Running with Ivy

A travel essay by Zinta Aistars

            And why not 3 o’clock in the morning? I can do this. For a chance to spend even a short time in the U.P. – the Upper Peninsula of Michigan – I’ll not only get up early, very early, I’d be willing to skip a night. But 3 a.m. will do, and so I fall out of bed and move in the general direction of the coffeemaker, where the previous evening I wisely ground the coffee beans, prepared the filter, poured the water. Push button. Go. Off to the showers, cold will do.

            Mary pulls up in the driveway a little after 4 a.m. Hannah, her eager German Shepherd-Husky mix, swipes a wet tongue across my cheek in greeting as soon as I get myself seated in the car, bag tossed into the trunk. We are on a mission. Sure, Mary’s loosened a few screws, maybe even misplaced one or two, but that’s why I adore this woman. However mad the passion, she follows it through to its logical, or illogical, end. This is all about following the call of the gut, far less about the faulty wisdoms of the head. We are two midlife women on a threshold of leaving one life behind and forming another. Children raised, relationships survived, jobs transformed into careers, we seek new adventure.

 In this case, it’s not only a call of the gut, but also the call of the wild. Since her last trip to Marquette, the largest city in the U.P., some weeks ago to watch a dogsled race, the U.P. 200, Mary has been afflicted with mushing fever. Outside, spring has sprung, grass is green, and the golden daffodils are already showing wilt – but Mary can think of little else than dogs harnessed to a sled, racing through crisp, white snow. Since her return, she’s been networking and researching, and the fever shows no sign of abating. 

            “Oh, I can’t wait to see Ivy,” she hums in anticipation, the old white Oldsmobile humming in unison with its driver on 131 heading north. Far north. We have a 460-mile trip ahead of us. And 460 miles back again the next day. Our enticement, Ivy, is an eight-year-old sled dog that currently belongs to Ed and Tasha Stielstra in McMillan, a tiny blink-and-you’ll-miss-it town in the U.P. The Stielstras raise and train some 100 dogs in McMillan the greener part of the year, but head up to Juneau, Alaska the whiter part of the year, where they run the Iditarod. The Iditarod, also known as The Last Great Race on Earth, is a dogsled race covering 1,150 snowy miles from Anchorage to Nome, Alaska. Only the hardiest dogs and humans cross the finish line. Both Ed and Tasha have run the race, and will run it again. And again. They have made a life of dog-sledding. Mary has seen Ivy only on the Web site the Stielstras keep with ongoing journals of their many trails.

            Mary is not planning on running the Iditarod. Although by now I know that any fine adventure is open to negotiation with my friend. Which is precisely why I am in the passenger seat this still dark as pitch morning. Over the past few years, I seem to have lost touch with my own adventurous and impulsive side. Life has been getting too cozy for comfort. Or too uncozy for its lack of spark. I miss the spontaneous Z that I used to be… and going north always seems to bring the best part of me back to the surface.

            And we’re off. Kalamazoo is far behind us; Grand Rapids, too, is a faint glimmer of city lights in the rearview mirror. A little north of GR, trees thicken on both sides of the highway. The dark of the night sky is transformed into a subtle shade of cobalt blue. Michigan’s larger cities are mostly clustered on the lower half of the state, as if heavy with cement and humanity, too weighty to float like cream to the top. Clearing the latitude line that pierces Grand Rapids and Lansing, the capital, to our east, and just below the middle of the state, we begin to feel the welcome relief of nature. The farther north, the more untouched.

Hannah flops on the backseat and naps, occasionally lifting her head to peer over the seat at us, at the still dark and starry sky outside, then resumes her nap. We stop twice for coffee. And then – it’s light. The cobalt blue has paled, paled, to become robin’s egg blue, and I can feel my heart pattering a little faster at the prospect of the day ahead. Soon after 131 turns into a two-lane 31, then joins Interstate 75, we see it: Big Mac. No matter how many times I make that turn, see the sight of that immense Mackinac Bridge curving slightly over the place where Lake Michigan flows into Lake Huron, I have to draw my breath, deep, and feel my heart patter faster still within me.

Home. Yes, that’s exactly how it feels. Crossing the bridge, spanning five miles from the Lower Peninsula to the Upper, it’s as if we enter a different kind of place entirely. Towns and interstate exits are replaced by forests that cover endless miles and acres. Cultivated land is replaced by craggy rock. All that weighs us down falls away behind us. All that is man-made and “civilized” drifts away. Concerns, problems, stress, obligations, duty, worries, aches and pains, all melt away. Even my cell phone blips and shuts down. I feel free.

I have been coming to the U.P since I was a small girl. My father used to bring the family north to paint every summer. All the way across the width of the U.P. to the Keweenaw Peninsula, the small stretch of land that juts up into Lake Superior at the northwestern corner, he drove us to its northernmost tip, to the town of Copper Harbor. Setting his easel up in the rocks of the beach, he was lost in his work for the day. On the canvas appeared the blue wash of the water, the hardy pines resisting the lake winds, the weathered houses tucked between. While he painted, Mother stretched her legs out into the sun and read a novel. My sister and I each wandered in our own direction. There were times that I sketched with my pencil in a notebook, weak imitations of my father’s artistic mastery. Yet end of day, looking over my shoulder, or picking me up to lean against his, he looked with utmost seriousness at my drawings of boats and the pier and patted my head. Well done, he always said, very well done, Zinti. And even if I didn’t quite believe him, I beamed.

