leaving the dream...

...and on to the next. that's the beauty of it. "The dream' is always out there waiting to be realized.

Its spring here in the arctic. The sun rises at 6 am and sets at 11 pm and its really only dusky in between. Days are sunny and warm and everything is melting really fast. Tundra is poking out in big patches through the trails. The dogyard is turning from its winter white into brown, mucky slush. The dogs still want to jump up and play even though they are covered with the muck and its no longer so appealing to give them big doggie hugs. Flies are hatching in our room by the thousands and all the meat and fish are thawed and mushy. We have spent the last two weeks cutting down dead spruce trees for next fall/ winter's wood supply and hauling them on the sno go sled back to the house. In a lot of ways it feels like it is exactly the right time to go. And yet...

Puppies are being born left and right. Ed is starting to break last year's pups. The blue skies and sunshine lure us out to play and explore for far more hours than you should really stay awake. Its hard to leave and know that this place will carry on without us just as it has for years before we came- a blip in the cycle that continues here.

Its hard to think of how to say goodbye to the dogs and find some closure to this experience. The dogs don't understand that we are really leaving. How is time and happiness and friendship measured for them? They will run for other folks from here on out and they will (most likely) be just as great for them, they are no longer "our" little guys and its hard to let them go.

We spent today boxing and bagging our stuff and emptying our little room. We will drive the sno go one last time across the still-frozen lake and back to town early tomorrow morning before the daily melting starts to turn the snow to mashed potatoes. We'll wave a final good bye and thank you to the dogs as that is all we can do. A wise friend of mine once said, "its not how you say goodbye that counts, its how you spent all the time leading up to the good bye that really matters." We hope its a clear day when we fly out so we can look down on our "home for a little while" and soak in the vastness that we were a tiny part of.

Enjoy some puppy photos as promised. :)


take care, m and j





Sincerely,
Michael Raffaeli and Jen Brown

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spring break - arctic style

Early in the winter, Ed had mentioned we might get some time off in April to do a little trip of our own. With all of the work on the ranch (what a reporter called where we live, though we don't wear cowboy hats nor has a truck ever driven here), we sort of thought a vacation would turn out like the sauna- a great idea, but just not realistic and not likely to come to fruition any time soon. We put the idea out of our minds and just planned on taking a week off between working here and the start of our Outward Bound season.

 

Ed returned to Camp from the Iditarod pretty exhausted, having again placed in the top ten (6^th) which is impressive given that not everyone even finishes the race, and still plenty good enough to help pay the dog bills. He also received the Leonard Seppala Award which is a high honor. All of the veterinarians that check the dogs throughout the race choose one musher (out of sixty-something this year) at the end of the race for the best treatment of their dogs. Ed's dogs had diarrhea (no, not because of any of the meat that we cut or bagged thank goodness!) for the start of the race and he nursed them through it and kept them healthy and running well.

 

So, when offhandedly in the kitchen Ed mentioned we should take a week off and go to the mountains (what, with wood to cut, nets to fish, dogs to feed, poop to scoop??) we were a little surprised, almost stunned. Of course, we had to fish before we left, though Quinn did "offer" to take care of the nets while we were gone. It didn't take us long to let the idea of an adventure soak in (and though we call it a vacation, it was definitely not going to be tropical with froofy drinks and lawn chairs). We perused maps, checked weather, and started planning a little ten day tour to the mountains with two teams of 12 dogs each and skis to explore the Baird Mountains. Quickly we threw together our stuff- sleeping system, eating system, meals, etc.- which has become routine for us in some ways given our lifestyle.

 

On a crystal clear and very cold day we left Camp (home camp that is) and headed upriver to get up into the mountains. Our sleds were heavy and we slogged out of the yard. Within two hours, however, we had started traveling over country neither us nor more than half our dogs had ever seen before. For all our yearlings, this was going to be their first overnight trip away from the kennel. Like students on one of our courses, some were nervous and some got more excited. 

