Slowly the trail clearing work continues. All the while I was squatting on my haunches this afternoon rooting out buffaloberry bushes, I kept thinking about Alexander the Great's captain of the guard. Caught sleeping when he was supposed to be on duty, he was brought before the king and sentenced to death.
Desperate, he thought of a wild ploy to save his neck. Knowing how besotted the king was with his great war horse Bucephalus, the captain cried out as the guards moved to take him away, "Wait! Majesty, you are about to destroy a unique talent. There is something I can do that no other man can accomplish." The king laughed and asked, "And what might that be?" The captain replied, "I can teach your great horse Bucephalus to sing! You would ride to war and confront your enemies as Bucephalus chanted songs of battle!" "And how long might such a teaching take?" the great king replied. "Sire, 'tis hard to say, a year, two years…" "Very well!" replied the king, "a year you shall have. A year and a day hence you shall be brought again before me, in the company of Bucephalus. If he will sing for you, I shall remit your punishment. If not, on that very day your head shall be struck off. Guards, take him to the stable."
The next day, as the captain sat in the box stall of Bucephalus, solemnly singing songs of war at the great beast, one of the guards said, "Why do you thus demean yourself? You know as well as I that horses cannot be taught to sing. Wherefore, then, this foolish game? Can you not face death like a soldier?"
The captain replied to the guard, "Friend, in the course of a year much can happen. The king might die. I might die. And who knows? Perhaps the horse will learn to sing!"
And as I uprooted berry bushes and cut back willows I could not help thinking, it has now been a year since the confrontation at Seeley Lake. Nobody has died. And the horse hasn't learnt to sing…
The trail work continues, yesterday afternoon in drizzling rain, today in blazing hot sunshine. The long stretch that meanders along beside Horse Creek is in danger of quietly disappearing within another two seasons. Willows encroach, small spruces and poplars spring up in the middle of the trail, buffalo-berry bushes produce new clumps from half-buried branches in all directions. How can so much junk shoot up in such a short growing season?
This is slow work. The chainsaw stays at home, useless for this endeavour. Swede saw, secateurs and kelly swing are the order of the day. The smaller berry bushes can be pulled from the earth by hand; larger clumps must be opened up with the swing, then cut apart with secateurs. Small willows and aspens, secateurs; larger ones, swede saw. Then a pass with the kelly swing tops off the wild roses, fireweed and other small stuff. A hundred yards in three hours is good going, down by the creek where the growth is heavy. The rest of the trail system will need only a casual snip here and there.
The fall colours, fresh air and the company of two Seppala bitches are our compensations for this grinding labour. When the snow flies, we'll be ever so glad we did it and anyway, it beats digging ditches…
A clear, sunny day, too warm even for bike training. Well, it's time to bite the bullet, anyway: parts of our trails are in need of brushing out again. Particularly near the creek that crosses our training grounds, the willows, alders and aspens are growing in, narrowing the already-narrow trail cut, reducing visibility and reaching out to lash the driver as he is pulled along behind a team moving at 15 to 20 miles per hour.
Get out the swede saw, the secateurs, the pruning saw, the kelly swing and throw it all in the back of the truck. The chain saw can wait for another day; let's get the small stuff today. Grab my sidekick Tonya and drive up to the pine woods near the creek crossing. Yep, it's getting pretty narrow and overgrown, and here and there are clumps of willow and alder shooting up in the middle of the trail. Small wonder nobody can find the "old historic Gold Rush trails" of the Yukon. Even while we are still using a trail regularly it begins to disappear, reclaimed by jealous Nature.
Two or three hours of brushing out and I'm exhausted. I'm getting old and I guess I've let myself get out of shape. Oh, well, tomorrow is another day. It will take another session like this one just to get this one short stretch whipped back into shape, but it's the worst because it's close to the water. Where it's drier there won't be so much new growth.
