The woof-roof

Here's the dog pen, now finally with a kind of roof. Turns out the tarp flaps and snaps something awful in the wind. How could I not know this was going to happen? Will have to tie it down with lots of rope.

Go, Nina!

Nina's page is up. This, my friends, is the real deal. No posts about fretting whether to take out six or eight dogs at once here.

Foraging for wood

Wood for the winter has to be taken care of the preceding spring, at the latest. And though I did chop down trees and limb them this March, I've been horribly late in bucking and splitting. I fell in love, the wood could wait. I've propped the felled trees up so they haven't become soggy, but they haven't dried as much as they should have either.

There's one safety valve though, trees in the vicintiy that have fallen down on their own, and dried out over a couple of seasons. So I've dragged them home and now at least have something.

Don't do this

A musher's nightmare. Do not attempt.
(Thanks, Jaass!)

I've got the power

I got these pylons on my land. As someone who lives off-grid, the irony is not lost on me. Visitors, encouraged by my seemingly lawless lifestyle and vague memories of third world countries often ask why I don't «just hook up» to these lines. These are, however, high-voltage lines that do not transport the kind of electricity you'd find in a normal outlet in a home.

I wonder sometimes if I'd rip out all grid-tied components if I ever moved to a place with «normal» electricity, and install a renewable energy system. Sometimes I've felt as if I probably would. The idea of being «energy self-sufficient» really rocks my boat. But there simply and literally isn't enough lead to go around to let everybody have their own batteries. As the grid is already there, it's probably the most environmentally responsible alternative to energy storage around.

I even advise friends who have off-grid cabins not to worry about getting pv-panels, provided they have road access to their site. With a car, you can just buy a sealed lead battery and charge it at home. Spending thousands of dollars on panels and regulators makes no sense if you're only going to use it for some reading lights and to charge your phone on a weekend.

For my insanely inconveniently situated home, however, solar panels and a battery-based system makes all the sense in the world.

And thank goodness for that.

Feed for the gang

Running low on kibble, thankfully neighbours Olav and Kaisa have a freezer full of assorted, unmentionable moose parts. Here's Bembo posing in front of a full bucket, being a very, very good boy.

Path less traveled

Here's my path down to one of my compost heaps, the one where I dump the dogshit. This path is made by me trotting up and down once, occasionally twice a day. I find it almost shocking to see how little effort is needed to make a semi-permanent mark on the forest.  

Me and my axe

Spent the day in the woodlot, frantically trying to catch up before snow comes. Got to use my Chopper1Axe, given to me by Carl and Anne Lene. And boy, what a wonderful tool this is. It has some kind of scary spring mechanism inside that prevents the axe from getting stuck.
There are a lot of diesel- and electricity-powered wood splitters on the market, that all seem to me to be horribly complicated and expensive, and with the word "wimp" embossed all over them. This sweet little honey is all human powered, but just very cleverly engineered.
Hermit's verdict: Wonderful invention for anyone who does their work in the woodlot by hand.

Black mushers

I met a friend the other day who is, and I mean this in a positive way, professionally black. She performs, talks and writes about being black. You're in a minority, you want people to know what it's like. Fine.
Invariably, when talking to people like her and describing my life, I feel very, very white. Again, not in a bad way. But these situations make me think of Richard Pryor's quip about how white people always seemed to have "such exiting weekends! They'd go bearhunting and trekking and stuff," while he was down on the streets.
Interestingly, the first man to mush to the north pole may well have been Matthew Henson (above). And then there's a guy called Ralph Bradley who won the Wells Fargo "Red Lantern Award" in the Iditarod 1982. (An award for arriving last, Bradley spent 26 days on the trail.) And then there's Cuba Gooding (below) in the film "Snow Dogs", though I'm not sure that counts. Part of the supposedly humorous content in this movie, though never really stated , is simply the idea of a black musher!

These boots were made for mucking

Neoprene boots: Do they make any sense at all? I just a bought a new pair of so-called "muck boots". I use these nine months on end and wear out a pair a year. An average life-span of two hundred days doesn't sound like much, but I imagine that's the most action most footwear sees. Think about it, if you jog twice a week all year, do you keep your running shoes for more than two years?
Sigh. Consumer angst.
Anyway, I keep going back to neoprene boots. Compared to any other footwear they keep your feet relatively dry. Compared to normal rubber boots they don't get cold as easily, and and as opposed to normal rubber boots they are quite easy to take off. They're not much good for really long trips, as they don't give all that much support and your feet will simmer in your own sweat, leading to all kinds of crazy fungi and loss of toenails. For short stints in wet terrain, though, they are almost impossible to beat.
Supposedly the two certain things in life are death and taxes, but I would add "wet feet". Do anything even mildly exiting outside of the Sahara, and you're feet are going to get wet. That goes for feet in neoprene boots too. But at least in these you get wet from the inside, and the neoprene insulates pretty well, down to minus five degrees centigrade in my experience.
My new pair has some hoity toity "Vibram" rubber soles, so maybe they'll last longer than my three last pairs.
Hermit's verdict: Good, if you're not going to live in them.

