by John Smelcer
There was a saying in mushing that said a lot about life in general: “When you’re not the lead dog, the scenery never changes.”
And while the respite of the village’s hospitality was welcome, the trail beckoned. After several hours of deep sleep in her sleeping bag on the gym floor, Denny heard the trail’s call and abruptly responded with thirty-two paws on snow.
Her mind wandered a great deal while she was out on the trail. While the race itself required a Herculean effort—more than a thousand torturous miles through one of the most remote and inhospitable landscapes on earth—the pace wasn’t exactly blinding. Dogs pulling a sled heavy with gear, food, and musher don’t move all that fast. The miles fall slowly but steady behind the sled. For the most part, the lead dog—or in this case the lead wolf—can follow the trail easily without much direction, awaiting a command only when a trail forks or the driver wants to stop to rest.
While there’s little time for sleep on the trail, there’s plenty of time for daydreaming and reflection.
During the monotonous hours, often as many as eighteen to twenty each day, Denny thought about many things: about school, about her mother, even about her invisible father. Mostly, she thought about her grandfather. Her mind kept returning to The Old Man and the Sea. While at first she had imagined her grandfather as Santiago, the tenacious old man fighting against all odds to wrestle the giant marlin from the sea, she now began to see herself in the role of a determined young woman pitting her strength and courage against Nature. As in the book, the natural world hurled itself against her and her team as they ascended mountain passes assailed by snow storms and by days and nights as cold as 30 degrees below zero. The wintry world tried to smother under snow and ice her dreams of winning, but, like Santiago, Denny persisted, driven by her pride—or fear. She wondered if the old man in the story was driven to challenge the sea by an enormous pride or by fear—the fear that he really was old and weak and useless.
If that were the case, she thought, the story wasn’t about Man against Nature at all, but about Man against Himself.
In moments of such genuine self-reflection, Denny came to understand that a hero is someone who is also afraid but, unlike other people, hangs on for one more minute.
During her ruminations, Denny noted that she hadn’t seen Jasper Stark even once. Because he started the race so much earlier than she did in the line-up, he was always leaving a village or checkpoint by the time she arrived hours later. But she had heard about his problems and his two dropped dogs. Judging on how many teams she had already passed, she knew he couldn’t be too far ahead.
With that thought utmost in her mind, Denny put the pedal to the metal, as they say. On one clear night, she passed three teams ahead of her camped at the bottom of a steep mountain valley, confident that she could tackle the treacherous pass in the dark. If successful, her calculated move would push her into the top five. Sometime in the middle of the night, she was safely descending the other side of the pass.
From afar, the little light from her headlamp as she came down through the darkness must have looked like a falling star.
17
Hw’eł kuzyaa
The Storm Passes
Denny’s gambit paid off. For the next three days her team stayed in the top five. Increasingly, media attention was focusing on Denny, who was becoming the Cinderella of one of the world’s greatest races. If she won, said the stories in the newspapers and on television, she would make history as the youngest person ever to win the toughest race in the world. As more than one reporter put it, she was becoming “The Little Engine That Could.” Back home, reporters swamped the village trying to get the scoop on her backstory. At the airstrip outside of the village, airplanes were coming and going almost hourly, bringing in reporters and magazine photographers from around the world.
Pictures of Denny’s family’s modest cabin with the dog houses out front appeared worldwide accompanied by stories likening her humble origins to the way Elvis grew up in a little shack of a house. By that time, the school’s website was receiving hundreds of thousands of hits each day. The village tribal organization got the idea that with so much traffic, people should post advertisements of their handmade Native crafts.
Business was good.
People around the world ordered hand-sewn, beaded moccasins and gloves, fur-trimmed mukluks, parkas, objects carved from ivory or caribou bone, beaded necklaces, and carved dancing masks. Someone even got the bright idea to make T-shirts that read “Village Girls Rule!” and “Taz the Spaz!” He sold over a hundred in the first day alone. Everyone worked overtime to meet demand, realizing that when the race was over, so too would be the intense interest. Denny’s mother and grandmother went into high gear, sewing and beading twelve hours a day. The school even created a scholarship page and received thousands of dollars in donations.
Silas latched onto the idea of charging visitors for rides to and from the airstrip, which was almost a mile away from the village. He borrowed Denny’s mother’s truck and paid her a percentage of the take. With no other means of transportation available, Silas’s pockets soon bulged with cash. Without a single restaurant or café in the community to accommodate the visitors, some enterprising villagers set up hot coffee and sandwich stands, the way children in the lower states set up roadside lemonade stands on hot summer days.
Out on the trail, the weather worsened dramatically. With less than forty miles before Denny’s team would emerge from the forest to cross a stretch of the frozen Bering Sea, a storm blew in across the icy Straits from Siberia. The powerful winds broke tree limbs and snapped trees in half, some of which fell across the trail, blocking passage. It got so bad that half the teams in the race stopped dead in their tracks, found whatever shelter they could find from the blast, and waited it out, in spite of the prospect of losing precious hours of time. The other half pressed on into the belly of the storm, Denny among them. The swirling snow, which seemed to blow in from every direction, even upward as if the earth itself was in a fury, was so blinding that Denny could barely see Taz at the front of the line.