But this is why we keep using the same old trails and never have any new ones. The amount of labour needed to brush out a totally new section of trail is staggering. The humiliating part of it is this: you work for days on end to brush out a short stretch of trail, say a mile or a mile and a half, that the dogs will traverse in five or six minutes! The Yukon is a wilderness of firekill, deadfall, aspens, alders, willows, boulders, bogs and berry bushes; to make a new trail is a job for heavy machinery (which then leaves an unsightly, tumbled, rough mess in its wake). No, despite the beautiful weather, the fall colours, the outdoor scents and sounds, there just isn't a whole lot of satisfaction in brushing out trails. It's a case of too much labour for too little return. Tonya lolls on the grass, snoozing at the end of her leash or watching the progress of a squirrel through the trees while I sweat. When her turn comes to do her version of trail work, we'll go through here so fast I'll hardly be able to see the work I did. But at least the willows won't whip me in the face.
Today the sky cleared from the west, the earth slaked and refreshed by yesterday's rain. Rose hips are bright vermilion against the still-green leaves of the low-growing wild roses. The willows are bright yellow, the aspens half-turned to golden, the narrow leaves of the fireweed blood-red now with wads of cottony fluff spilling from the splitting seed pods. These are the glory days of the Yukon's brief autumn. The next frost will bring leaves off the aspen and willows in a flood, as though the trees were crying torrents of leafy tears over the death of summer. This morning a red squirrel awakened me, sitting at the top of a black spruce right beside my shack, petulantly tossing unripe spruce cones to the ground and chattering incessantly.
This afternoon I threw the mountain bike in the back of my pickup, took Tonya and her daughter Happy in the cab and two of Tonya's sons on drop chains in the canopied cargo bay. I drove up a dirt road that is part of our trail system, parked the truck, got the bike out and ran the two green males, each with a more experienced leader, on a trail that was less familiar to them than the easy run from the kennel yard. The temperature, at 17 Celsius, was high than I liked, but there was a cool breeze and a jug of cool water in the truck; with the dogs out of coat, they could handle the heat for a short run.
The males Maraq and Misha confirmed the promise of their previous runs. For sure I'll have two excellent leaders in these boys. The surprise was 5-year old Happy. Always up till now, Happy has been #2 dog in partnership with Tonya, gracefully supporting her dam's lead, keeping up the pace but letting mama make the hard decisions. I saw no evidence that she had learned directional commands. But today, hooked for a 2 1/2 mile run that was not a familiar route, Happy easily and precisely responded to every single command while barrelling along at a brisk lope, even when the green male tried to pull her off-course to where he thought we should go.
Too bad for me in a way, but I guess that's it for the marvellous combination of Tonya and Happy. I have new leaders that must learn their craft, and Happy has conclusively declared her independence. She is now a fully-made leader, capable of training other leaders in her turn. Yet I wish time could stand still. I would love to run my team forever behind the unsurpassed and elegant duo of Tonya and her daughter. But Tonya is eight and slowing down. Happy is in her prime, ready to be everything her heritage makes her. Time will not stand still for the dog driver. A team's performance is largely defined by its lead dogs. Lead dogs have their infancy, adolescence, their prime and their decline into old age, which follow one another in quick succession. The dog driver may say with Faustus, O lente, lente currite, noctis equi, but the horses of night will not slow down for his beautiful, short-lived companions. The beauty of Seppala Siberian Sleddogs in full flight is heart-rending in its intensity and impermanence. It is a dynamic process, fueled by change itself. And, as Heraclitus said: nothing endures but change.
The bike training goes on, rotating through young stock and older dogs that never got much of a chance to run at lead, most of the work centred around my #1 and #2 leaders Tonya and her daughter Happy. Two of Tonya's two-year-old sons are now identified as first-class leader trainees, so I'm set for the winter already. Happy and new leader Mokka yesterday gave me a bike ride that was almost frighteningly fast. Obviously Tonya reigns supreme; this winter's leaders will be Tonya and her progeny. This, I must recognise, is how sleddog kennels so easily get bred into a corner. It usually seems to happen that one mating or one sire or dam-line turns out to be so superior to the rest that it inevitably upsets any effort at having a balanced breeding programme over time.