 

Traveling over glare ice on the Noatak River the runners of the sled scratched along. Turning onto new trails that wound through tundra plants exposed from the wind and daily gain of solar radiation, we inched on. We headed up the gentle Hugo's valley to a pass and took a much needed rest for an hour, snacking the dogs on a half pound of Hi Protein meat chunks.  After two more hours of running we finally dropped into the Squirrel River watershed. It was here that it seemed like it dawned on the dogs that we were not turning back towards home and we were not going back to Camp that night. Ten miles from where Ed has a high camp for his training runs, the dogs slowed. Plowing through softer snow in the higher reaches of the Squirrel we frequently hopped off the sleds and ran beside them or pushed to keep the pace going. We started looking for places to bivi for the night. We took a little break to check the map, but with the short rest the dogs seemed once again excited to get on the trail. We pushed on, the sky still light in the spring Alaska evening. After a little more than fifty miles and over ten hours of traveling we arrived at high camp in an amazing nook in the mountains. Ed chose this spot because it almost always has running water, even at forty below. He uses it every year. It's funny, that out here, people claim different spots on public land (or is it Native owned? We are still not sure given the land settlement issues between the Alaska National Interst Lands Conservation Act and the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. See http://www.npca.org/media_center/fact_sheets/anilca.html to gain some background) as theirs for hunting, trapping, etc. and everyone else knows whose camp is where. What is most impressive is that really its just millions of acres of open space in the mountains and seems to be hardly used by anyone except the locals.

 

We attempted to settle in to our temporary home and clipped our confused, young dogs on to the picket line (a long chain with short leashes attached) stretched between the trees. Tofu just howled and howled in pure panic that he wasn't back at his doghouse and it was dark and cold and he was hungry and tired. We were too. Grumpily we snapped at each other just trying to get things done.  We needed to get some calories on board and sip some tea, but we couldn't get the stoves to work safely. Both of our stoves just poured fuel out of their pumps because the rubber "o" rings were frozen. Dark now, we realized just how cold the already cold day had become without that big fiery ball in the sky. A bit flustered we managed to feed the dogs and then retire to the tent. We munched on chocolate, nuts, bars, and other yummy Trader Joes snacks (thanks!) having to eat a second meal in the middle of the night to keep from shivering too much. We woke up to huge frost feathers covering the inside of our tent, some hanging down several inches from where our breath above us froze. I don't think I have ever been so cold camping (it was at least 40 below zero if not colder). We laughed that it was our own little Outward Bound experience. We also realized that it was exactly the Alaska experience we were looking for when we peered out the tent door at the rising golden moon, white snowy mountains, and a wavering green curtain of soft green Aurora.

 

We spent most of our days exploring from high camp, traveling up the valleys and drainages surrounding us, some days on skis, some days on dogsled, some days on foot. The mountains were blown to bare rock on their northern aspects collecting the season's snow into windpacked bowls on the leeward slopes onto weak layers of dry snow- perfect avalanche conditions. So for those who were about to be jealous of our sick backcountry turns, rest easy as we have no tales of figure eights in pristine pow pow of the AK backcountry. We did, however, do some sick skinning around on hardpack, to some really beautiful spots. Camping in the cold and with the dogs forced a relaxed pace for us as we had to spend a few hours every day just making hot food for the dogs on a fire. And there was no sense getting up before noon because it was too darn cold to be fun until the sun finally peeked into our little valley and hit the tent.

 

Winter turned to spring on our journey and the last few days were warm and cloudy and a bit snowy. The warm weather was nice, but we started to worry a bit about overflow, especially since we were going to travel a different route out along the Agashashook River. Overflow is a natural phenomenon that occurs on rivers in cold places, where fast moving water under the ice flows up through cracks or the edges along the banks and over the top of the ice layer, especially when the weather warms up. Overflow can be just a thin coating or a few feet deep- not a fun prospect when you are winter camping to think of submerging your feet in cold water. We have heard dramatic tales of snow gos sunk forever in overflow, of it sneaking up on you hidden under a layer of snow, of suckholes on rivers that you can disappear in?we have been afraid of overflow. We finally had to face our fear. We slushed through overflow many times, up to our knees at times, yelling at the dogs to keep moving forward and pull us and the sled out, which they did every time. The dogs don't like it either, it is wet and no fun, but not so scary now, and if you are quick, you can avoid getting wet by hopping up on the sled until the dogs make it through.

