starting

It's hard to start writing about things that have already started, but they have. So I will start with tonight.

Tonight, it is warm. Too warm for November only two hundred miles south of the arctic circle. The snow on the roof of our cabin has melted and dripped onto the stairs, and there is standing water pooled in the ice there. I have just arrived home from my first day at a new job. I am overwhelmed by it, although I am trying to trust this will fade with time and familiarity. I was there for ten hours today, and it is an hour from our home. Twelve hours gone. And there are dogs to feed.

Sawyer, under the trees across from the porch, greets me with a single yip and a dance at the end of her chain. She is full of energy tonight. She wants to run. I can barely walk. I go inside and change, carefully hanging my uniform high out of range of dog hair, start the kettle to boil. Now in jeans and muck boots, I take the steaming kettle to the porch and mix three bowls of dog food with the hot water. They yelp when they hear the sound, but settle down to wait. I leave it to cool and soak, and head down to the dogs with a shovel and a bucket.

Scooping the day's leavings takes hardly five minutes, even though I have to search behind Leo's house to find where he left his. I am still unsure of how he gets back there, but the proof, as they say, is in the pudding. Food soaking and chore done, I turn off my headlamp and head back into the trees where Leo and Dottie wait. Leo, for the first time since he arrived, doesn't shy away from my hand. Instead, he pushes gently into it and lays down on the soft, melting snow, almost relaxed. In the deep silence, I wonder what has changed. I carefully wrap my hands around his head, finding the hard-to-scratch places, gently, slowly. This is a moment of asked-for contact I didn't expect, after weeks of shying and flinching. But it doesn't last. After a minute, he tires of the contact and jumps up to begin pacing and watching the sky. He is bursting with energy, and with hope after two days this week of running badly rutted trails on soft, punchy snow. They were bad runs, but they were runs and that is what he lives for. He is coiled for it, waiting. It is too warm tonight to give him what he needs. And there are no trails safe enough to run at night, not yet. But there will be, I promise him. There will be night runs soon when you forget everything but the trail and the stars and the wind. I try to have hope, myself. Because it is warm, and there is still hardly any snow. It is hard to have hope when the snow is melting in November.

I move to Dottie, kneel on the hay that has spilled from her house. She butts her head into my chest and lays the weight of her body across my knees. She collapses into me in a full body cuddle that I have only ever experienced in the embrace of an Alaskan husky. Watching Leo pace over my shoulder, I rub Dottie down and scratch all her favorite spots. She licks my chin, burrows under my arm, wags her tail softly across the unfrozen ground. I sit in the dark under the trees and the weight of the long day away from home, of the newness of the job, the length of the drive, the myriad of new faces to remember and protocols to follow and schedules to arrange fade into the soft snow and the stars and the still-shedding coat of the soft creature burrowing into my arms, and they fade also into the dark, powerful shadow pacing next to us, into his deep need for the woods and the trail ahead. His need and my need, but that is a longer story.

Sawyer is next, and she tolerates my advances but her eyes are on the food still soaking on the back porch. She is a spring, pacing, watching. She gives me a quick kiss, but makes it clear where her priorities lie. I bring her dish first. Leo and Dottie howl in protest. Almost before I am done dolling out food, it is gone and they are settling in for the night. Each of them outside their houses, laying on straw under the stars. It is too warm to sleep indoors they say as they circle and paw and settle down for the lengthening night. And I agree.