Over time, I have returned again and again, even if years, sometimes far too many, have come between. At one transitional point in my life, I needed a place to reinvent myself – and so I moved to the Keweenaw and set up a household: my two small children, myself, and a man I loved beyond sanity, whose wife I would become in a small church on the Portage Canal in Houghton, just at the bottom of the Keweenaw Peninsula. My memories of this corner of the U.P. remain some of the best of my entire life, a gleam of bright light in the near half-century now behind me.

Crossing the bridge, I try to recall why I ever left. But so much is… water beneath the bridge. I am not returning to go back. There is no going back. I am returning, I realize, to reinvent myself yet again. Mary knows: I dream of retiring to the U.P. someday – a writer living in the woods in a log cabin, weaving words and watching cobalt skies turn robin’s egg blue, walking the rocky shores of Lake Superior, pondering plotlines of epic poems and grandiose novels yet to be birthed.

For Mary, crossing the bridge makes her knuckles on the steering wheel go white. Bridges spell fear to her. Crossing high expanses, deep roiling water beneath, high winds tossing her from side to side make her tremble. But Mary is a woman after my own heart: having identified a fear, she is determined to face it and walk through the fire to the other side. In this case, by driving across the Big Mac. What's on the other side is just too good to miss. What's on the other side of any bridge is too good to miss.

The enticement is irresistible. Marquette is home to her son, attending university, and at present, it is home to Ivy, the sled dog Mary is waiting in ever growing anticipation to meet.

Near halfway across the peninsula, my eyes catch on shadowy movement to the left side of the road. Could it be? I catch my breath and reach over to grasp Mary’s arm. Wolf, I whisper. Cautiously, Mary stops and puts the car into reverse. Slowly, wincing at every grating of gravel beneath the wheels, we pull back to where the wolf stands,  pondering us, the safety of woods to her other side, the tease of curiosity, hers perhaps equal to ours. We sit and watch. She stands still and watches. Hannah lifts her head in the backseat, then rises to all fours, is still, very still, and watches.

And then, smooth as silk, gray melts into trees, and she is gone.

We breathe, breathe deep with gratitude and blessing and wonder, and drive on.

“A good omen,” I say, and Mary nods emphatically.

About fifteen miles later, we find McMillan, passing the county road only once, then making the turn north again, another eight miles, until we see a large blue paw print on a piece of plywood nailed to a tree. The road is pitted dirt, and there are no houses anywhere, only the occasional deer camp. But a turn in, left, more blue paw prints guiding our winding way, the Oldsmobile lurching through potholes, and we enter a camp resonating with the chorus of barks and bays and howls of sled dogs – Nature's Kennel, where nearly one hundred dogs are born and bred to race.

Both Tasha and Ed greet us, along with other staff who have time only to nod and wave. Tasha is petite, blonde hair cropped boy-short, and her skin color even in spring healthy from sun and winter wind. Her small frame is strong and quick, her smile equally quick, and she leads us through rows upon rows of tethered dogs alongside their plastic “barrels” serving as doghouses – towards Ivy. The yapping of dogs is friendly, inviting; eyes follow us with interest. Are we here to harness and race? Tasha calls out to one, then another, seeming to know the names of all, even though we surely pass more than fifty dogs. The animals are surprisingly small, lean and muscled, ranging around 40 to 50 pounds. Colors vary. Only their eyes strike me as different than the usual domestic dog. Wisdom of the trail? Endurance breeds intelligence? But when we reach Ivy, her head ducks with sudden shyness, or perhaps a show of respect towards her owner and trainer. When she looks up at Mary’s outstretched hand, we see that her eyes are one colored brown, the other a wintry blue, as if she has always had one eye on winter fun. She is unsure of us; it will take time to gain her trust. Ivy, like all sled dogs, is an animal of the wild, of the trail, and she is not accustomed to human bustle, or wheeled traffic, or the insides of houses crowded together. She knows when to lead, but also when to obey. She follows closely at Tasha’s side as we go back through the rows of dogs and plastic barrels.

It is not just Mary’s approval Ivy will need to return home with us to Kalamazoo. There is also Hannah. The two dogs must get along, and eventually, they must be able to pull a sled side-by-side. I note the warmth rising in Mary’s eyes; her heart is already won. But Hannah? Car door open, Hannah leaps out into the open, head switching left to right to take in the sight of so many peers, but when she approaches Ivy for a sniff, a firm growl greets her. Ivy’s lip curls up, exposing white teeth, and Hannah immediately steps back, head bowed.

“I believe we have a new alpha in the household,” Mary grins.

The two dogs ride in the back the rest of the way to Marquette, another hour and a half down the road, and Ivy is lying across the backseat in an easy sprawl, while Hannah is now huddled uncomfortably on the car floor behind the driver’s seat. The two are not speaking. Hannah wouldn’t dare. Ivy doesn’t care. Every time I turn in my seat to glance back at her, her two-colored eyes meet mine in a steady gaze. I have my own chow pup at home, my heart is taken, I tell myself, but something about Ivy’s sure gaze… I reach a hand back and softly graze her head with two fingers, and she lets me.