 

The big moment of the journey came on a mountain pass overlooking the Agashashok River (the Aggie is the shortened version), and this will tell who really reads through our whole email updates?(yes, we too are guilty skimming long email updates from friends, so we do it out of fun). Michael asked Jen to marry him and she said yes. A dog named Gringo wore the engagement ring (that Michael carved for her out of a caribou antler) on his dog bootie. That's who you see with us in the picture attached. No, we don't have a date or a place or a whole lot of details worked out yet (though it will be in the next 18 years for sure), we have been too busy playing in the mountains on vacation!

 

On our way out down the Aggie, we ran on shiny, blue glare ice, smoother than any ice skating rink. The dogs are not graceful skaters and avoid it when they can. In our case it meant being dragged onto exposed gravel bars, through willow patches, over bumpy tundra and then back out on the ice to slip and slide and scramble with the sleds for footing with traction again. It was a relief to make it back to a staked trail that led towards home. And just like many of our students, the dogs were relieved to make it back to their doghouses and home cooking. Admittedly, we were also a little glad to make it home, having seen some incredible open country, big mountains, and big rivers. We gee'ed into the dogyard with big smiles on our goggled, scarf covered, frostnipped, windburned faces.

 

Sincerely,
Michael Raffaeli and Jen Brown

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I put my meat suit on (What the hell is a meat suit? and why would you need one?), carefully slipping into the navy blue coveralls so as not to touch its tainted outer skin. I zip it up and button it as high as it will go in an attempt to conceal any exposed flesh. I originally bought the garment as a joke, as a costume item that I might wear out on the playa at Burning Man. But now, I think I understand the purpose of coveralls, and it is not about style or making a statement. I grab my warm hat that never ever goes to bed with me (anymore), the clear protection glasses, a re-breather mask, and an old bandana that serves to wipe the glasses clean.

The portable Honda generator sits on a little sled so that it can be hauled around to wherever you need it. I grab its sled leash and drag it out of the workshop/our front door, down the snow mobile tracked walkway that prevents us from slipping down the ramp when it gets icy. The green extension cord, once neatly coiled, now trails behind me as I fumble with my mask and fogged up glasses. The generator doesn't slide so well on the rubber track. I jerk it to pull it to the snow where it glides easier. Ten below zero today; shouldn't be so bad for cutting meat.



The hum of the generator is muffled by my earplugs, so that I can hear all the funny noises I make but never realize I’m making them. It’s almost as if I’m in that shell that you pick up on the beach, the one you turn to your ear and hear the ocean. The Makita table saw whirrs. The zipping of its blade tells me the status of my cutting, the state of my medium, and is a constant reminder of the danger that exists every pass I make with meat over the blade raised to three and a half inches.

The week before the Iten’s annual Iditarod Meat Cutting Party I broke the saw. This is the second table saw we broke since we came here. Really, I didn’t break it on purpose, but it quit on me the other day. It just stopped whirring. Something to do with the bearings, because the motor still runs but the blade won’t turn. I’m not a mechanic, and neither is Ed. All the meat needs to be cut and sent to Anchorage by a set date so that it can be organized by race volunteers and flown to check points so that the dogs will be fed along the trail. This really is the organizational crux of the race, so we had to order two new saws and get them flown in overnight (which out here ends up being several nights) so we could meet the deadline. They made it and they work dandy. Cut like charms.

