March 8, 2004

• Various Topics

  
  

  Maybe my forgetfulness is an attribute of aging.  Maybe it is more closely related to my three decades of marijuana smoking.  One thing I think I can accurately say about it is that it is NOT because I WANT to forget.  If I had a consciousness that was entirely “forefront” and could remain always mindful of everything–Wow!  That would be super. 

  
  

  Yesterday, as I pottered around here, with Doug asleep and Greyfox off working at a gun show, I noticed how thorough and responsible I was being.    In addition to the tasks I usually keep track of, such as keeping the dog’s feeding station supplied, I checked on and did things that are usually done by Doug and Greyfox.  It was simply remarkable to me then.  It was not until I checked my email today and got a reminder, that I remembered that Saturn is stationary in conjunction with it’s natal position for me.

  
  

  Rich Humbert, one of my favorite astrologers (along with Rob Brezhny, who in his Village Voice column “Free Will Astrology” recommended that I and other Virgos give up our excessive responsibility and self-sacrifice for Lent) mentioned the current Saturn station in his Celestial Weather Report email:

  
  

  
  

  Saturn (many know him as Father Time) is closely associated with our maturation and growth.  At these times (twice each year) of intense Saturn energy, we are more aware of time passing in our lives, that we’re aging, that we don’t have unlimited time on this beautiful planet.  Like Captain Hook, we can hear the clock inside our personal crocodile ticking louder.  We can see that our choices and options become more limited as time goes on.  Despite the serious nature of these thoughts, we can use this to focus on the moment we’re living in right now.  As you read these words, this moment in your life will never happen again.  And if we have only a limited number of moments allotted to us, we should make the most of them At this Saturn time, it’s useful to ask ourselves if we’re spending time wisely; if our time ended, are we doing what we want most?  In thinking this way we can use the awareness of our own mortality to enhance each second of life we have.

  
  

  There’s one way I’ve always differed from the norm on this planet–okay, more than one, but it’s this one I’m focusing on right now.  I was conscious of my mortality from early childhood on.  Ten years ago, at fifty, I’d already lived more than twice as long as I thought I would.  About fifteen years ago, I started consciously recalling past lives and so became conscious of my immortality at an age when most people are in mid-life crises struggling with their unrealized dreams and other failures. 

  
  

  Seeing the patterns I have carried through from lifetime to lifetime has given me a different perspective on time and on life.  I feel no wistfulness thinking of the things I’ve missed, as I felt in my youth thinking of the things I would miss due to my physical limitations:  mountain climbing and other demanding athletic feats, mostly.  Now I figure if it is important that I do those things, I’ll do them some time, somewhere, somehow.

  
  

  Mushing the Iditarod Trail is one of those things I used to wish I had the stamina and wind to accomplish.  (neat segué,eh?)  Early this year, I felt some admiration and a twinge of envy for the blind girl who was planning to run this year’s race.  At the time, I was thinking of her as a “young woman” but she was relegated to girl status for me when her spokesman-father announced that she had decided not to race when the snowmobile manufacturer who had been financing her withdrew after the Trail Committee had nixed her plan to have escorts accompany her on snowmachines. 

  
  

  Since she never spoke out publicly herself, she’s somewhat of a non-entity to me.  I imagine this pitiable thing, a pawn of her father and his moneyed accomplices.  I could be wrong, but that’s how I see her, which I suppose is a step above the way my neighbors and I were talking about her when the news came out that she had asked for an exception to the rules, to allow her to be accompanied by a support crew on snowmachines… yeah, and probably a news crew, too.  In asking for that, they demonstrated a massive ignorance of the trouble snowmachines make for mushers and dogs on the trail, among other things.  If the committee had allowed it, I think they would have faced open rebellion from mushers, as well as public outrage.

  
  

  

  
  

  The photo above was Tim Osmar’s team leaders at the start Saturday in Anchorage.  I don’t know those dogs, but the table below lists Osmar’s training team with their genders and ages (15 of whom are on the trail with him now), so those three are in there somewhere. 

  
  

  
  

  
  
  
  
  
  

  SCOUT – M – 5 FANCY – F – 5 KUSKO – M – 3 SOUNDER – M – 3 SHARK – M – 5 SEAL – F – 5 FRIEDA – F – 8 LIBBY – F – 4

  SHASTA – M – 4 RAMBLER – M – 4 TARZAN – M – 6 BEEBEE – F – 3 SUNBEAR – M – 6 CRAZY TRAIN – F – 5 HANDLE – F – 4 CRAZY HORSE – M – 6

  LOKI – M – 3 ANTON – M 6 DEE DEE – F – 4 RICK – M – 7 TATON – M – 4 BONNIE – F – 5 IOI – M – 4 WOLFIE – M – 3

  
  

  I like knowing the dogs’ names.  I see that Tim has named a few of his after famous mushers, including Libby Riddles, first woman to win the Iditarod, and my neighbor from Willow, Dee Dee Jonrowe who was barely out of chemotherapy for breast cancer when she made the run last year.  This year, Dee Dee and another musher encountered a young moose on the trail.  I’ll try to find details, and share them if they’re interesting.  I guess the old dog, Rick, is named after Rick Swenson, who has run the Iditarod 27 times, won it five times and finished in the money a total of sixteen times.  He’s out there again this year.  Some of his dogs are Viper, Tadpole, Texaco and Froggy.