My previous home in the Keweenaw is still two hours further down this road, but the sight of Marquette already makes my heart hum with recognition. U.P. cities are not marked by skyscrapers, but by old mining towns as seed: stone buildings, saloons and churches in town, mining houses surrounding, plain and sturdy, surviving many decades of harsh winters. This is copper country, where miners emigrated from the Scandinavian countries, who knew how to withstand, even relish the cold. The ground is riddled with old mines, a latticework of tunnels hidden beneath our feet. And although the mining is now down to a bare minimum, more for tourist attraction than industry, the mettle of the inhabitants of this northern country is unchanged. It is what I so love here: the spirit of independence and individualism, hardiness and wisdom won by experience. Priorities have shifted. Politics and fashion trends, the whimsy of more “civilized” places, seem to have faded in the distance for the fluff that they are.  

When Mary and I decide to stop and park the Oldsmobile under the shade of tall pines and let the dogs have their first run along the rocky shores of Lake Superior, it is as if I can feel layers upon layers open up about me, thick hides fall away, old aches diminish, wounds shrivel and mend.

Mary puts a harness on Ivy, who bows her head instinctively for the accustomed gear. Hannah runs loose, knows enough to stay near. Out of the car, Hannah bounds like a deer. Joy ripples through her every muscle. She leaps and twirls and dances. I can’t help but smile at the sight of her. This is how an animal shows pleasure in being alive. This is what so many of us have forgotten. I shed another layer.

We head towards the water. Ivy is well-mannered, but an electric current of excitement runs through her. New terrain. Fresh air from across the water. Seagulls screaming overhead. When the four of us, two women, two dogs, stand at the shore, a reverential silence falls about us. Yes. Oh, yes. This is what life was meant to be. This, this pine and sea scent, this fresh wind slapping my hair across my face and back again, this copper-red sand and shale rock beneath my feet, this grace.

“Ladies,” Mary finally says – to all four of us. “Let’s walk.” And we do, for long hours, along the shore and along a forest trail, always tight along the water, and the layers continue to fall away behind us, a littering of what no longer serves us. The two dogs forget themselves, and nose in the same scented spot in the sand, and a sure camaraderie is on its way to being formed. Ivy’s pleasure in the walk is restrained and contained, while Hannah brims exuberance. They will be a good team of youth and experience, vim and wisdom.

When I lag behind, stopping from time to time to gaze out at the waves, or to investigate more closely a pool of water among the rocks, Ivy circles back and checks on me. A cool nose touches the back of my hand. Two-colored eyes check mine for intent. All is well? Yes? Shall we move on?

We move on. I bend over to pick up a wave-washed stone and slip it into my pocket. Whatever trails each one of us has run, we are here now, and new trails await.

~2006

Mush into 2008

by Zinta Aistars

"...and don't forget that cheap bottle of bubbly," Mary concluded.

Got it. I ticked off items on my list as I packed them into my duffel alongside the fat roll that was my too long unused sleeping bag. Draped over it: several old blankets and a flannel covered pillow. My blue tin plate and mug and bowl, a flashlight, extra ragg socks, towel, long underwear, sweats, extra sweaters, and yes, bottle of cheap champagne went into the duffel. Mary was bringing the tent. This was going to be a New Year's Eve and Day to remember.

It had been a very long time since I had had one of those. Memorable New Year's Eves... not that I would always require well-chilled adventure. But special occasions of any kind for the past some years had been sadly lacking. Indeed, they had more times than not been "special" for all the wrong reasons. I spent my last New Year's Eve, in fact, feeling emotionally battered and abandoned, sopping in the new year drenched in tears and with a yet again re-broken heart.

Oh no, not this year. No more, I promised myself, clenching my teeth in fierce determination. Life surely must have its necessary element of suffering, but mine had had enough shadows for too long, and I was thrilled when my dear friend Mary called me at work on the morning of December 31, 2007, with yet another proposal of one of her impromptu wild woman adventures. The last time she had called with an idea for adventure, we ended up piling into her aging Oldsmobile with a pink rubber flamingo stuck on the antennae, hours before daybreak, her German Shepherd, Hannah, in the backseat. That time, we headed north to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan to meet with a wolf and a sled dog named Ivy, retired from the Iditarod in Alaska. Ivy became Mary's first official sled dog for her new hobby of dog mushing.

Dog what? Here in lower Michigan? I was disbelieving, but mention snow to me, up north, and throw in a floppy-eared dog, and I'm ready.

That was nearly a year ago. In another snow. By now, Mary had four dogs, newly trained, practicing most every weekend in anticipation of winter, in a wheeled rig before there was snow, but on a proper sled now that the glorious white stuff was coming down in shimmering blessing. Leave it to Mary to not only have a wacky idea... but bring it to fruition. She'd been promising me a sled ride for several months, and New Year's Eve seemed as good a night as any to skid around under icy moonlight in nearby Fort Custer, about 15 miles east from our hometown of Kalamazoo. The park, hedged by a beautiful and serene cemetery for veterans, bordered the Kalamazoo River along with a series of lakes and miles of open trails. It was, as one might expect, pleasantly deserted at this time of year. More than 3,000 acres open to wild women and dogs. There was a winter storm warning out for tonight, and we couldn't be more pleased. The clock was ticking toward midnight, a threshold to cross into a new year and a life brimming with truly special occasions.

I had a very good feeling about 2008.

***

The sky was thickening with gray-bellied snow clouds. I stopped listening to weather reports at the point where they had upped the expected snow fall from 10 to 12 inches. Heck with that. Dog sledding is all about snow, isn’t it? I sat on the floor of my living room among heaps of blankets and sleeping bags, waiting for Mary to arrive, apologizing to my own about-to-be-left-behind chow pup, Guinnez.