But Denny pushed on through the whiteout until she came to what was clearly a fork in the trail. Both paths lay equal before her, the wind and snow having erased any evidence of other teams that had gone before her and the markers knocked over or buried. She stood in front of Taz looking down both trails trying to decide which one to take, wondering what differing fate each held for her. The scene reminded her of one of her favorite poems.
“Right or left?” she asked the wolf, who looked up at her, squinting and blinking against the snow bullets blasting his eyes and sticking to his eyelashes.
Finally, she made her decision to go left.
As Denny mushed the team toward the left, she had no idea that three of the four teams ahead of her had chosen the righthand fork, the wrong direction. It would be hours before they realized the trail dead-ended at a lake nestled in a steep valley. It would take an equal number of hours to backtrack to the fork. Jasper Stark, in the lead, had chosen rightly because, when he arrived at the junction, the markers were still visible. But by the time the second-place team arrived at the same fork, everything was obscured. Only by chance, or by some innate sense, did Denny choose rightly the trail to the left.
Because the drifting snow was so deep and the howling wind so ferocious, the going was slow. Taz could barely distinguish the trail ahead from the surrounding woods. Open fields were the worst. With the trail buried under a blanket of undisturbed white, the wind sliding ribbons of snow snakelike across the surface, not even the wolf could decide where the trail picked up on the other side. Several times the team stopped while Denny trudged along the edge of a field looking for the trail. At one point she stopped for half an hour to let the dogs rest, giving each a large piece of dried salmon. The wind was too strong to build a fire to heat water for a proper meal.
Sometimes a
half hour break is just enough.
While she rested, Denny wondered if she had, perhaps, taken the wrong trail. She had seen no signs of the teams before her. But then she knew the drifting snow and the grinding wind would have eroded all evidence of their passing within minutes. She also knew that there were dozens of teams hot on her trail. It was only logical that some of them would choose the left trail at the fork.
Worried that other racers might pass her while she was resting, Denny examined each dog’s paw for injury before getting back to work. She knew that an injured paw could spell the end of a dog’s ability to stay in the race. Each dog had lost one or two of its booties. Taz had lost all four. Thrown booties are commonly found along dog-sledding trails. Like all mushers, Denny had a bag full of extras. As she put them on, making sure they were snug, she patted each dog on the head.
“Good job,” she said.
She had a longer conversation with Taz, leaning close to tell him how proud she was of him.
“We wouldn’t be here without you. You’re so strong and so smart. If we win, it will be because of you. I couldn’t have asked for a better leader. Thank you,” she said above the din of the howling wind, pressing her face against his.
Taz’s eyes were ablaze and never veered toward the surrounding wilderness from which he came into Denny’s life. He snapped his jaws several times, his way of showing excitement, an eagerness to continue what must have seemed to him a curious but necessary goal.
Denny shuffled to the back of the sled, took her place on the small platform and, with one hand gripping the handle, deftly pulled the snow hook and shouted, “Let’s go!”
Every furry member of the team strained against his harness, and with a jolt the sled with its exhausted driver once again set off down the trail.
Denny was too tired to pedal. Instead, she leaned against the handle trying to stay awake.
A little over an hour later, Denny came on a dreadful scene. As she broke through the forest into a clearing along a small river, she saw that Jasper Stark and his entire team had broken through the ice. Man, sled, and every dog had plunged into the icy water. The sled with its heavy load had sunk straight to the bottom, and even though the river wasn’t very deep, the two dogs closest to the sled were dragged to the bottom, where they drowned. The rest of the dogs, fourteen in all since two of Jasper’s dogs had been dropped earlier, were struggling to stay above water, climbing over one another pell-mell in their frantic attempt to escape the icy clutch of the river. Jasper was desperately trying to crawl out onto the unbroken ice, but each time he managed to haul himself partially out of the water, the thin ice broke beneath him. When he reemerged, his dogs would nearly drown him as they tried to climb onto his head. Denny had no idea how long they had been in the water, but she could see they were all exhausted.
Here was her chance to win the race. With Jasper preoccupied as he was, Denny could take the lead and cross the finish line sometime around midnight. She would take home the purse of nearly $100,000 and the brand-new diesel pickup truck, which she could keep or sell. She would make history as the youngest person ever to win the race—and a girl at that.
But Denny batted the thought from her mind as if it were a bothersome mosquito. She knew that only some teams would take the correct trail at the fork, lessening the chances of anyone else finding him. It could be hours before help arrived to pull them from the frigid water. Jasper and his remaining dogs had only minutes. If she left them, the river would swallow them up, purely and simply.
Remembering her grandfather’s lessons, especially the story about the man who helped the little mouse, Denny stopped to help. She brought her team as close to the hole in the ice as she thought was safe and turned them around so that the dogs were facing away. Then she quickly tied a rope to the platform where she stood at the back, careful to secure it to the strongest part.