_________________
While Isa and I do our bike training, some people are headed for Seeley Lake, Montana. If they don't get burnt to a crisp in western Montana's current spate of forest fires, they will hold The Second Annual Seppala Siberian Sleddog Seminar there. Dr. John Cole of LSU will discourse on "The Genetics of Breeding" and Dr. Doug Willett of the University of Utah will hold forth on "History and Definition of the Seppala." The founder of the Seppala Siberian Sleddog breed won't be there. Being physically assaulted by Dr. Willett at the first Seeley Lake seminar was really the kind of once-in-a-lifetime experience that one ought not to attempt to repeat, for fear the repetition might spoil the bloom and perfection of that precious memory. Nightly beer busts are a distinct probability (based on past performance). And there is a more or less tacit assumption, among those of us who have decided not to attend, that a rabbit of some kind will be produced from The Great One's hat; some sort of dramatic announcement that will deal definitively with . . . or finally dispose of . . . or put paid to . . . well, something or somebody. Tremble. Shiver.
The Yukon goes its own way, in weather as in most things detached from norms that apply to the rest of the country. Practically the entire continent is sweltering in a heat wave as forest fires rage out of control in many places. Here in the Yukon it's cool, cloudy, threatening rain with fire risk comfortably rated low.
Yesterday it was cool enough to get the bike out again. Lo and behold, the wild, skittish puppy that was introduced to the harness a few days ago was jumping up and down uttering ear-splitting screeches! She wanted to do it again. "Come on, take me, take me. I can do better this time, I swear! I thought about it lots! Take me, take me!"
I took her, once again hooked double with her next-door neighbour Happy, my number two leader. Lizzy was a different pup on this run. Just for the first 75 yards, she thought she might be able to stop and hunt in the aspen woods alongside our long "chute lane," but Happy kept things going. Once we hit the main road, though, Lizzy was all business, on her tugline strongly, running with a lot more focus than she had done her first time out. At our turnaround point, it was Happy who spotted a hot squirrel tree and wanted to investigate. I laid the bike down, lined them both out, and we took off for home. Lizzy ran straight and hard. Maybe, just maybe, I'll have another leader in this ten-month-old female.
Now that the three leaders (Llop, Lleo and Lluna) from our foundation Hank x Dreama litter are too old to serve further (they'll be twelve in November), along with one other oldster who decided he had served at lead long enough, we're looking for the next generation of lead dogs. Actually Isa has four who are just middle-aged, so really I should say I'm looking. Young Mokka, broken to harness mostly at lead last year, is already running better this year, keeping her head lower, showing much more focus and seriousness. Happy's doing fine and working on her commands. Tonya the queen-mother is superb — reliable and elegant, but probably starting to slow down just a little at almost eight years of age. If I'm to run two teams this winter I need one more leader. Today I think I shall try out Mokka's brother Maraq. He's two now; maybe his brain has caught up to his body enough to try it. I find that female leaders often declare themselves as puppies; males, rarely. Maraq runs like the wind; if only he'll lead, I'll really be set up for awhile, particularly if little Lizzy can replace Tonya as she ages. Such a shame that their lives are so short. It seems as though no sooner do I have a leader trained to the point that the dog is really trustworthy and a pleasure to drive than he/she's showing signs of age.
The worst of it is that I'm showing signs of age, too, and the older I get, the more I depend on having really good leaders to keep things running smoothly. Dog driving is a constant balancing act, never a static situation. Relax for one instant, let things slide, and the development of your team has slipped out of your control. It's a strange, compulsive sort of sport — and it's only the most fun of anything you can do outdoors!