“Tell you what, Guinnie Pig,” I rubbed his soft, fuzzy orange ears. “If this winter camping is as very kewl as I think it will be, sometime yet this winter – it’s you and me, dawg. Just you and me.”

Guinnez’s tail thumped and wagged, picking up speed until it was swirling in dizzy circles. His tail dropped when Mary arrived to pack my gear into her car, closing the door on my broken-hearted pup. Thank goodness he couldn’t see the other three girl dogs we were picking up later, I thought, feeling guilty for leaving my friend behind. Next time, next time.

Dinner first, still in the civilized world, and Mary’s sister, Joanna called Joey, greeted us at the door of her warm and glowing home. Her husband, Paul, was already grilling New York strip steaks in the backyard, the grill set in snow under a canopy of bare oak trees laced with white. Paul’s brother, Kenny, was stirring “grog” in a pot on the stove—hot red wine with slices of lemon floating on top, the scent of cinnamon and cloves and nutmeg rising around him—and we were hardly out of our coats before we were holding steaming mugs in our chilled hands. Kenny grinned through his beard at us, pleased to be pleasing us, and we clinked mugs in good cheer. It was Kenny’s new tent we’d be taking along. Never out of the box. Four-person (we were counting three dogs as the equivalent of two persons) with flexible thin pipes to hold it up free-standing in the snow, a tarp beneath, a tarp overhead.

I wandered the house while dinner grilled and baked and cooked. Floor to ceiling shelves were filled with books and gorgeous pottery, vases and mugs and bowls of earthy and rich colors, and where the walls weren’t lined with books and pottery, there hung paintings and framed photographs. The windowsills were lined with snow globes. Cats and dogs wandered by and around me, and I took time to greet each one, offering fingertips to scent, and introduced myself. Books, art, and animals. I felt right at home.

I ate my fill at the dinner table lit by candlelight, feeling no guilt. Surely one must be fortified to camp in a snow storm. I ate all my steak, every last bite, two helpings of cheesy scalloped cauliflower, a stack of asparagus, green salad, roasted tomatoes, and a gooey slice of apple and cranberry pie, washing it all down with the best merlot wine I’d had in years. As I learned in our dinner conversation, Kenny was a vintner, knew his wine like nobody’s business, and Joey had brought back from her many business trips abroad so much wine (to Kenny’s approving nod) that U.S. customs required her to fill out forms to officially become a wine distributor.

“I thought I was ordering bottles from the winery in Germany,” she laughed, holding up the wine to glow blood red in the candlelight. “Apparently, I was buying cases. There are 150 more bottles downstairs. Drink up!”

The gray-bellied snow clouds had opened while we ate; snow fell thick and soft outside, and from the dining room walled with windows, we watched the silent storm gain momentum.

“Still up for this?” Mary tipped her head at me from across the table.

Paul and Kenny pshawed and decided for us: of course we were up for this! I grinned and licked sticky pie from a fingertip and shrugged. No argument from me. Our bellies full, our hearts toasty warm from the comforts of family and friends, off we went to collect Mary’s dogs and head into the snowy night.

***

Willow, Nabu, and Hannah panted in the backseat of the Oldsmobile. Humans and dogs, we were all so tightly stuffed into the car, there was hardly enough room to maneuver a seatbelt across my lap to click shut. My duffel was beneath my feet, now also holding a candied apple and Godiva chocolates from Joey, and a bag of macaroons from Kenny—real camp fare. The dogs were huddled next to sleeping bags and blankets in the back, furry shoulder to shoulder, raring to go. The dog sled, a thin and graceful frame of curving blonde wood, was on the roof of the car, fastened down with a criss-cross of bungee cords.

I pointed at the glow of the dashboard clock as we headed down I-94 east. “Hey Mary. I thought you said the Fort Custer campground closes at 10 pm?” It was 9:57.

Mary chuckled. “Yeah, well.”

Which is why I love my good friend. Life happens. We make do. Things work out. What’s to worry? Hers was a philosophy of life that had once been my own, but that somehow I had gradually lost over the past few years. Somewhere along the way, I had lost myself. My sense of adventure, my ability, even hunger to take risks, the deliciously outrageous part of Z that had made my life interesting, worth living, brimming with lusty cheers and gusty hurrahs, with good loving, good fun, high hopes. The last few years, however, had sucked the life right out of me. I was a dry and hollow shell of the old Z. All my bright colors had faded away until I no longer knew my pale self. I felt invisible. But this New Year’s Eve, I promised myself, would be another line to draw in the sand—or the snow, as the case may be—to mark the place where I would find my colors again. I would not be held back any longer, not ever again. I was hungry for adventure. I would find my voice and I would use it and I would refuse to be invisible or to spend time with anything or anyone that would sap my appetite for life. I had some dreams to dust off. Tonight was as good a night as any.

The Oldsmobile crept along on the slick interstate, two headlights piercing the dark. There was little traffic; most sensible folk were gathered in parties tonight, huddled around television sets and watching other parties, keeping warm. I envied none of them.

Visibility was minimal, but Mary had traveled this route so many times already that she didn’t need to see much. We turned off the highway onto ever narrowing country roads, until we were driving through a silent forest. The shadows of tree limbs outlined in white hung over us to form a tunnel leading to Fort Custer. The gate was open. The car bumped and shimmied through the deepening snow, making fresh tracks where there were none. Willow, Nabu, and Hannah whined in excitement, scenting familiar territory, and jostled each other in back for a better view.