“Stay!” she shouted at Taz.
With her team in place, Denny crawled out toward Jasper with the other end of the rope in her hand. When she was as close as she dared be, she tossed the coiled end of the rope across the ice to Jasper, who managed to lay a soggy glove on the end, fumbling in his effort to grasp it. Shouting encouragement, Denny told him to tie the rope to his team.
“I can’t,” he said, his teeth chattering. “I can’t move my fingers.”
Denny slid closer to the edge of the hole, struggling to reach the rope’s end. She heard the sound of the ice cracking beneath her a second before the shock of the cold water made her scream beneath the river’s surface. When she emerged, she couldn’t breathe and thought she was going to drown. When she finally managed a gasp and filled her lungs with air, she concentrated on trying not to panic. She pulled off her gloves using her teeth, found the end of the rope, and managed to tie a good, strong knot to the main line just where the lead dog was hooked. Then she turned toward her waiting team.
“Go!” she shouted, while she still could control her breathing.
Taz turned around and looked at her. Then he did as he had been taught. All eight members of Denny’s team pulled and pulled against the dead weight. Little by little, dog by dog, they pulled Jasper’s team from the water, but the two dead dogs and the dead weight of the sled were like an anchor catching on the lip of the ice, preventing further rescue. Denny saw that there was no way to save Jasper’s team with the sled still attached. With the risk of everyone perishing, she pulled out her pocketknife and spoke to Jasper, who was barely able to keep his head above water.
“I have to cut the sled free or else we’re all going to die.”
Jasper nodded that he understood.
“Here, wrap your arm around the line here and hold on with all your strength,” she said, helping him to hold the main line in the crook of his arm. “When I cut this, my dogs are going to pull you out. Don’t let go.”
With one hand firmly gripping the line, Denny sawed at the thick mainline with the other. Suddenly, her blade cut through.
“Taz! Go!” she shouted, choking on water. “Go!”
Free of the weight of the sled and with Jasper’s team safely out of the water and on their feet, Denny and Jasper were pulled from the water. Taz and the other dogs kept pulling until they had dragged them clear of the river, up the bank and into the trees.
“Whoa! Whoa!” Denny shouted.
Although free of the icy water, Denny knew that they were still in danger of freezing to death.
“First things first,” she said to Jasper, who was too cold and too exhausted to help. “I’ve got to tie off the teams so they don’t run away and then build a fire to warm us up.”
Denny always kept a butane lighter in a sealed plastic baggie, something she had learned from her grandfather. She remembered his exact words as they sat around a campfire. “The ability to make a fire in an emergency can sometimes be the difference between life and death. You must always be prepared for the worst.”
While Jasper sat against the trunk of a tree shivering uncontrollably, Denny gathered up firewood, small pieces at first. She peeled off some small curly bark from a nearby birch tree and built a small pile of tinder. On top of the white, paper-thin birch bark, she gently piled thin pieces of dry limbs she broke off from underneath a scraggily spruce tree. With her hand shaking, she tried to ignite the lighter. The wind blew the flame away as soon as it appeared. She tried over and over, cupping a hand around the lighter to shield it from the wind. Finally, the wind died down for just a moment, and she was able to hold the yellow flame against the tender pile, which ignited quickly. For several minutes she knelt beside the small fire, feeding it larger and larger pieces of wood with her trembling hands, nurturing it as if it were a living thing.
Finally, the fire was roaring.
“It’s going pretty good now,” she proudly announced to Jasper.
But when she looked up, Jasper was unconscious with his head slumped
on his chest. Denny’s own breath stopped for a moment. She thought he was dead. She checked his breathing.
His pulse was faint, but he was still alive.
She had to work fast if she was going to save him. She tossed another handful of sticks on the growing fire and scrambled over to her sled. While Jasper’s sled with all its survival gear lay at the bottom of the river, hers was safe and dry. She pulled out her sleeping bag, good to thirty below zero, and brought it close to the unconscious man. With difficulty, she removed his soaked high-tech parka and sweater, which were robbing his body of all its warmth. She also pulled off his wet boots and soggy socks and slipped on his feet a pair of her thick and itchy wool socks. With most of Jasper’s wet clothes removed, Denny wrapped the sleeping bag around him as best she could, and then she got out of her own wet clothes.
She had to save herself if she was going to save anyone else.
With her dry clothes on, Denny helped the dogs, building several large fires near where they were tied up and heating water for their supper. She fed all twenty-two dogs a hot meal to warm their bellies and to give them energy to warm themselves from the inside out. While she worked, the storm died down. All the while, she kept an eye on the main fire, adding to it from time to time, and checking on the wet clothes hanging on sticks close to the fire to dry out. Her grandfather’s red flannel shirt almost caught fire. When she felt the sleeping bag cloaked around Jasper’s sleeping body, it was toasty hot.
Once the dogs were fed and settled, their fires stoked, Denny collapsed by the main fire to gather her strength. Jasper opened his eyes, looking around him, perplexed.