Mushing alone

If you live in a society where everybody lives off the land, aiming for "the best" often means aiming for "good enough". In a mushing context, this means that if you have enough dogs and they are strong and fast enough, well, that's pretty much it. You're not going to breed and train your dogs to be ten percent faster than your neighbour's, if this means feeding the dogs more, hunting less and missing out on berry-picking season.
When the global economy started seeping into mushing societies in the guise of fur traders and gold miners, this all changed. With the advent of money and stores, you could start specializing. And the dog teams became bigger, the sleds larger and more sophisticated. And once big prizes were given in competitions, it could really pay to miss out on berry-picking and concentrate on training instead.
The reason I'm banging on about this is that I'm wondering what the elements of my own private evolution as a musher are.
I haven't the foggiest idea. Mostly, I just like seeing the dogs run. Still, I feel I probably need to do this together with other people more.

Undercover

Wasilla, Alaska. Photo by Michaela Berg.

The things I have to do in the interest of investigative journalism. For heaven's sake.

A week in the forest

From one monday to the other one: Photo Jørgen Aas.

Jørgen just spent an entire week in the forest with his sled dogs and his three year old kid, Felix, and sendt me this picture. Take a look at his rig! If I'm not mistaken it's a standard dryland musher's trike (a Hahdi, perhaps?), but modified by Jørgen with a welded bow above the front wheel for increased luggage capacity. Felix, who by now has spent a grand total of 81 nights outdoors, rode in the trailer which was connected to the left rear wheel.
As there are no pedals on the trike, all the wheels are symmetrically dished, so they can take a beating. On normal bikes, the spokes on the backwheel are asymmetrical to accomodate the chain and freehweel, which invariably weakens the wheel, especially when under stress from a lot of luggage.
That rubber thingy hanging in front of the handlebars is, I believe, Jørgen's homemade drag brake, fastened with a chain and dragged between the rear wheels. By stepping on it, you can regulate the speed. Relying solely on rim brakes while being pulled by a team of sled dogs can easily end very nastily.
With this lightweight setup Jørgen transported food for his whole team (four alaskan huskies and possibly also his chocolate lab, Bark), two people, tent, camping gear and his heir.
Pretty impressive.
Felix at the helm: Photo Jørgen Aass.

Lonely?

Team of six: Tor and his gang.

"Don't you ever get lonely?" is probably the question I get asked the most. As if loneliness somehow was dictated by the physical distance to your next door neighbour.
Of course I don't get lonely. For one thing, how lonely can you be if you're surrounded by eight dogs and a cat. They might not be great for those deep, intellectual discussions but neither are most people.
And I get visits every now and then. At least as often as my friends in town get visits. Tor came by the other day. I didn't know one of his bitches had puppies this spring, he kept all three and dropped by with his whole team.
Tor walks with his dogs an hour each morning, and exercises them every goddamn evening. For heavens sake.
Knowing other mushers is probably one of the most important thing a dog driver can do for his team. There's always somebody around to be inspired by. Someone who makes you feel pretty horribly inadequate.

Bethel, Alaska

So far, so close

Distant places: Tabs at Bethel Airport for luggage sent by bush plane to small, really small airports.

Just spent some days in Alaska on assignment. All that flying and staying at hotels invariably reminds me that I have somehow gotten a much better deal out of life than I deserve, and should be ashamed of myself.
Most of Alaska is inaccessible by road, and the part that isn't accessible by the Alaska Marine Highway either is commonly called "the bush". There are two kinds of settlements in the bush, villages and "hubs". Hubs often have some kind of road system, some cars, and, more importantly, a number of services like hospitals for the villages in the vicinity.
We traveled to one such bush hub, Bethel. To be honest, I wasn't entirely sure what we were going to do there, but fortunately one gentleman, James Pak, had started up a limousine service. In Bethel. A town with ten miles of paved road. "Normally, you take a limo to go somewhere," Mr. Pak explained. "A theatre, a restaurant, anything. But here there's nowhere to go. People just want me to drive around. So what I offer isn't transport as much as an opportunity to do something special."