It is hard to believe that it was just a week ago Friday that I was following Sepp's bobbing headlamp down a narrow, wooded trail to his cabin. It was about half a mile downhill, and I was bundled up way too much for the mild November night. We came around a corner, and a huge home loomed out of the dark. In the starlight, it was a giant shadow against the snow. As we got closer, I saw that it was only half-built (though beautiful) and on reaching the porch, saw that it was straw-bale construction.
Sepp opened up the conversation by telling me that his dog team had hauled all the supplies here over the last seven years. In the wan light of our headlamps, he showed me the sled he was going to lend me. It was old, several pieces were lashed together with string and duct tape. Two major sections looked like they had been carved out of tree branches with a large, dull ax in the dark. The brush-bow was only attached on one side. Sepp tipped the sled up and tapped the white plastic. "Runners are good. Almost new." I shrugged. "Looks great." Beggars can't be choosers.
We hauled the sled outside and brought a much newer, nicer sled into the cabin for storage while he was out of town. Back outside again, we walked down another trail. I heard dogs bark. "The others are gone. Only two left." There was a black dot against the snow, a butterball of a dog who leapt on her house to give Sepp enthusiastic kisses between suspicious barks at me. This was Rsta. The other dog was on the other side of the yard, a faint movement on white-on-white. Arwyn. She didn't bark, but paced suspiciously and didn't take her eyes off me. He told me he'd be back sometime in March to collect them.
"So ... you'll come back tomorrow morning and take them?"
"Yeah. I just ... I need to find some dog houses."
"Ok. Ten o'clock, I think it is light enough."
"Sure."
"Can you find your way back to the road."
"Yeah." I wasn't sure, but he clearly didn't want to walk back out.
"Ok. See you."
I started walking, kept it uphill, and eventually found the road and my car.
The next morning found Sepp hooking his dogs up to the wreck of a sled and sending me running behind them all the way up the hill back to the road. He put Rsta in front, saying she would do better there, although, "neither of them are leaders." At the road, he gave the station wagon a long look. "They've never been in the back of a car before ... they have hardly seen cars or been around them much. They will be very afraid. So, hold on tight or they will run."
He explained that these two-year-olds had been with him in the Brooks Range on his remote trap lines for most of their short lives. No cars. No houses. No other people. Just Sepp and the mountains and the trail. Everything was going to be new to them.
We got the sled strapped down to the roof of the Subaru and he followed me to our cabin. I wasn't sure if his gentle handling of the sled was due to care for its well-being or concern that it would fall apart. On ensuring that both dogs were secured in our yard, he gave them a quick scratch behind the ears, gave me an imploring look, and was gone. He had a flight to Santiago in three hours. And Chile had an earthquake in it's future.
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