  
  

  This year’s race is different in a couple of ways.  For one thing, there are more rookies than ever this time.  But the new factor that the old race hands are saying could make it a much faster finish this year is an innovative sled design.  Jeff King, who in his “day job” is a Ranger at Denali National Park, built a sled more flexible than any of the older designs.  It hinges in the middle so that rather than sliding around turns it can sorta slither around them like a snake.  Jeff seems to like geography.  Some of his dogs have names like Kansas, Texas, Vermont, Houston, Jersey, Lassen and Concord.  The latest update I saw shows Jeff in second place between Rainy Pass and Rohn Roadhouse.

  
  

  As I write this, Greyfox is reading a letter from some, “simple-minded redneck bitch” in Carolina… oh, he just amended that, says she’s probably a, “pretentious bleeding heart yuppie asshole.”  Her letter is in this week’s Anchorage Press (“Alaska’s most medicated weekly newspaper”).  It asks us to write to race sponsors, etc., and protest the treatment of the dogs.  She says, among other nonsense, that “race supporters say the dogs love to run, and of course you’d love to run, too, if you were kept tethered on a short chain.”

  
  

  Hello!  If the dogs were “kept tethered” much, their muscles would atrophy and they wouldn’t be very good in a race.  Mushers as a rule can’t keep up with their dogs’ needs to run.  No human can.  They employ handlers to help train the dogs.  The teams are out on the road every day, all year, either pulling a sled, or if there is not enough snow, a cart or four-wheeler.  Several teams pass our house on this back road regularly on training runs, winter and summer.  I can sometimes tell when it’s a team of novice puppies by the confusion, delay, and the mushers’ shouts as they try to round the corner at the end of the block, together as a unit.  The pups get yelled at, sure, but they don’t get “beaten into submission” as that letter writer says.

  
  

  Dogs in the kennel yards are kept on short chains to keep them from “interacting” either sexually or aggressively with each other.  Ordinary household pet owners, as a general rule, keep their dogs confined more than a serious musher does.  As I listened to Greyfox reading that bullshit letter, his voice dripping sarcasm and scorn, the images that crossed my mind were a series of human/dog moments I’ve witnessed: 

  
  

  
  

  Marty Buser at a local store, signing autographs, a promotional gig for one of his sponsors, with an adoring dog’s head in his lap.  When the man looked down at the dog, there was as much love in his eyes as was evident in the dog’s. 

  
  

  Susan Butcher in Nome after one of her wins.  Most mushers carry their lead dog onto the platform in front of the cameras.  That wasn’t enough for Susan.  She had more dogs up there than she could carry, and was too busy hugging and scratching behind ears to pay attention to the cameras.

  
  

  A video I saw of Libby Riddles in her dog yard (If you have not read her “children’s” book, Danger the Dog Yard Cat, you’re missing a great read.) being affectionately assaulted by her team of huskies.  You don’t earn a dog’s love by beating them, as anyone knows who has ever known a beaten dog.

  
  

  

  
  

  Joe Garnie of Teller is one of few Alaskan Natives running the race this year.  A story in yesterday’s Anchorage Daily News starts this way:

  
  

  
  

  When dawn breaks over the Kig-luaik Mountains near Teller in the summer, Joe Garnie gathers netted salmon for his small 29-dog kennel.
  
  After feeding his huskies, Garnie prepares for his workday — which most mushers in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race call training. Whether hauling firewood, fish or tools for his carpentry work, the 50-year-old musher moves by sled whenever he can.

  
  

  “His life is the perfect example of an Eskimo family,” said fellow Iditarod musher Nils Hahn, who’s running his third Iditarod. “He really uses the dogs for work. I don’t think many people do that anymore.”
  
  Garnie has raced the Iditarod since 1978, but he’s been a dog musher his entire life.
  

  After a four-year respite from the race, one of the Iditarod’s most-seasoned veterans is back. All 14 of Garnie’s finishes have been in the top 25, including runner-up in 1986.
  

  And when the 32nd Iditarod begins this morning on Fourth Avenue and D Street, Garnie will be out to prove that village mushers can compete with professionals.
  

  “The (Iditarod) just went on a new level of professionalism, with well-financed mushers who ran these big monster kennels,” Garnie said. “I’m just a guy living in the Bush racing a few dogs.”
  

  Some might see Garnie as a musher with outdated equipment struggling against the high-priced dogs and sleds of racers like four-time champion Martin Buser and three-time winner Jeff King.
  
  “That’s the reality, but winning is not impossible,” Garnie said. “That’s what I’m out to prove.”

  
  

  

  • 4:14 pm
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