“Are we there yet? Are we there yet?” I spoke for the three, make that four, and then—we were. The car heaved through snow, shuddered, and settled into a soft drift, and with the engine off, we entered perfect silence.

It was somewhere between 10 and 11 p.m. of New Year’s Eve, but I lost all sense of time standing in the shin-deep snow, face to open sky, kissed by a thousand soft, cool snow kisses, melting as they touched my warm skin. The dogs raced out of the car, each in their own direction, looped around, danced and circled, unable to contain their joy of life. Mary’s setting to work unpacking our gear woke me from my reverie.

Setting up a tent in a snow storm by the beams of two car headlights was no easy feat, especially when we had no clue what the finished shelter was to look like. While we worked on pitching the tent, Mary put Willow, the youngest of the three dogs, a mostly black husky mix with white paws, on a long chain. Willow had a tendency to bound off to explore, losing track of time and place, while Hannah and Nabu could be trusted to stay nearby on their own. Hannah was still a young German shepherd, eager to explore, too, but never wanted to be out of sight of her “mother.” Nabu was a retired husky sled dog who had run many long races, including the 1,000 mile-long Alaskan Iditarod, and was born and bred to race. She knew her place. Mary’s weekend dog mushing was just her speed now. She was wise, and sweet, and enjoyed our company, at times leaning against our legs for the comfort of companionship.

We spread a large tarp on the snow, then unfolded the tent and spread it out. Long thin tubes in flexible sections, connected by an elastic rope running through all of them, had to be pushed through openings in the tent, and we soon realized gloves wouldn’t do to accomplish this. Off they came, and we struggled to get all four sets of pipes through the shell of the tent with our stiff fingers, then carefully bent them in arcs to fit through grommets along the bottom edges of the tent. In the two beams of light from the car, snow swirled and fell over and on us, catching in our hair and in the creases of our jackets, melting on the bare skin of our hands. Now and then, I turned my wristwatch to the light to check, calling out to Mary: “It’s 11:30, Mary! 11:45! Five more minutes!”

And then, the tent curved and rose up along the spines of the tubes, a neat little igloo in the middle of the woods, home for the night. I hurried to dig out my blue tin cup and champagne bottle from my duffel bag, Mary handed over her cup, and I uncorked and poured. Just in time! It was midnight—the year of 2008—and we were triumphant, raising our fizzing cups to the snowy sky and bare moonlit limbs of trees overhead. The dogs danced around us in shared glee.

Happy New Year! And it already was.

Buzzing me back to the civilized world, my cell phone vibrated in my pants pocket. These were my son’s flannel-lined cargo pants, pulled tight with a rope around my waist, and it took me several zips to unzip various pockets up and down the length of my legs and along my hips and rear to find the pocket holding the cell. My son was first caller of the night, wanting to verify that “you’re really not coming home tonight, Mom? In this storm? You’re okay, right?” and then my daughter, calling from Chicago, insisting I tell her my exact location in case “I hear some news story about two crazy middle-aged women lost with their dogs in the frozen Michigan woods on New Year’s Eve and I have to tell the police where to look for you.” But once location was determined, my girl gave me a telephone version of high-five, echoing my own intent: “It’s good to see you coming back to yourself, Mum. I’ve missed you.” I breathed in the fresh chilly night air, deep, filling my lungs. “I’ve missed me, too, baby. And you, too. You have yourself a fine, fine new year. May this be the best one ever for our family.”

“Shall we walk before sleep?” Mary asked, and I readily agreed. Our work done to make our campsite as comfortable as it could be, I was feeling an adrenaline rush, and the night was far too beautiful to abandon just yet. Mary ran the car engine for a moment to regenerate after our use of the headlights, then shut it off. Flashlight in hand, and Mary wearing headgear that put a light atop her head, much like a coal miner’s, the way ahead was well lit and inviting. The dogs romped in excitement, bounding ahead then circling back to check on us. The snow was falling even faster and thicker than before. By the time we returned to the tent, it was capped with white and our footsteps were already erased.

Sleep. Mary crawled into her Yukon sleeping bag, prepared for 25 below zero. I crawled into mine. Not bad, I thought, although this bag was three season, much thinner than Mary’s. Still, I had put several blankets underneath, between me and the snowy ground, plus another summer bag spread out for insulation, and surely that would be enough. The dogs huddled between us on their own wool blanket. I fell asleep quickly, more tired than I had realized. When I woke again a while later, my bladder reminding me of champagne that was, I could hear Mary’s soft and contented snore from the opposite side of the tent. I reached for my coat and scarf at the bottom of my sleeping bag to make my run outdoors, but to my dismay, found them to be as soaked as if they had been dunked in icy water. The coats had been laid out in the snow just outside our tent, still under the overhead tarp to protect them from the snowfall, but instead of drying out, had absorbed a surprising amount of water from the ground. I sighed and decided a quick run into the snow would be fine without anything more than the flannel shirt I was wearing, still in my son’s cargo pants, long underwear, and two shirts beneath the flannel. Shoving my three-layered stocking feet into wet boots, I unzipped the tent entrance and emerged into the deep silence of the forest in snow. 

For a moment, I forgot my need. I stood in the snowy night, more snow still falling around and over me, and listened. If I held my breath, I could hear it falling. Soft, soft, it settled into the trees and on the ground. The high moon shown bluish-white through the bare limbs of trees high overhead. My breath was a white mist, and I felt the blessing of this night settle gently onto my shoulders, as gentle as the snowfall.