Lizaveta, ten-month-old screeching lead dog wannabe
The weather suddenly turned warmer, too warm even for relaxed bike runs with my leaders. So I had time to revise my website and finish up its new educational section, 'way ahead of schedule. I thought it would take me weeks to find enough spare moments to research and write up a dozen different historic Siberian Husky bloodlines and build web pages for them. Surprise, surprise! All finished, thirteen of them. Probably I shall add one or two more as they come to my attention and time permits. Here is the link for "Learning More About Siberian Husky Bloodlines":
http://www.seppalasleddogs.com/shbloodlns.htm
It's surprising how little information there is on the web about basic matters of that sort. I have run web searches for every one of the thirteen names on the nav bar on the above index page. All I came up with was names in on-line pedigrees, one Danish list of kennel-names and owners — and the pages of my own site, or articles I wrote myself years ago. For the major names, maybe a brief mention in the SHCA's capsule breed-history rundown. For a breed that registered 12,350 litters with AKC alone last year, that's a really lousy showing with respect to educating breeders! I know of at least four major Siberian Husky historians. As far as I know, not one of them has a website.
People will probably criticise me for slanting my bloodline information articles towards my own particular point of view, inevitably. Tough beans. My site is about Seppala Siberian Sleddogs, not about Siberian Huskies, so the articles are slanted towards explaining why various mainstream SH bloodlines are not part of the SSSD gene pool. Those who don't like that should maybe curtail their indignation in favour of putting up their own educational website to tell novice Siberian Husky breeders everything they need to know about historic SH bloodlines and other topics relevant to their hobby. Meanwhile, I know my pages will see heavy traffic, because they represent the only source of this information online.
For three days straight it has been blowing like stink in central Yukon. The tradeoff has been that the nights have been a good ten degrees Celsius warmer; no more frosts for the moment, and there won't be as long as the cloud that the wind brought stays around. Nevertheless, the frosts we already had have started the processes of autumn on their inevitable course. The aspens are starting to turn a bilious yellow-green, the fireweed is going rusty red and yellow, willows and wild roses show bright yellow leaves, and the rose hips are lightening towards vermilion.
Today, thanks to the wind, it was just cool enough to get out the battered mountain bike and remind my two main leaders of their winter responsibilities. I took Tonya out with little Nera; it was six-year-old Nera's first time at lead, yet she surged ahead as though she had done it a hundred times, due I suppose to my having taken her around with Tonya on leash a lot lately. It is strange how middle-aged Seppalas who have always been kennel dogs can make a graceful transition to housepet status, and how some older team dogs suddenly discover they can run at lead.
Encouraged, I hooked Tonya's usual co-leader, her daughter Happy, with a nine-month old female pup named Lizzy. Wearing a radiant smile, Happy introduced the totally green pup to bike running. Lizzy was apprehensive and wild, but with Hap's good example made it through the 1.5 mile run in pretty good style for a first-timer; I had to untangle her a couple of times, but she didn't panic. She might make another leader — both of her parents are good ones.
Since the wind blew my hat off in the middle of the second run, I went out yet another time with a single big tall male who usually runs wheel. Hawk stopped to do his business four or five times on the trailside and ran at a fast trot, but we made it — and I retrieved my hat from the trailside. Probably he'll never make a leader, but I keep trying him occasionally.
The dogs love autumn bike runs and so do I. The idea of being pulled by sleddogs while riding a bicycle seems to terrify some people, but to me it feels natural and easy. The dogs learn quickly what the ground rules are. This way of working with leaders is relaxed and free of pressure; it allows me to develop close communication with the dog that has to make quick decisions and respond to directional commands.
Most of all, though, for me bike training with Seppalas is just something that seems to be the very essence of autumn. (If you'd like to see how we go about it, here's a link:)
Tonya helps Boss train daughter Mokka at lead
ON Wenlock Edge the wood’s in trouble
His forest fleece the Wrekin heaves;
The gale, it plies the saplings double,
And thick on Severn snow the leaves.
’Twould blow like this through holt and hanger 5
When Uricon the city stood:
’Tis the old wind in the old anger,
But then it threshed another wood.
