My lead dog was a lesbian - Brian Patrick O'Donoghue [40]
“Go get ’em, Joe!”
He flashed a familiar weathered smile.
Sparks shot upward from a roaring log. Heat had melted a circular wall, six feet high, in a surrounding snow drift. Dewey Halverson, his face lit by flames reflecting off the glassy walls, had the other Finger Lake volunteers in hysterics with his impressions of other mushers.
The checkpoint consisted of a cluster of tents in a clearing between tall spruce trees. Accommodations for mushers were sparse. We had a floorless tent, heated by a small sheet-metal stove. Spruce boughs served as bedding.
After tending my dogs, I headed for the tent carrying a fat ice wad of used booties. Most were castoffs from other teams, which I’d snagged en route. My own booty situation was approaching a crisis. The icy trail had already shredded several hundred, wiping out my reserves. Examining my frozen assortment in the mushers’ tent, I picked out several dozen booties in good shape and burned the rest.
Alan Garth, Chase, and I talked by the stove, which hissed with drying gloves and booties. Mark Williams was sleeping soundly nearby.
Chase mentioned that he had never, in all his Iditarods, drawn a decent starting position.
“Yeah,” I said, “I got lucky, but I didn’t know what to do with it.”
Herrman was off in the woods by himself. He couldn’t bear for others to witness his distress. First it had been the heat. Now his dogs were sick. Only 11 dogs left, and 9, NINE, had bloody diarrhea. It looked to Sepp like they had swollen tonsils as well. The German had a theory about the cause. Living at his remote cabin in the Brooks Range, his dogs hadn’t been exposed to the viruses common in populated areas. They had never had a chance to build immunity to the diseases carried by the other teams. Up north, the trapper depended on no one but himself. He didn’t need or want any help now. Those nosy Iditarod officials could just mind their own business.
For 36 hours Sepp kept the fire going under his cook pot as he camped near Finger Lake. Using snow melted by the gallon, the trapper nursed and hand-fed his poor sick puppies.
Despair was overwhelming Barry Lee. Twelve hours had passed since he had set out from Skwentna on the 45-mile run to Finger Lake. He wasn’t absolutely sure, but he doubted anyone was behind him. Every team in this race was faster, and nobody was wasting as much time. What was I thinking of taking so many naps? he asked himself. Yet he felt tired even now. Bone weary. Oh, what was he going to do? This wasn’t just wilderness; it was an emotional wasteland. Tears ran down the musher’s cheeks.
Suddenly Lee sensed a light over his shoulder. Stopping his team, he slowly turned, expecting to see the headlamp from an approaching musher. The light came from no earthly source. A corona reached across the heavens. Shimmering bands formed an arching circle in the sky, reminding the musher of a great circus tent. The lights were an intense, dynamic presence. And so beautiful. Barry divined a message in the display: God had staged this Northern Lights show to let him know everything was going to be OK.
Anchoring his team with two snow hooks, Lee lay on his back in the snow, reveling in the glorious celestial fire. Tears again streamed down his face. This time, tears of joy. “Thank you, God,” whispered Barry Lee, staring up at the wondrous colors.
He was still rejoicing when a real headlamp appeared from behind. It was John Ace, a thick-bearded, barrel-chested musher from Sutton making his sixth run to Nome.
“How far in?” Lee asked.
“Oh, not too far,” said Ace. “Two miles, maybe three.”
Trailing the other musher through a thick stand of tall spruce, Lee sensed a change within himself. Whatever else happened, however grim the situation might get, he would never again feel so low. He had company on this, on any trail. His faith was confirmed. How could it be otherwise? At the moment of Barry Lee’s greatest need, a message had come.
CHAPTER 5
Storm on the Mountain
Leaving the campsite at Finger Lake, I mushed into an inky void. The Northern Lights had faded, and