Sleep did not come as quickly as before. The dogs rustled in response to my movement. Nabu touched a cool, damp nose to mine to check on me. Willow had stolen my “warm” spot on my pillow and moved with utmost reluctance at my insistence. She opted to lie beside me, nose to nose, one paw stretched to caress my face… alas, clawed, and I winced at the bruising across my mouth, shoving her back, then instantly felt sorry, and draped my arm across her and pulled her near again. She heaved a contented sigh. We would appreciate each other’s warmth this winter night.

Mary’s soft snore continued uninterrupted from inside her Yukon bag, while Willow and I arranged and rearranged ourselves for warmth I could not find. The chill of the snowy ground beneath me seeped through the blankets along the full length of my body. My nose was a chip of ice. My hair was crisp to the touch. Even with three pairs of woolen socks and deep inside my sleeping bag, my feet felt frozen. I considered going back outside again to move about and get my blood to circulate through my frozen extremities, then silently chastised myself, shivering and cuddling closer to Willow. I tried to imagine the homeless who had to find ways to stay warm through an entire winter, and here I was for just one night, my soft, warm bed awaiting me at home, flannel sheets under downy blankets, but hours away. Buck up, Z! One lesson learned, I thought, curling my knees up close to my body: three-season camping gear is one season short.

Then suddenly it was bright outside. The inside of the tent glowed with morning light. The dogs were getting restless, nosing our faces, pawing at our bags. Mary shooed them away, but they insisted. I was ready to get up and moving, stretch out my frozen limbs, but it took a moment nonetheless to translate the thought of movement to sluggish muscle. All of my outerwear was still sopping wet. Coat, scarf, gloves—all unusable. Mary tossed me a hooded sweatshirt and I pulled it over the previous three shirts. 

Ah, to have the joy of dogs! Willow, Nabu, and Hannah bounded from the tent into the snowy morning, and snow sprayed from their paws as they raced around and around in sheer bliss. I had to laugh just to watch their infectious and simple happiness. Mary and I realized we had brought wood but no paper for starter, so her tiny one-burner, a wonderful little contraption of canned fuel with a thick wick, atop which she set a metal cup of water, soon gave us our first cup of hot, steaming coffee. No beginner, Mary had a bin of goodies in her trunk: bags of instant oatmeal and trail mix, jerky and high-energy protein bars, coffee in freeze-dried grounds or in liquid form, called Java Juice, in foil packets. I squeezed the Java Juice into my tin cup and poured the hot water into it, and oh if that didn’t beat all Starbucks and Gevalia combined. Tossing my gloves aside, I curled my fingers around the hot cup and mm-hmmmed my pleasure. Life was more than fine. Life was good, delicious and hot and good. I unbagged a heavy dark loaf of Lithuanian bread from my own duffel, cut a generous slice, and spread a thick layer of dark honey from a tiny jar a friend had brought back for me from my native Latvia onto the bread and bit in. Throughout my years of camping experience, I can say this with all assurance: food never tastes better than it does in the open air. The simpler, the better, like manna from heaven.

“Nothing,” Mary noted, turning her key in the ignition of the Oldsmobile. The engine wouldn’t even turn over. We had hoped to take the car out to the trail head so that I could watch the dog sledding—the dogs generally could pull only one person at a time on the sled—but with no way to get me there, unable to match the speed of joyous dogs, I opted to stay behind at the campsite while Mary went mushing for a couple of hours. She was unconcerned about the dead engine, nor was I going to worry. Life has a way of taking care of itself when we let it. She buckled the dogs into their harnesses, called “Hike!” and off they went. I heard “Gee!” in the distance as they took a right turn into the white forest and disappeared.

I was alone. I heated another cup of coffee and listened to the frozen silence, feeling the strong, steady beat of my own heart. I could still recognize it, that soft, warm sensation flooding my middle-aged heart… yes, here it is: happiness. Fistfuls of snow fell from tree branches to the ground in soft plops.

I set off to walk without aim or intention in the woods, making trails where there were none, trying not to disturb the white weight on leaning branches. Without coat or gloves, I was warm, and the walking brought life pulsing back into my frozen feet.

When I emerged back onto the path leading back to the campground, a park ranger in a black pickup truck pulled alongside me. “Happy New Year!” he offered with a wide smile, and for a moment I thought of the picture I must present. Not one article of clothing on me matched. I was in every imaginable color, and my uncombed hair pushed out from my sweatshirt hood in a mass of unruly wisps. I smiled back. I felt beautiful. 

“And a very happy new year to you, too.” My upper lip smarted where Willow’s paw had scraped it in the night. “By any chance would you have a set of jumper cables?”

While the ranger drove off to retrieve cables, Mary returned from the trail. She motioned for me to hop on before the dogs cooled, and I put my feet on the back of the runners, holding onto the back of the sled, Mary jumped on behind me, and off we went. The ranger had plowed the path, and where he had plowed, the surface was now so icy smooth that the dogs had no trouble pulling two of us. I hooted with joy at the ride, snowy trees rushing by me to either side, Nabu and Willow in the lead, Hannah pulling behind. A moment later, Mary had hopped off, and I was off on my own, racing in the snow, the winter day unfolding like a white miracle, my heart racing as fast as the dogs. I couldn’t help myself, calling out like a child for the sheer fun of it, hooting and hollering, then growing quiet again to hear the shushing of the white woods all around us, filled with childlike wonder.