Then, ’twas before my time, the Roman
At yonder heaving hill would stare: 10
The blood that warms an English yeoman,
The thoughts that hurt him, they were there.
There, like the wind through woods in riot,
Through him the gale of life blew high;
The tree of man was never quiet: 15
Then ’twas the Roman, now ’tis I.
The gale, it plies the saplings double,
It blows so hard, ’twill soon be gone:
To-day the Roman and his trouble
Are ashes under Uricon. 20
—A. E. Housman, A Shropshire Lad, (1896)
A hard wind has blown out of the south all last night and throughout the day, tossing the cone-laden heads of the black spruces wildly about and threshing the leaves of the aspen poplars. Last night the moon was hugely full. Between the full moon, the high wind, and the growing encroachment of the planet Mars my nerves are on edge. I happened to think of the Housman poem that I memorised decades ago and found it quite in keeping with my present mood.
The e-mail storms have died down somewhat, but a sullen, restless mood pervades the dysfunctional Seppala community as we all wait for someone else to settle our disagreements for us. Achilles sulks in his mountain retreat, Hector broods at his computer keyboard, while the Achaeans and the Trojans murmur uneasily and try to sort out their own feelings about the matter. "The tree of man was never quiet." As the bad wind blows, we all wait, uncertain whether the dénouement will be a climax or an anticlimax...
The rain clouds have departed from the Yukon for the moment, leaving a blocking high with clear blue skies and brilliant sunshine. The high also means it gets cold at night; the past two nights have been at the freezing point or a couple of degrees below. The beans that Isa hopefully sows each year are blighted just as they were blossoming.
Another kind of storm rages at the moment, a new kind of weather that I'm only now becoming familiar with — e-mail storms. The e-mails fly thick and fast in all directions as this poor bush-rat tries to follow half a dozen or more exchanges of communication at once while flying through smoke and flames. Ten days ago I rashly started a Yahoo Groups e-mail list that has taken flight beyond my wildest expectations. On and off-list communications threaten to defeat the possibility of doing any work offline. Since the "SeppalaSiberianSleddog" group has public message archives, I might as well give you a link to it:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SeppalaSiberianSleddog/
If this frantic electronic activity means anything, it seems probable that some critically important decisions will soon be forthcoming from Continental Kennel Club with respect to their Seppala Siberian Sleddog registry, and that the natives are restless in all Seppala camps. It could be that the coming opposition of the planet Mars has some influence here. What bothers me is whether this sudden storm of electronic weather means the breed, like the beans, will be nipped by frost just as it's starting to bloom.
My excursion into New England sleddog breed history the other day led me to look into additional avenues of information about Chinook Kennels, and in so doing I came to the New England Sled Dog Club website. There are several interesting essays touching on aspects of NESDC history on the site, but what really attracted my interest was a table containing the 1932 Lake Placid Olympics demonstration race results. This Olympics demonstration race was a high point of sleddog racing history in the 1930s; one still sees it mentioned occasionally.
The winner of the two-day 50.2 mile event was Canadian driver Emile St. Goddard with his team of Quebec hounds, with a total time of 4 hours 23 minutes 12.5 seconds, an average speed of 11.44 miles per hour. Not impressive by today's standards, but these were the early days of the sport. In second place was Leonhard Seppala at 4:31; third was Canadian Shorty Russick at 4:47, and fourth was Harry Wheeler at 5:02. Russick and St. Goddard drove hounds, Seppala and Wheeler drove Seppala Siberians. Eight other teams participated, including two Chinook Kennels teams, one driven by Saint Eva B. herself, and the other by Col. Norman Vaughan.
