it’s too much, they stop,” John had said. “They just lay down and that’s it. You’re not going to beat ’em into running.”
So we unhitched the dogs, ate some lunch (meat pasties, warmed on the wood-burning stove), then all hiked — Jill and I on snowshoes, the rest in insulated boots — a mile through the still-falling snow and frozen magnificence to a spot near Point Detour on Lake Superior, Wisconsin’s northernmost chunk of mainland.
The mid-afternoon temperature, according to the thermometer by the window of the rustic cabin, had skyrocketed to minus-5. It didn’t seem cold at all. It seemed instead a privilege to be out there in this, amid the lacework of tree and snow, along a shore with a pristine beauty so seldom seen and so rarely appreciated.
But daylight is too short in early January, and back by the cabin, the dogs would surely be refreshed.
I wanted to experience the intimacy of mushing.
– – –
Timmy did not slip easily into harness. When Scott tried to lead him to the sled, the dog curled up in resistance.
“Maybe he’s hurt,” I said. Scott checked his paws. There was no tenderness. Scott persisted. Timmy was hooked to the lead position on my sled, then sat in the snow and waited.
Lightning and Thunder were paired next. Then Kenna and Scout. Then Duke and Yancy.
Scott pulled Timmy and the rest of the team and sled into position at the start of the trail. Timmy continued to appear disinterested. Thunder, on the other hand, appeared unusually interested in Kenna, who was behind him and out of reach of all but Scout, who mounted an attack that confirmed a suspicion: Kenna was in heat.
So Kenna was given the afternoon off. Thunder now faced front. Duke and Yancy just waited for the word.
It came from John. He stood on the left runner. I was on the right.
“Timmy — let’s go! Let’s go! Let’s go!”
Whatever had bothered Timmy before wasn’t bothering him now. We were moving. I mean moving.
The sled slowed as we hit an upgrade, and we both hopped off to reduce the drag, running alongside until the land leveled, then hopping back on.
“Get ready to `haw,’ ” said John. Ahead, the bend in the trail revealed itself, and at just the proper moment —
“Haw!” And they hawed. And it was good.
Another uphill, another hop off, and then back on again. I was gasping.
“If they’re doing the work, why am I exhausted?” I squealed to John as we both hung on.
“There are no free rides,” said John. “You work harder than you think.”
Then came the downhill. My boot rested easily on the brake to keep the sled from overtaking Duke and Yancy, but there was really no chance of that. They were flying, and so were we. My chin, left uncovered, was frozen. I didn’t care. Another turn.
“Haw!” I shouted. They hawed again.
Ahead, I spotted Bob at the clearing and knew what it meant.
“Timmy — whoooaaaahhh,” I sang. Timmy knew what that meant.
I set the break, left the sled and gave Timmy a brisk rub. Timmy looked ready for another run. I was finished. The rustic cabin beckoned.
But first, in the fading light, I looked around. Winter never seemed so beautiful. And I never loved dogs more.
And suddenly it was really, really cold.
DETAILS ON MUSHING
Greg Sweval and his crew at Trek & Trail offer one-, two- and three-day dog sledding experiences from Bayfield, Wis., ranging from $89 to $425 per person. (In summer, they specialize in kayak trips.) Overnight accommodations are in cabins, tents or improvised shelters, depending on conditions and the will of the group. For information, call 800-354-8735 (www.trek-trail.com on the Web).
Jim Ryder, who sells real estate when he isn’t behind a dog sled, offers one-day and longer trips from LaPointe, Wis., on Madeline Island (in the Apostles, near Bayfield). His prices start at $100 per person or $150 per couple, with longer trips by arrangement. Same deal on accommodations. Call 715-747-2000.
Alaska-based Mushing magazine lists providers of dog sled trips in eight states (including Wisconsin, Michigan and Minnesota), Canada and Greenland on its Web site: www.mushing.com. Or call 907-479-0454.