Seven tons of meat. I’m not sure where it comes from, but it has to be flown frozen to Kotzebue. Each ton is sent on its own pallet. And then we painstakingly lifted every 50 pound box of meat off the pallets, loaded it onto a sled, pulled it behind a snowmobile (over the course of 14 snow go trips), reloaded it onto pallets in the yard, and when it was time to cut carried it to the saw. One ton of tripe, frozen yellow folds of innards, that when cut to show its grain remind me of the pastels of a typical sunset with pinks and yellows. One  ton of blood red beef chunks, labeled “Not for Human Consumption” and marked with big black, charcoal X’s over the top of every open box. One ton of lamb, which is human grade flanks, like sheep bacon. One ton of pale Poultry Skins. Three tons of Eureka Hi-Pro, short for blended high protein, looks like a sandstone pink mud brick, until it thaws. And something like a partridge in a pear tree. All of it cut into quarter pound slices for easy chewing. You do the math.

Every box is marked “Keep Frozen”. The week before the Meat Party the weather got real nice, like 40 degrees in the day, 33 at night. 32 is freezing. Thawing HiPro bled. The once stiff fish flopped again. Bricks of unboxed meat sagged into a big pile, still cold enough to slightly resemble the rectangular package it was processed into. Lamb got greasy, tripe became slippery. But we had no choice but to cut and bag all of Ed’s Iditarod dog food, which included commercial kibbles (special race blend) and fish. 2500 pounds of dog food for 1049 miles.

To date we’ve caught 1760 shee fish- most go to nightly dinner, but a hundred lucky few were sliced and bagged. At five-eighths of an inch slices, it felt like a high school science class to examine the cross sections. We could see the different organs and how they are laid out in the fish's body when it was time to knock the guts out (so if it warms up on the race it doesn't spoil the rest of the fish meat).

What ever happened to the days where you went to the super market and could watch the butcher cut up the meat you were going to buy? I feel like I am a butcher. It takes complete focus to work with a saw. I have been reminded time and time again of all of the woodshop teachers that are missing fingers, or just the tips. Fast whizzing blade, always keep your eye on the blade. This is my mantra.

The one bad thing about cutting meat with a table saw is the meat spray (the effluent of meat, as sawdust is of wood). When it is very cold outside (minus ten or colder), meat spray is mostly fine particles, almost a dust that doesn’t melt so it can be brushed off. But it can be like breathing in a hamburger if you don’t cover your mouth. Even if we didn’t start eating wild game out here, it would have been hard to call ourselves vegetarians after all the meat spray we inhaled. As the meat sputum warms (either due to the ambient temperature or body heat, say because it is on your face), the meat spray starts to stick a little like dough flying off of an eggbeater. Above freezing, it is like puke squirting out of a child’s mouth as if they are trying to spray it all over you. We have no running water. Showers are a luxury. Still, at the end of the day we look at one another lovingly and ask, “Sweetie, did you wash your face?” It is worth the energy it takes to haul the water from the creek and “wash that meat right outta our hair”, sing it with us.

All of that 2500 pounds of meat that had to be cut into quarter pound slices, then had to be bagged into 10 pound bags. These were then distributed into 18 different checkpoint bags (these dogs don't just eat the same food at every meal), and once again loaded into sleds and freighted to town. This was/is our job. So when you see Ed Iten cross the finish line while you watch the Iditarod on the Outdoor Life Network, remember, his dogs were powered by the meat we cut.

Love, light, and meat, Michael and Jen

P.S. For those who really do want to follow the big race, you can watch it on channel 2 news if you live in Alaska or Outdoor Life Network if you live “outside”. You can also follow it on the internet at Iditarod.com/2007/.



Sincerely,

Michael Raffaeli and Jen Brown

Our lives up here have been full of all kinds of new things from all day darkness to sheefish and we have sent out lots of stories of those things. But really, it is the dogs that fill our days and our hearts. My Dad emailed after one of the updates and asked, “Why don’t we hear more stories about the individual dogs you guys are running?” Great question and here’s a little more insight into our lives with the dogs.

