Spring in Alaska brings long days and brilliant sunlight. It starts to feel hotter than the middle of summer. Just when you begin to hope for dry ground, the snow starts again. Warm days lead to punchy snow. Places where trails used to be packed give way showing the bottomless depth of snow you've been walking on. Max and I have been exploring on snowshoes. We look for tracks. Mostly we find raven tracks and fox tracks.
Max loves it when we fall through, despite the snowshoes.
The daylight is already overwhelming. It already seems to be light almost more than I am awake. I looked out in the middle of the night the other day and felt surprised to see the moon and stars. I am simply amazed that darkness, which has been the norm for so many months, can feel foreign so quickly.
We have also had the chance to enjoy the last of the snow on snowmobile. Frozen ground smoothed by snow allows people to travel through parts of Alaska that are inaccessible in the summer. Max enjoyed leading the way both on snowmobile and on foot.
Spring for the dogs is downtime. We go through a period where the trails are too soft, broken, and muddy for sleds or wheels. Instead the dogs lounge in the sun as we rake up the straw that has insulated their houses all winter. We dig out their water buckets, which can now finally stay unfrozen for at least part of the day. We scramble through the squishy snow as we wait for the ground to return.
The puppies from last summer are all running well in harness. I am looking forward to watching them learn turning commands as we wind different ways through the trails and neighborhood over the summer.
Spring is also a time that we begin to think about dogs who are ready to retire from racing. This is often one of the hardest decisions. Having traveled so many places with them, endured challenges and successes together it is hard to imagine a day without them. However, it is also unfair for them to be on the sidelines while younger dogs take their place, instead of becoming the main focus of a family or small kennel.
We have decided that both Clifford and Twain are ready for this new adventure. Both are Iditarod veterans, dogs who have been in our family since 2007. I will miss Twain’s high-pitched bark, his drive and his soft ears. I will miss Clifford’s strength, his desire for attention and his wish to see what is around the next corner. But I know we will find someone out there who will loves both these and other things about them as much as we do.
Max and I traveled to Fairbanks, yet again for dog food, supplies, and groceries. I feel like I keep telling you about these supply runs, but it does feel like gathering supplies, preparing meals, and cleaning up afterward, is a big part of my time. I am sure many of you feel this way as well.
Yesterday, we traveled in our 15 passenger van. The dog truck is still broken. The company who tried to fix it didn't suceed, but that is another story. Anyway, the van is big. I am so lucky that I don’t have a small vehicle like a Prius for my other option, but the van is still much smaller than the truck. First I loaded 50 bags of dog food. Then we went to Home Depot. I didn’t need much, just 24 2x4s, and 7 bundles of insulation. As the gentleman from the store helped me play Tetris to squeeze the giant bundles of insulation above the dog food, after tucking the 2x4s in every nook and cranny, I joked, “Now I just need to fit in the groceries.” I don’t think he thought I was serious. But Max and I made it work. It was a pretty small day for groceries anyway, just 2 full carts at Sam’s Club.
As we drove out of Fairbanks, we saw many people gathered as Creamer’s field. The big open farmland was covered in birds. Canadian geese, many varieties of ducks, and (to me the most exciting) tons of Trumpeter Swans. I had never seen so many before. The newspaper said that at 124 of them it was a record number. They were mostly foraging in the standing water, but some flew or flapped their wings showing off their tremendous wingspan. What an awesome world this is.
Until next time, I hope you are having as much fun with your dogs as we are with ours.
Mike, Caitlin, and Max