Spring Things!

Posted on June 2, 2021 by Keely

Summer’s really getting going now, and I have the mosquito bites to prove it. Alan and I just got in from an overnight backpacking trip with a big crew of new friends (new friends! Meeting new people feels almost sinfully delicious!) in the Chena River Recreation Area, and we’re still all mud up to mid-calf and blisters under the toes and skeeter bites clear up to here and it just feels so good. So good. (Hot tip for anyone thinking of heading to Stiles Creek cabin any time soon: bring a mosquito net – the cabin isn’t safe from the swarms)

It’s been a gorgeous, busy, cool-weather spring. The snow stayed on the ground a long time, and my garden plants have taken their time in germinating, but the mosquitos haven’t been too bad yet (well, up until this weekend), and the sap run went well into May. I brought in a pint and a half of finished birch syrup just using the sap from the two tapped trees in my woods.

Just like last year, my woods turned into a creek when snow in the field next door started to melt in earnest. Unlike last year, I was ready. Alan and I hauled a lot of water before the trail became unsleddable, and I had rubber boots ready to go for wading through the mire. By the time the flood was knee-deep, we had concocted a scheme for a new annual event: prodding stick required, rubber boots optional. Alan’s beer box boat won the race, but Silna stole the show when she came through for Manny and carried his craft over the finish line.

Manny, Alan, and Silna getting prepped for the First Annual Yaranga Creek Floodwaters Beer Box Boat Invitational

Using this wonderful video as a guide, Alan and I have been trying to learn traditional brain tanning and practicing on a couple of caribou hides from last fall’s hunt. It’s going pretty well so far. He wants to make a buckskin shirt (without too much fringe, of course) and I want to have some soft, beautiful hide to make into a pair of beaded slippers trimmed with rabbit fur to wear at school when I get back into the classroom next year.

Scraping demands that good ol’ all-natural mosquito repellent

The past few months have been hard: Back in March, Daazhraii was injured in Arctic Village (we don’t know how, though the vet believes someone must have hit him in the knee with some kind of club). The injury left him essentially crippled and he developed a horrible abscess and infection that ate away at the bone and nearly cost him the leg. After more than a week of draining infected fluid all over the house, the vet cleared him for a first, exploratory surgery and scraped away the necrotic flesh from the knee. Later, after that first incision healed, the vet went in to operate on the severed cruciate ligament and nearly gave up and amputated: the infection had eaten away too much of the bone. Over the phone, Geoff begged him not to take the leg, so he did what he could and we all got lucky: as of today, Daazhraii is scheduled for a final surgery that should give him almost full use of the leg again by the fall.

The summer’s arrival has brought some much needed light: there’s finally good news about Daazhraii’s leg, there’s a memorial service scheduled for next week that will allow Geoff and me and our friend Alison to grieve in community for a loved one who died in the autumn, there’s all the good fresh food that the end of winter brings, and there’s the promise of a season brimming with new faces, smiles showing bright, bared to the endless sun.

Solstice, Estrus, Christmas

Posted on December 22, 2020 by Keely

Happy Solstice, friends!

And Merry Christmas from the reindeer next door and their supervisor, Silna.

Late the other night, I drove Alan and Crozier back to Alan’s place in the Goldstream. Alan’s been staying with me more than usual lately, since his Bronco’s been in the shop (apparently, they had to order a part from Texas, and it got delayed on its way because the pandemic is slowing down barge traffic from the lower-48). It’s been lovely: we’ve been cooking together, trying to establish some healthy routines, and mostly failing no thanks to a recent mutual obsession with the Great British Baking Show. All I want lately is cream puffs! The dogs have been keeping each other entertained, and we’ve been playing board games with the friends in our bubble, drinking lots of tea, and taking turns doing dishes. Each of us has been trying to take a daily leash walk with one of the dogs to soak up a little of the precious sunlight that filters through the trees in my neighborhood. A few times we’ve met in the clearing up the trail and let Silna and Crozier off their leashes to run around together and smell the fascinating smells of the world outside my yard. The whole thing has been very nice and domestic and cozy.

A grainy but warm and cozy photo of the treehouse.

Now, though, it looks like we’ll both be spending Christmas more or less alone. Alan will be stranded at his house with no vehicle, and I’ll be pretty limited in my movements, too. It’s all Silna’s fault: she’s taken it upon herself to go into heat for the holidays.