Well, we train the young dogs, the up and comers. So what does that mean? It means when Ed or his son Quinn are looking for a good dog to try out in their team they take it from ours. It means that not every dog we are training will someday make the race team.

Right now, we are not only running the two year olds, but we have begun to add yearlings into the mix. We are working with the future of Ed’s racing team and it’s pretty exciting. Michael and I each have around 14 dogs that we regularly run. After each run they get grades just like students so we can keep track of how each dog is doing. We run our teams out to the ice to check our fishing nets. We run them across the tundra and through the woods on training runs to get them used to deep snow, hard pack, and longer distances. We try them out as lead dogs and see who has the intelligence, speed, and determination to be in the front of the team. We separate the boys and the girls as the females go in and out of heat cycles and the boys lose all ability to concentrate during the runs because their hormones drive them crazy (think of teens in the midst of puberty, or adults for that matter at a bar…). And, yes, we get attached and we have our favorites. As Michael and I make up our teams we talk about our little guys and where they should be running. After we come home from a run we sit and eat and drink hot drinks and talk about the funny things, the great things, or the naughty things that each dog did that day and we laugh and we love our little dogs.

These are some of our favorites. Feel free to skip this part if reading about individual dogs feels like reading about people you’ve never met. We think they are cute and fascinating, but we won’t take offense if you don’t feel the same.

Guy. Every morning when we feed breakfast I make a special trip over to see Guy. He is usually watching me as I move from one circle to the next, waiting for his turn. I can hear him start squeaking as I get close to his circle. He squeaks with happiness, telling me all sorts of things I wish I could understand as he jumps up to wrap his paws around my waist and give me a dog hug. He stares into my eyes with his big, dark brown ones peering from such a serious face as I pet him and he squeaks to me. After he goes on long 100 mile runs with the race team he comes home exhausted and hungry. I go over to take his harness off and walk him back to his house he still jumps up to give me a hug and squeak to me about how glad he is to be home. Guy is a girl’s dog, a total lover, big and fluffy and a total softie.

Delta. She is a little girl with a big attitude. Tiny females don’t make the race team unless they are great leaders or fast trotters because they just can’t pull as much as the big males as a rule. Lucky for us Delta is turning out to be a great leader and has a beautiful fast trot. But this isn’t what comes up when we talk about Delta. We laugh as we unclip her and let her run loose to the team before a run. It is a given that Delta is not going straight to the team where she is supposed to. She is going on her discovery tour of the kennel. Self guided. She checks out the fish shed, the dogpot, a few other dog houses, the sled she will be pulling to see what’s in it today… and  then she comes to us to put on her harness to run. While she is a great lead dog her curiosity gets the better of her when she is running and can quickly drag the whole team to where they are not supposed to be. She is the only dog that is desperate to know the whole setup of our sheefishing holes and nets on the ice. She is the only dog that will chase a snowmobile or a raven just because she is fascinated. She is an alpha female for sure. She’s a girl with a Napoleon complex and she’s out to show the other dogs who’s boss. More often than not we’ll glance at the team and see two dogs on top of each other. “Oh crap!” We yell as we run to stop what we think is a potential breeding and then we’ll realize its just Delta humping the dog next to her, asserting her dominance. We laugh and go back to work.

Cloudy. Michael’s main lead dog. Her ice blue eyes give away her whole personality. Cloudy is without a doubt the smartest dog in the kennel. She is also the most devilish. Cloudy was in Ed’s race team for many years and is now retired. He’s got lots of stories of her incredible ability to understand racing strategy and to make decisions to lead her team to success. The trouble with a dog this smart and self willed is that they can also plot to lead their team and driver into trouble. Cloudy gives you warning that she is plotting. She starts looking around, scheming, as she is running. Her ears go flat out the side as she thinks really hard about what she is going to do. (Look for her devil ears in the photos.) Then she pulls her moves on us, the new kids, to test what we are made of and whether we are worthy of driving her and her team. Luckily, Michael and Cloudy have developed a good relationship and more often than not she takes the team where they are supposed to go and patiently teaches the young ones how to do her job.