By the time we returned to our camp, the ranger was hooking up cables to the car’s dead battery.  I sliced a thick piece of dark bread and spread it with honey, handing it to the ranger, who quickly pulled off his glove to take it.

“You dog mushers are the best,” he said, finishing the slice in three bites. I broke more pieces of the bread for each of the hungry dogs.

The engine refused to turn over. Each time Mary turned the key, it would give a hopeful chug and sputter, but then die again. The ranger’s cheeks glowed pink with determination. Again and again, nothing. Chug, sputter, dead. The ranger finally sighed, “One last time.”

I looked at the engine and in my thoughts, asked nicely: “It’s going to be my year, you know? It’s time for you to start. This day is nearing end, glorious as it was, and we need to go home now.”

The ranger revved his engine; Mary turned the key for hers. It sputtered and roared to life. Saying our thanks and goodbye to our new friend, we hurried to take down the campsite with the engine still running. The car once again stuffed to the bolts, the sled back on the roof and bungee-corded securely in place, we jumped in and headed out of the woods, back towards town.

Glancing down again at my celebratory party attire, I noted—olive cargo pants with red zippers over green sweat pants over long underwear, green hooded sweatshirt with a raspberry pink and white scarf over plaid flannel shirt of red, blue, and yellow over blue turtleneck over white shirt with brown wool socks over blue-gray socks over black socks in damp mud brown hiking boots.

“Mary,” I said, “Can you see me? I am in color again.”

“Honey, we are beautiful.”

“Aren’t we, though?”

Willow stuck her furry face over the back of the car seat and licked my cheek. She thought so, too.

 A good year is on its way. I couldn’t wait to break the news to Guinnez.

~ January 2008

Travel Over Time and Distance

(Fifth and final installment of the Michigan to New Mexico travel log; complete series on Zinta's blog)

Time travel doesn't require a machine. None more gadgetry than an automobile, that is. I hop into mine to head 70 miles north of Santa Fe to Taos, New Mexico. It is a trip in time. The road itself whets the appetite for entering into a different world, winding through mountains, through tiny pueblo villages, until I reach Taos, a smaller version of Santa Fe. I'm overfed on art galleries and shops by now, certainly my wallet has had enough, but I stop for a meal before still heading north a few minutes more to Taos Pueblo. I look for a restaurant where the cars all have local plates, avoiding the tourist traps. Found it. No ambiance, no style, but the food is what I expected it to be: authentic and mouthwatering Southwestern fare.

Then I leave this world to enter one that dates a thousand years ago. Taos Pueblo is a village where Native Americans have lived longer than any other community in North America - about 150 Taos Indians still live there today. The pueblos of the village were built sometime between 1000 and 1450 A.D.  and they haven't changed since then. The pueblos are all built of adobe – earth mixed with water and straw and dried in the sun to form bricks. The buildings are all low and squat, thick-walled, windows and doors small and low to the ground. To jar the eye back into reality, an occasional car is parked next to a pueblo. I've left my own outside the pueblo community, as we are allowed to only walk down the dusty and narrow streets, but I stop to ponder the Hummer parked next to a tiny pueblo. Mostly, there is nothing in the streets to remind one of the world outside. Most of the pueblos are closed and silent, a mystery to the modern world, but a few doors are open to the inside tiny rooms, hand-lettered signs stating, "Open" for business. Stooping to miss the door jamb, I enter one, less intrigued with the goods for sale than the space itself and the squat little white-haired Taos Indian woman sitting on a bench wedged into the corner. Her smile is as bright as it is wide, her lined brown face glowing with warmth. She tells me about the necklaces she has made, the silver beads interspersed with colored glass or turquoise nuggets, and points out the tomahawks, wooden with colored feathers and leather cords, and carefully laid out on a small table – photographs of a white-haired man she identifies as her brother. "He's a dancer," she says, beaming. I ask if I might sit a while on the front step and perhaps talk a little with her? She nods, her face like a sun-dried apple, cheeks flushed pink. Tell me about when you and your brother were children here, I say, and she does, and I sit in the cool of her tiny room built of the earth, and listen, listen, traveling back on her words.

I wander the Taos Pueblo village for another hour, the sun beating down on my head, only a little cooler for my Santa Fe hat. The slow and easy pace of people in this area makes sense to me, as it quickly becomes second nature to move slowly in the southern sun. The air smells of dust. Two dogs play in a patch of grass, taunting each other to a chase.

On the drive back to Santa Fe, the sky begins to turn color, the bright blue darkening to an ever deeper gray. But there is one more place I must go. When I reach the town of Espanola, instead of continuing on to Santa Fe, I turn a sharp right and up north again on county road 84, traveling through the town of Abiquiu and on into the orange-red mountains that surround Ghost Ranch. Georgia O'Keeffe, desert artist, spent her last years here, moving to New Mexico permanently after her husband, photographer Alfred Stieglitz, died in New York. It's been a long day, a long drive, and as I watch the sky darken, a sudden flash of lightning zag down towards the red peaks, splitting the sky in two, I wonder at the wisdom of driving back into the mountains again, but it is my last day here, and I know I would regret not having made the effort if I were to return home without visiting Ghost Ranch. 