Now, whether or not Eva B. Seeley was "one of the greatest woman dog drivers of all time" as Siberian Husky breed mythos insists, Col. Vaughan was widely regarded as a good dog driver. So the placing of the two teams from Chinook Kennels is interesting. Eva B.'s team placed dead last, with a total time of 7:14:46.7. The team driven by the professional driver did a wee shade better at 7:13:56, next to last. These two teams averaged 6.94 miles per hour. Accompanying text says that Mrs. Seeley drove Alaskan Malamutes; it doesn't state what dogs Col. Vaughan was driving. Here's the page link so you can check it out for yourselves; click the link at the top of the History page to go right to the 1932 Olympics Demonstration race results.
http://www.nesdc.org/history.asp
Eva B. Seeley's Siberians and Malamutes went on to become the guiding light of these two show-dog breeds as Chinook Kennels and its spiritual successor Monadnock took control of the show ring. Interestingly enough, those who continued to breed Seppala Siberians after Leonhard Seppala returned to Alaska, namely Harry Wheeler, Alec and Charlie Belford, William L. Shearer III, and finally in 1950 J. D. McFaul (after he bought the Seppala stock and kennel name from Wheeler) — all were very careful to keep Chinook Kennels breeding out of the Seppala Siberian breeding programme. I think between the Zoller files and these eloquent 1932 race results, it's pretty obvious why Seppala Siberian people wanted nothing to do with stock from Chinook and its successors. I wish that everyone breeding Seppalas today understood that position and the reasons for it so well...
While surfing the web and wishing the rain would let up, I found an announcement on the website of the International Siberian Husky Club that a tax-exempt Chinook Kennels Heritage Foundation has been set up for the preservation and maintenance of Chinook Kennels in Wonalancet, New Hampshire. (No date was given, so I don't know when this happened.) Some sleddog people will already know that Eva B. Seeley is considered by many people to be the godmother, patron saint, or breed founder of both the AKC Siberian Husky and the AKC Alaskan Malamute breeds. Authors such as Michael Jennings ("The New Complete Siberian Husky," 1992, Howell Book House) have tended to promote the image of Mrs. Seeley as not only the all-wise breed mother but also "among the top women [dog] drivers of all time"! So perhaps it is not surprising to see Siberian Husky Club of America and New England Sled Dog Club luminaries volunteering to assist in the preservation of Chinook Kennels as a holy shrine of sorts. The following link shows a handy image of the announcement:
http://www.ishclub.org/forms/chinook_ann.jpg
My curiosity piqued, I ran a Google search on Chinook kennels and on about page five I hit the jackpot. A few preliminary words of explanation are in order first. In 1969 when I was still quite new to northern dog breeds, I knew a professional handler in Ontario, Mrs. Lorna Jackson. Lorna was responsible in a way for my involvement with the descendants of Leonhard Seppala's sleddogs, because she sent me up to Chelmsford, Ontario, to visit Susan Elizabeth "Bunty" Ricker Dunlop Goudreau, the daughter of Sepp's New England kennel partner Liz Ricker, where I first saw Ditko of Seppala (whose descendants lie at my feet as I write this).
At her Ontario farm, Lorna had two or three ageing Alaskan Malamutes like no others I had ever seen. They were bigger, all-white or cream, longer and rangier than show-ring Mals. It turned out that Koonah and Kulik were among the last of the Paul Voelker "M'Loot strain" Malamutes — the opposition to the Eva B. Seeley "Kotzebue" strain. As my involvement with the Seppala sleddogs grew, after acquiring Ditko of Seppala from Bunty Goudreau, I often thought about the M'Loot Mals I had seen at Lorna's place and wondered at the parallel situations in both the Malamute and Siberian Husky breeds.