Tofu. No we don’t just love him for his name. Poor Tofu was supposed to be Taku, but when he was little everyone decided that he was too soft and sensitive to be given a tough name like Taku and so he became Tofu, named for a soft little square that not many Alaskans are very fond of. He is a baby, but he’s coming around. When we first got here Tofu was so nervous we couldn’t even pet him. Now he loves to run and after a run he loves to get a belly rub and he smiles with his bottom teeth or a little crooked smile with his canines sticking out. When we go to his circle he tilts his head and sticks out a paw asking us to come over and give him some love. We have attached a photo with Tofu and Delta. Tofu is particularly living up to his name looking like a softie in his pink jacket and booties. He’s one of those dogs you can’t help but love.

The Calendar Girls. This is our term to refer to a bunch of the yearling girls we are now running who are named March, April, May, June, July, and August (we didn’t name them…, we just get to run them). They are a wiry, hyper little bunch of girls. June is hysterical at the nets and barks and digs and jumps up and down on the wind packed snow and ice in sheer frustration because she can’t figure out how to curl up and make a comfy bed to rest in while we fish. These girls are fond of bouncing over the gangline while running to give their partner a little peck or playful nip which often results in the other dog ducking and diving away and generally distracts the team. Aaahhh, the yearlings, yes, they are still young and have a lot of learning to do.

Stan. Oh, Stan. When we got here in the fall I did not like Stan at all. He was too spastic to get close to. If you went into his circle it was guaranteed he would jump on your leg and pee all over you. Well, Stan is in my team now and I love him. He has mellowed out now that he can direct his energy into running. Stan loves to howl and chirp like a bird – sounds I never knew a dog could make. There’s a photo of Stan starting the group howl at the sun. Every day all the dogs howl at the sunrise and it is one of my favorite moments. Stan scared me to death the other day when he went into a seizure while he was running and I stopped and held him thinking he was dying. Stan came to and has been running fine since then, but who knows. Its too late to not be attached and so I follow the dogs lessons. Stan gets unconditional love from me and I will just be grateful for every day that Stan pulls his heart out in my team and chirps for extra attention. If Stan dies from a seizure like Sherpa did this fall, I will be sad, but I will know that he has had a good and happy life and that is all Michael and I can try to give each of these dogs each day.

And so the dream continues to reveal the parts that we did not imagine and we continue to learn to accept them or to gain the lessons that we are supposed to learn here.

Michael & Jen

happy holidays and the solstice update

Part I: Happy Holidays

Oh, we thought it would never come to this for us, but alas, we are shaped by the society in which we live- an email to greet you for the holidays. Think of it this way- we are saving paper and the energy it would take to hand deliver each one of you the cards we would make.... and given the schedule of our current situation, we figure that an email seems better than no contact with you at all during this time of year. Honestly, this time of year always seems too cram packed for me, with things to do for the holidays as well as with expectations of what is to be done (can anyone say, "bah humbug"?- now that I'm 35, I might as well become a gumpy old man... but I digress...). The spirit of the season, however, has moved us. we have Christmas lights and a Christmas tree at the main house. They play Christmas carols on the radio. People are giving one another gifts. So we got to thinking. We wanted to share how blessed we are to have you as not only an audience to read our little updates, but as a huge extended family. You have supported us in our adventure. You have sent us love and caring thoughts or words or care packages. You have inspired us by the life you live and the choices you make. You are the greatest gift we could have and we won't take you back to get store credit. We honor you this holiday season, and we hope that in the New Year, the love and light and energy that you have given will return to you tenfold. Happy Holidays and the best wishes for 2007.