I do not regret it. Passing Abiquiu, I open my car windows to feel the cool, fresh mountain air on my arm and face. I see Pedernal Mountain to my left, Georgia's favorite mountain, tall and separate from the range, flat-topped and deep blue. The road narrows and winds between red cliffs, and it belongs to me, borrowed from the artist, whose road home this was for the last 30 years of her life. A wooden sign points to Ghost Ranch, and I turn in, my car rattling around on the orange and dusty gravel road. I stop at the sight of a small and weathered log cabin. Such places tug at me, at my heart. A lifelong dream… and the window is open to the mountain air; it's all I can do not to poke my head in for a look around. I have no idea what this cabin houses or has housed. I'm not sure I need to know. I am alone here, and I pull the car over, and walk the plain at the base of the red mountains, Pedernal off in the distance, circling the cabin, imagining myself here. My lungs fill with this delicious air, so cool, so fresh. Just beyond the mountains, another zag of white lightning flashes.

The museum is closed, the ranch is shut to public, it is too late in the day, but I am content to merely walk the grounds, place my hand against the cool earth of the adobe ranch wall, lean against the wooden fence, walk a path here and there, watching and listening for Georgia's ghost, Georgia's muse. The muse still resides here. I imagine Georgia's two chow dogs following her across this dusty ground, their thick red ruffs matching their surroundings. I imagine her cutting greens in her garden for a salad. I imagine her standing just here, where I stand now, watching Pedernal in the distance. She had said once: "It is my private mountain, it belongs to me. God told me if I painted it enough, I could have it." And so it is - hers. Only tonight, for a cool evening moment, it is also mine.

The sky breaks open as I drive home to Santa Fe. Thunder cracks and sizzles just overhead, and rain pours from the sky in a sudden waterfall, so that, back on the highway, cars slow or stop on the shoulder to wait it out. I keep driving. I have an interview yet to do for work tonight, and I watch the clock on my dashboard. Dark gray clouds roil overhead, wrestling each other, tumbling and massing, and the lightning flashes again and again. My wipers beat a rapid rhythm across my windshield, accomplishing little. A thrill rushes through me. The sky is alive. The dusty ground opens itself like unfolding petals to accept the fresh kiss of rain. I open my car window for just a moment to stick my hand outside, palm up. Palm to sky, as if in prayer, open and waiting for the gift of new life.

***

Two more work interviews in Albuquerque, and it is over. This trip. That is, all but for the drive back to Michigan. Something sags in my heart, sighing. Even the scenery as I hit the road seriously again has changed, lost its magical draw. I make it to Texas in one afternoon, and the landscape changes almost instantly as I cross the state line: flat, burned out, dry and barren. My dashboard thermometer announces 101 degrees. A billboard jumps out from the flat land to announce my approach to Amarillo, Texas, where a restaurant promises 72 ounce steaks… free. No doubt only if one is gluttonous to actually finish such a slab of cow. I roll my eyes. It must be that the American concept of super-sizing began in this state, much to our downfall.

A night in Shamrock, Texas, and I escape into the air-conditioned interior of the hotel as quickly as possible. Even so, my skin prickles with heat in the short distance from car to interior of building. Blood beats heavily in my temples. An ache begins just in back of my eyes. The next morning I wake with the headache still firmly in place.

St. Louis, Missouri is my next night stop, and by now the thermometer has reached 102 degrees. Missouri is misery, I think glumly. In my final morning on the road, I pass the silver arc over the city. An impossibly thin arc, and perhaps I remember wrong, that I've actually been up inside that arc years ago, can't be possible, but yes, with one of my most favorite travel companions, even as the pod that carried us up to the top made me cringe with claustrophobia to be caught inside such a silvery wire. Somewhere, tucked away, are photos to prove the moment. But now, I only nod at the silver gleam in harsh sun, and pass on.

The pull of home, like nearing a magnet, is making itself known. Even so, heat fatigue bears down on me. My eyes grow heavy, my temples pulse, and there are moments that I am no longer even conscious of the road. Tired, tired. These miles are too well known, dullness overtakes me. I stop in Indianapolis for lunch, hoping to revive myself, but the meal only makes my eyes heavier.

One droopy eye on the road, I punch keys on my cell phone to call my daughter and beg distraction to keep me on the road and out of the ditch. She happily chats away with me, and some miles pass, reinvigorated with our chatter. But my battery is low, I have to let her go, and I have only myself and I to keep me company on the road, straight and flat and dull, nothing more than the occasional orange construction cone to perk me up. Yet there is no stopping me. I refuse to stop in Fort Wayne, Indiana. I refuse to stop on the border of Michigan. I am too close now to stop anywhere. If my eyes nearly roll back into my head at Marshall, Michigan, it makes no sense to me to not make the last 35 miles. Images of the journey behind me swim in my mind… the gentle green swell of Kansas, the Rocky Mountain range, sitting on a boulder to watch Boulder far below, sipping tea at the Dushanbe tea house, haggling with the hat maker in the Santa Fe plaza, tasting lobster at the Sleeping Dog Tavern, lighting up a Hoyo de Monterrey at Rio Chama's, walking the path of Georgia, and I run the memories, the scenes, through my mind until I have revisited my entire journey all over again.  

And then, I am home. My little blue house in Kalamazoo, Michigan. My own red-furred chow pup leaps into the air when I walk in the door, again and again, and his pink and black spotted tongue laps at my face every time he can reach, until I am fully awake and laughing. My cats tangle around my ankles, purring like little bulldozers. I drop my suitcases at the door. I toss my Santa Fe hat onto the sofa. Unpacking can wait. For now, I drop to the floor and sit among my furry family, absorbing the unconditional adoration and the purring welcome home. 

~August 2007