for donation. These added rations meant far fewer drives north to Anchorage for dog food, which provided me more time to write, and had the added benefit of always making tails wag when these meals were offered in addition to the regular kibble.
My father, Joe Robertia Sr., deserves recognition too, for planting in me as a child the seeds of literary love that eventually grew to fruition in the form of becoming a freelance writer, and now author. Exhausted from the heavy demands of being a true blue-collar workingman, my dad somehow always rallied enough energy to take me to the comic shop, local bookstore, or library instead of just plopping me in front of a TV.
I am very appreciative of the editing efforts of Monica Mullet, Emma Mullet, Travis Wright, Amanda Burg, Kyle Ferguson, Kim Morgan, Ray Lee, and other witty members of my local writing group: The Kenai Peninsula Finer Things Club. Dave Atcheson also gets credit for giving me some writing tips and answering many of my questions about navigating the long and twisty trail to finding a publisher.
My wife, Colleen, deserves the lead dog’s share of credit for this book, for not only passing on so much of her mushing knowledge to me, but for always being a partner in this unorthodox lifestyle. Living with forty dogs has never been easy, but from the abysmal lows to the Everest highs, the cumulative experience has been an unforgettable journey, and one I’m glad we endeavored together. I simply couldn’t have survived it without such a physically and emotionally strong woman, and she’s the only one I want by my side. Cole also read and edited countless drafts of all these stories, and stalwartly encouraged me to never give up on believing this book would eventually see the light of day.
I’m also obliged to my daughter, Lynx, the littlest pup in our pack, for continually reinspiring me with her own love of nature, flair with all animals, and ability to enthusiastically roll with a lifestyle revolving around so many dogs and dog-related chores.
Unquestionably though, I am most grateful to our dogs, for all the adventures we’ve shared, for showing me so much amazing country I wouldn’t have seen without them, and for inspiring me to write this book and, even before that, for revealing to me that I had a story to tell—their story.
Introduction
Alaska—untamed, unrestrained, the edge of the wild. It’s been said this Last Frontier is made up of people who don’t fit in but fit here better than anywhere else. I can’t speak for everyone, but this maxim certainly resonated with my wife, Colleen, and me. In the Lower 48 we always sensed something was wrong. Not with us, but with everyone else. The get-ahead materialism, the I-need-more consumerism; we believed life was about doing—and being—so much more. We felt a calling, a hunger not satiated in a world addicted to lattes and laptops, governed by traffic and time clocks, and constructed of concrete and steel. This mutual feeling brought us north in search of something, but to what, we didn’t know at the time.
Where we’d settle remained undetermined, as was how long we would stay, or what we would do for income. We only knew we were drawn by a deep aspiration to live a more purposeful life, closer to nature, and filled with adventure. In a stroke of serendipity, the first place we secured was a stamp-sized cabin with no running water in a tiny town called Kasilof. Little did we know, the area we moved to—and have since called home—was a mushing mecca.
Soon after settling in, we discovered teams of sled dogs blew by several times a day—their paws churning up the fresh powder, their pink tongues dangling, and hot breath billowing into the cold air. We quickly learned that within three square miles of our new home lived half a dozen mushers, cumulatively owning more than 300 huskies between them. Sitting on our porch at dusk, the wails washing over us were more than a wave of sound; we felt flooded by the tidal surge of full-throated howls from the various dog packs.
As lifelong animal lovers, we were immediately awestruck by the camaraderie between human and dog pack, intrigued by the joy of purpose they both seemed to share, and inspired to learn more. Within a few months we were apprenticing under other mushers and had gotten our first few sled dogs, primarily rogues, runts, and rejects from other kennels, as well as several pups from local shelters. We’ve never bought a single one, and initially we got what we paid for. They were a motley bunch of untrained and nearly uncontrollable hyperactive huskies. We had no leaders and to gain any kind of forward momentum, one of us had to run down the trail in front of the raucous mob.
But, over time, they learned. Leaders emerged, their conditioning improved, and a team coalesced. Within a few years we consistently had forty dogs living with us (and a high of forty-five at our peak, before a few old-timers passed on). Vacations ended and the bank account drained as every penny we had went to specially formulated kibble, veterinary care, and inordinate amounts of cold weather gear and mushing equipment. Every moment we weren’t at work we spent in the company of our huskies.
We forged the life we longed for, one spent almost entirely outdoors and that moved with the rhythm of the seasons—a simple life, but far from easy. In spring, we tilled the soil and sowed a garden, as well as felled trees, cut the logs into rounds, and stacked the lumber to feed our woodstove when the weather turned cold. In summer we turned to the sea, setting gillnets to snare salmon, stocking chest freezers full with the silver slabs that we and the dogs dined on as our major source of protein. Fall was spent hunting, harvesting our vegetable crops, and picking berries and boletes, followed by days of jarring, jamming, and storing away as much of the wild edibles as we could fit into our larder and whatever space remained in the freezers.
Winter was the season we lived for most though. Despite subsisting in a land where nights are so long the darkness lasts much of the day, we relished the intimacy that developed through months of traveling with our dog teams, more often from sunset to sunrise than the other way around (due to maintaining day jobs to support our dog habit). Whether in the slanted light of day, or under every phase of the moon and the enormous star-crowded skies of the evening, we journeyed hundreds—sometimes thousands of miles—each year with our canine companions, exploring the backcountry that makes up the bulk of Alaska.
Together, we stared out over snow-blanketed mountains, their blue-hued ridges fading lighter the further each fold of the landscape stretched to the horizon, then traveled the range from end to end. In the lowland valleys between them, we snaked along the serpentine curves of icy rivers and traversed seemingly endless expanses of frozen lakes and buried muskegs. Our faces, confettied in the cold, white currency of the season, hid the smiles beneath.
Whenever weary, we’d hunker down in the silent stillness and shelter provided within forests of dense spruce, basking for a few hours in the crackle and orange glow of a makeshift campfire before eventually curling up with the dogs, sleeping together for warmth and comfort.
Despite the perpetually inhospitable cold and the miles that separated us from more civilized society, in the hours and days of self-imposed isolation where we shared space only with each other and our dogs, we felt like we were in the best place we’d ever been or would be. In these far-flung locales where the only audible utterances of life were the soft panting of husky breath and the voices in our own heads, we were in our element. We felt happiness, experienced what it meant to us to be alive, and we found what we had come so far north searching for: our true selves.
This doesn’t mean our lives as mushers were always bliss. All dog owners have their fair share of problems, and at times our struggles seemed compounded fortyfold. It’s understandable that most folks tend to stay tight-lipped about the minor calamities and major catastrophes that constantly occur. Sure, tales are legion of all the things that can go wrong during the Iditarod, but few and far between are all the sordid stories that begin to accumulate from a life shared with forty dogs the other fifty-one weeks of the year.
Still, I believe it is the misfortunes of our dog-filled lives that define us, the misadventures we remember most vividly, and the