Love, Michael and Jen

Part II: Solstice Update
My natural history book on the arctic defines the arctic as a place where one day a year the sun never sets, and one day where it never rises. Every map shows us above the Arctic Circle. So you can imagine our dismay on the solstice when the radio announced that the sun would rise at 1:40 and set at 3:22 for a total of 1 hour and 43 minutes of sunlight! So, we can not figure out what is going on! But indeed, the sun did rise and it was a relatively clear day, so we saw it. It never got fully above the horizon, so maybe it never really "rose". Instead it was like a two hour surise/sunset. It was a bitter cold day somewhere below zero with a nasty wind- a great day to be out on the ice picking shee fish from the nets... but it was a blessing to see that sun. all day, all I could think about was the hope that existed now that the days were getting longer again. I had thought that I would write some dark, deep, inner psychology essay about how horrible the darkness is and how it tweaks the psyche. but so far we are still normal, or as normal as we can be living above the arctic circle (?) in a little shop with a dogyard out the window.

Our lives have become somewhat of a routine, which involves working, eating and sleeping. The lack of light is only traded for a headlamp and oil lamp. It is good to have settled in, and not have everything be overwhelmingly new, but that means less of the adventure stuff to write to you about. We have become regular fisher-people, the fish tally somewhere near 1,300 fish. Our newest activity, however is "freighting". We drive snowmobiles to town on the trail that the borough (kind of like the county for you non-Alaskans) pays someone to establish each winter after the ice freezes. The trail is marked by cut willows stuck into the ice and then marked with a piece of reflective tape so you can see it with your light. 23 miles to town with an empty sled, 23 miles back with some assortment of frozen meat (beef, chicken skins, pork, "hi-protein", lamb- all clearly marked "not for human consumption") for the dogs, mail, groceries, etc. that weighs up to 1,000 pounds. In the process, Jen and I have killed two out of the three snow machines, one of which the mechanic fixed (gear box fell apart), and the other that sits in the entrance to our room (the shop), until we can figure out why it won't idle and dies when you give it gas- any ideas? Our best guess is water in the fuel, or something that is keeping the spark plugs from firing correctly. You know, ordinary things that keep you busy.

It is still rather exciting to be up here, and it is the little things that amaze us each day. It was awesome and almost eery to watch the full moon stay above the horizon for over 48 hours- another arctic phenomenon. We have been enjoying the updates from all of you... and the long distance winners are somewhat of a threeway tie between Venezuela and India and Scotland- all almost halfway around the globe from us and sent with a click of a mouse. This is the world we now live in, even us, way up here in the middle of nowhere. It's going to be hard to tell you stories when we see you next, because you'll already have gotten the highlights and seen the photos. This means there will be more time to be on an adventure together since we won't have to catch up.

Being over the hump of Solstice is exciting, but we have as much darkness to wade through as we have made it through so far. So, perhaps, you will receive what I had hoped this update would be, something of the dark reality of our lives (sorry Adonia!). Maybe its just not us, or maybe it will come when the Christmas lights get put away for the season. Until next year, Michael and Jen signing out.

PS the photos are as small as we know how to make for all you dial up users. if we make them smaller they get all pixelated (is that a word?). Any hints on how to make them smaller for easier viewing??? Enjoy.


Sincerely,
Michael Raffaeli and Jen Brown

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take two: sheefish

hmmm. already i am becoming technologically inept living out here. there was a long story written with those photos, but somewhere along the process of mailing it out i must have deleted the writing and sent only photos. here is my best effort at a rewrite...

