Environmental Stewardship Commission (MEESC)

As Skye and I were walking the back road down to the river boat landing, a black bear came tumbling out of the brush about fifty feet in front of us. All three of us froze in that quick stare of recognition. Then the bear bolted into a full run straight across the road and into the brush on the far side of the road. Skye's hair stood bristled along her back and down her rigid legs. Then she charged and hit the end of her leash pulling me down the road to the bear's exit route. She was ready for the chase if only she could get rid of that dead weight at the other end of the leash. She jumped and howled at the end of her leash. Finally with her hair still bristling she relaxed to take in the full scent of the bear on the path and relented as I dragged her down the road to the landing.

As we made our way down to the landing I was thinking how nice it would be to take her along on our canoe trips. She would keep the bears away. But then, we could never let her run free off the leash. The two of us would have to be bound to each other for the whole of the trip. Neither of us would go for that. The problem is that when she is free from the leash or pen she runs off to return when it suits her. We've heard stories from others who know sled dogs and they say much the same.

This is one of the differences between sled dogs and other domestic dogs. I think there is a kind of secret understanding between sled dogs and mushers that asks us to put our notions about dog obedience aside. The musher should know that in spite of our pens, leashes, harnesses and ropes, that the dogs are basically free. In other words when Skye and I are face to face there is this understanding: that no one controls her completely, and all acts of compliance and discipline are purely because she has chosen this way for the time being, but she can certainly change her mind.

Gary Paulson tells the story of moving into the kennel to prepare his dogs for the Ididarod race. Following the writer Farley Mowett in his book Never Cry Wolf, Gary established his own territory by marking his boundaries with his urine. As the wolves in Mowett's story soon remarked the boundaries with their urine, so did the dogs in the kennel. In fact, even while he was harnessing the dogs he could be suddenly dragged over to his spot to have the dog remark it. At one point he wrote that he got in a contest with his lead dog, Cookie. "She covered me, I covered her, she covered me, I covered her and on and on until I was out and couldn't p--- more. Whereupon she covered me once more, scratched back with her feet and walked away, done and done."

When I returned with Skye from the river landing, I pulled out my Bible and reread Psalm 8, just to see if it said what I thought it said. "What is man that you should be mindful of him; the son of man that you should seek him out? Then there it was: " you gave him mastery over all the works of your hands; and put all things under his feet: all sheep and oxen, even wild beast of the field…" and so on. "Hah," I thought, "This writer spent too much time in Jerusalem singing in the choir. "Come with me," I said, and I took our ancestor by the hand and led him down to the river. Sure enough the eagle was perched across the bay high in the burned out pine, and the loon cast its wail upon the silence. Our ancestor listened. He was young and dark skinned with deep brown eyes that searched up and down the water front. He didn't miss a thing, and his soft smile opened into the biggest grin possible. And he looked at me with those wonderful eyes and said," Maybe I did exaggerate a little. Maybe we aren't really masters of anything. Would you have preferred something like this?"

"I celebrate myself, and sing myself."

"Whoa," I said, "how do you know Walt Whitman?" "Do you think that you are the only one who reads?" he quipped. And then with a sly smile he continued,

"Divine I am inside and out, I make holy whatever I
  Touch or am touched from,
The scent of these arm-pits aroma finer than prayer
  This head more than churches, bibles and all the creeds,"

ll I could do was sit down at the river dumbfounded. I had questions, lots of them, but I didn't know what they were. I just sat there. Then slowly I came to realize that it was just Skye and I looking out over the water.

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