Well, I won't spoil the surprise about what Google turned up by commenting overmuch. I will only say that "The Robert Zoller Story" found on the Starhawk Malamute website was the most fascinating and rivetting narrative I've come across for a long while. It's presented in three parts, all of them long and detailed. Part One sets the stage for the drama of Parts Two and Three. If you haven't a lot of time and must choose, read Part Two. Bob Zoller is to be commended for his courage and intellectual honesty in setting down the whole story, because history of this kind is usually buried beneath breed myth as soon as the dust settles. I'll just say here that Bob tells ALL about the early years of the Alaskan Malamute Club of America and his experiences with the renowned Eva B. Seeley. Here's the link:
http://www.northernterritories.com/Zoller_files.htm
Click the menu-bar buttons at the top of the page for Part 1, Part 2 or Part 3 of the story. I have to say, Zoller's narrative gives me the cold shakes, it sounds so much like what's happening at the moment with the Seppala Siberian Sleddog's effort to become a distinct breed. I guess the spirit of Saint Eva B. Seeley is still alive and well...
A friend on a Yahoo Groups e-mail discussion list commented, "sounds like Jeffrey has the perfect retreat! Coffee, e-mail, a couple of Seppalas at your feet as you write? How much better does it get?" This stopped me cold for a few seconds when I read it — I just hadn't thought about it that way. It's true. A very nice woodstove was installed in this cabin a couple of days ago, just in time to take off the growing morning chill; there is abundant deadfall just behind the cabin for autumn firewood. My leader and constant companion Tonya lies on a blanket right by my feet, and another little elf called Nera, with big luminous brown eyes and a steel-blue coat, has joined her for the past couple of days.
How much better, indeed, does it get? The weather has been rainy and unsuitable for outdoor chores, so little guilt attaches to staying inside at the computer keyboard. There's a great deal to be said for quiet contentment and simple pleasures. Excuse me while I go make myself another cup of coffee!
Your Yukoner develops an acute weather sense after living here awhile. My own personal weather radar picked up the first stirrings of change on the first of the month. The following morning I did after all look closely at the wild roses along the driveway -- thick masses of rose hips were already turning a dull brick red! And the willows -- here and there along the highway single bushes had turned completely to the bright cadmium-yellow of the highway centre line. In the Miners' Range, there was fresh snow on the mountain crests for the first time.
Today the maximum-minimum thermometer outside my shack testified that the mercury had descended precisely to zero degrees Celsius during the night. August 3 -- the first frost of the season. In the kennel at mid-morning many of the dogs were still curled up deep in their doghouses, celebrating the cooler weather by sleeping in!
At noon came a brief, drenching rain. While forest fires rage out of control in British Columbia and Alberta, the Yukon gathers itself for winter. It came from nowhere, this sudden turn of the seasons. A line from a Wallace Stevens poem comes unbidden to my mind, "out of nothing to have come upon major weather"...
The day dawns sunny but a little cool. There isn't a cloud in the bright blue Yukon sky to begin with, but somehow there's a new, brooding presence. By noon big puffy clouds are building their way upward and there is an insidious cold breeze. In midafternoon purple masses start to loom broadly over the Miner's Range; it has become uncomfortably chilly.
Some of the fireweed has already gone to cottony seed below a diminishing spike of magenta flowers. I'm afraid to look at the squatting wild rose bushes, because I know they will be setting masses of rose hips already. I'm sure if I look around, I can probably find a willow or two showing the first yellow leaves.
In the kennel two of the bitches are in heat; others will quickly follow. Again comes the same old question: must we breed one or two of them? Why won't more of them come in season in the spring? Nobody who drives dogs really wants fall or winter puppies; they make everything much harder. All sorts of logistic difficulties and hard choices arise. But we want to keep the bloodline going. Too much of our stock is already old; we need to think of the future.
Suddenly it's August. And although summer isn't officially over yet, here in the Yukon it might just as well be. It will get gradually cooler and probably rain frequently through this month. By the first week in September, guaranteed, the aspens will go yellow and will, at the first nip of frost, suddenly lose all their leaves.
What about that trail work we planned to do? What about our winter firewood? Both our trucks need mechanical work. All of a sudden a host of nagging chores become urgent: things that just must be seen to before the ground freezes and the snow flies. I just hope we can fit it all in and still manage to break last winter's litter of pups to harness. While the rest of the continent swelters in the August heat, here in the Yukon we are forced to think about winter.