beep beep beep 4:30 am and time to get up and put more wood in the stove so our fire doesn't go out in the middle of the night. quick peek out hte windows for the northern lights. not tonight.
beep beep beep 7:30 am and time to stoke the fire so our room is warm when we actually get up.
beep beep beep 8:00 am and its really time to get up. i know 8 am seems ridiculously late, but here it feels like an alpine start as we are exhausted and its still hours until sunrise. right now its dark and cold. we light some candles and the oil lamp in our room and stumble to gather buckets of dog food. we scoop warm water from the stove to hydrate the food for dog breakfast so they are ready to run for the day. then we scoop some hot water for tea and oatmeal for ourselves so we are hydrated and ready to run for the day too.
after breakfast we bundle in layer after layer after layer and then more layers and head outside to feed dog breakfast in the predawn light. (sunrise is at 11:30 or so these days and we are losing light at 7 minutes a day. we'll be down to none by solstice in december.)
we ready the sleds and the equipment is a bit different now than the last email we sent. no more gun, instead we carry three heavy snow hooks for anchoring our teams out on the lake ice, we also carry booties to protect the dogs feet from sharp snow crystals, jackets to protect them from freezing temperatures and howling winds, extra layers for us as well as hot tea. Finally the fishing gear, special rubber gloves, rubber jacket and pants, a giant tarp to carry the fish home.
you already know the excitement that is building in the dogyard at this point as we begin to hook up our teams. we are now in charge of running teams of two year olds down to our fishing nets. it takes them about a half hour to cover the 7 miles to the nets so we run them a bit further down the lake to the mouth of the little noatak river to get some more energy out before we ask them to sit still for a few hours while we pull the fish nets. Even after the extra run they can't do it. Asking a two year old dog to sit still and quiet is as ridiculous as asking a two year old human to do it. The dogs jump and bark and chew and fight and try to breed and jump some more and bark some more and try again to pop the three iron hooks out of the ice so they can run home without us because we are taking far too long with our fishing duties.
meanwhile, michael and i are busy opening up our holes in the ice. even though we keep them covered with foam insulation the ice still freezes a few inches overnight. we use a "took", a giant pole witha sharp metal point to reopen our holes. The nets are stretched under the ice between two holes. they have a cork side that floats just under the surface of the ice and a lead side that sits on the bottom of hte lake. the nets are suspended in between and when the sheefish are following the herring to feed upon they get caught in our gillnets. we pull the nets up and untangle the slippery, slimy fish. most days we get about 40-60 fish per net but the other day we got hit with over 150 fish! happy thanksgiving to the dogs. we can carry home about 30 fish in each dogsled and the rest get piled on the ice to be picked up later by snowmobile (that's another story).
the dogs are relieved when we are finally done with pulling fish and they get to run home. we run home in twilightas the sun sets while we are on the lake at about 3:30pm. some dogs are a bit dismayed by the new heavy load they have to haul, but they are truly earning their dinner.
when we get back to the dogyard we throw 12 fish and 4 five gallon buckets of water into the "dogpot" a giant outdoor woodstove with a cookpot built in on top. We light the fire and simmer a lovely fish chowder for the dogs for a few hours. We put all the dogs back in their straw filled houses and run into ours (not straw filled) to stock our fire and have some lunch. At this point it is well after dark, usually 6 pm and we grab a quick "lunch" and hot drink.
We feed all the dogs a mix of dry dog food and hot chowder - 16 five gallon buckets in all. We haul some more water for breakfast and set up the buckets again for tomorrow. Another day spent feeding dogs in some form or another, all day. Whew!
We have human dinner up at the house around 8 pm. Usually caribou or moose or maybe sheefish (its a very good fish fo humans too). Unless Jen cooks and then its beans! Many nights were spent sewing our own beaver fur hats to stay warm in our now very wintery weather. We are grateful for them every cold windy day that we stay warm.
We head back to our room around 11 pm and light candles again for a little yoga and stretching of sore muscles. Who knew living the dream included aches and pains and exhaustion? But we are finding what we were looking for. This feels like the real arctic that you dream of when you see the pictures of the endless white landscape lit by the pink winter sun. We wanted hard work and lots of time outside and every day we get that. The dogs continue to be amazing and patient teachers who are always full of love for us (and so is michael). We have seen sunny days and snowstorms and traveled in our first ground blizzard of 40mph winds blwoing snow into whiteout. We have seen norther lights and incredible mountains and winter is only just beginning.
We are thankful for all of you who support us in our dreams and adventures as we fall asleep each night.

love and aurora, jen and michael


Sincerely,
Michael Raffaeli and Jen Brown

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one fish, two fish, we fish sheefish

Sincerely,
Michael Raffaeli and Jen Brown

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