A piece on the Iditarod
Voices from the Flats – Iditarod and Re-Entry
18 03 2010RE-ENTRYBy LoveMyDogsDedicated to all of my friends in the race but especially Colleen…You are nearing Nome, running on the beach, straightening your racing bib that you picked up in Safety so you don’t look quite such a mess for the cameras as you feel. You find yourself crying and thanking your dogs over and over. You get off the sled and give them each a snack and a hug. You can’t believe you are almost finished with this thing and know you couldn’t have done it without them. You love them to the depths of infinity and you are so proud of them.You approach the finish line. Everything is a blur. There is a sense of relief, tinged with regret that you cannot just keep going. You know that you will soon be enfolded in the arms and congratulations of the people you love. You can take your first shower in days, eat hot food, sleep in a bed. But it is the dogs, the dogs that you are bound to now and your loved ones, who rush you off to all of the above mentioned amenities, do not quite understand where you are mentally and emotionally right now. Physically you limp off the runners, hunched forward, arms bent in by your sides and hands cramped in front of you-looking for all the world like some kind of giant squid- and accept their hugs.People, relationships, work, the human world makes no sense. For 9-12 days you have lived with your dogs and the wild world. None of the rest of this makes sense and it is, at times, an unwelcome incursion on your sense of what you have experienced out there. You have a far-off look in your eyes and trouble connecting with others. You want silence. You want peace. You want time to rest and reconnect. You don’t want to come back from the meditation, the pain, the highs and the lows and the beauty that you have just endured. Everything around you seems trivial. Sometimes you bark or snarl at the people you love. You talk and tell trail stories but you don’t want to talk, because how can you ever describe it?You are glad to stop but you want to go on…you can’t ever give this crazy thing up because, as Gary Paulsen says, “How could it be to live without the dogs?”
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Andrea
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Voices from the Flats – Iditarod and Re-Entry
18 03 2010RE-ENTRYBy LoveMyDogsDedicated to all of my friends in the race but especially Colleen…You are nearing Nome, running on the beach, straightening your racing bib that you picked up in Safety so you don’t look quite such a mess for the cameras as you feel. You find yourself crying and thanking your dogs over and over. You get off the sled and give them each a snack and a hug. You can’t believe you are almost finished with this thing and know you couldn’t have done it without them. You love them to the depths of infinity and you are so proud of them.You approach the finish line. Everything is a blur. There is a sense of relief, tinged with regret that you cannot just keep going. You know that you will soon be enfolded in the arms and congratulations of the people you love. You can take your first shower in days, eat hot food, sleep in a bed. But it is the dogs, the dogs that you are bound to now and your loved ones, who rush you off to all of the above mentioned amenities, do not quite understand where you are mentally and emotionally right now. Physically you limp off the runners, hunched forward, arms bent in by your sides and hands cramped in front of you-looking for all the world like some kind of giant squid- and accept their hugs.People, relationships, work, the human world makes no sense. For 9-12 days you have lived with your dogs and the wild world. None of the rest of this makes sense and it is, at times, an unwelcome incursion on your sense of what you have experienced out there. You have a far-off look in your eyes and trouble connecting with others. You want silence. You want peace. You want time to rest and reconnect. You don’t want to come back from the meditation, the pain, the highs and the lows and the beauty that you have just endured. Everything around you seems trivial. Sometimes you bark or snarl at the people you love. You talk and tell trail stories but you don’t want to talk, because how can you ever describe it?You are glad to stop but you want to go on…you can’t ever give this crazy thing up because, as Gary Paulsen says, “How could it be to live without the dogs?”