Here’s a primer on female dogs in heat: a few days before they become fertile, they begin to bleed and their vulvas swell up to twice their regular size. The blood and discharge can get a little messy, but it’s not too bad. Silna sleeps a lot more than usual and seems more sensitive. Alan described her as extra-doe-eyed. It’s a little bit inconvenient, and it can last for up to a few weeks, but managing her symptoms isn’t a huge deal. The real problem is the scent she emits. Everything I’ve read indicates pretty unequivocally that every single male dog in the North Star Borough is going to break loose and charge over here to pitch some woo within a few days (get it? Howling dogs say wooOOOoooOOO!). Unfortunately, Crozier is an intact male, and I really don’t want puppies right now, so he and Alan have got to go.

There are a few really good reasons for this. First of all, Silna’s still very young. She’s only in her second heat, and I absolutely don’t want to breed her until she’s physically mature. Second, I might never want to breed her at all. I haven’t had her evaluated by an expert. She’s brilliant, personable, fast, flexible, eager, and sound, but she’s also small and not very typey for a Greenland dog. I don’t want to be responsible for bringing subpar puppies into the world. Third, Crozier had parvo and spent a lot of time on the property this summer. It would be awful to go through that again, knowing I have the power to prevent it. I’d like to give any surviving virus a couple years to dissipate, or plan a litter that would whelp and mature in winter when the ground is encased in snow and ice. Fourth, I’d feel horrible if any of her pups wound up in a crappy home. She’s special, and if she ever has a litter, I want every one of those pups to have a home as good or better than the one I could give them.

I have some guilt about keeping her intact at all: on the whole, I’m a big fan of spaying and neutering dogs. Whenever I stayed home sick as a kid, I’d sit on the couch with my tea and applesauce and watch The Price is Right. At the end of every episode, Bob Barker would remind me to spay and neuter my pets, and I had nothing better to do, home alone, than to take that message to heart. Here I am, though, with my own female dog entering her second heat and no plans to spay her any time soon.

Daazhraii is neutered. I got him fixed when he was about two. It seriously improved his cranky attitude, no question about it. That was the biggest reason I wanted it done: he’d taken to growling at people – anyone but me and Geoff, really, even friends he knew well – who wanted to pet him. The world absolutely doesn’t need more cranky dogs in it, and his bad attitude wasn’t from some abusive experience: he’d had a really good life, with lots of socialization and no major traumas. It’s just who he was, and that didn’t need to be passed down. He’s still nuts, but a little less so. And he’s big and strong and gorgeous, and all the freight dog people look at me like I must have been off my rocker when I made the decision to get him snipped, but I’ll stand by that decision as long as I live. I swear, he’s a basketcase. It wouldn’t have been worth it.

Silna is Daazhraii’s opposite: she’s not as impressive a physical specimen, but she’s got all the charm, brains, and will that Daazhraii has never had. She meets new acquaintances, human or dog, enthusiastically, and she meets challenges with the same vim and a bold heart. She learns everything I try to teach her and plenty I don’t, and she’s got sense as well as smarts. In harness, she pulls hard and steady. It’s difficult to believe the two of them are half-siblings.

Alan’s dog Crozier has the size and power that Silna doesn’t, and he’s sweet as honey ice-cream. If I ever find I need a dog team, I could do worse than to let the two have a litter. And, honestly, I might like to have a dog team someday. Definitely not this year, probably not next year, but in the not-too-distant future when I go… well, I don’t know for sure where, yet. Maybe back to Arctic or to some other village, certainly back to the bush. She’s part of a possible long-term plan.

In the meantime, keeping the door open on that long term plan requires some investment, and that means another quiet Christmas. I’ll spend Christmas Eve in solitude while most of the folks in my pandemic bubble celebrate at Joshua’s house, but I’m okay with that. I’ll light some candles and I’ll sing some carols in the wonderful little amphitheater of my home, and maybe I’ll bake something special for myself, and I’ll think a little about the holiday traditions that have a hold on my heart and which of them I want to carry on. I’ve been thinking a lot about tradition and ritual and the power of celebrations lately, and I’ve been thinking a lot, too, about what traditions I want to invent or pass down to share with my own kids, when they arrive on the scene. Which they will, if I have anything to say about it, maybe around the time I get that dog team running. On Christmas day I’ll make myself a celebratory breakfast of pancakes and enjoy the last day of holiday music on the radio. Actual radio, too, not that internet stuff.

Home alone and enjoying all 314 square feet to myself. Yes, I made that wreath myself, yes I still use a utility ladder to climb up to my (unmade) bed, and yes that is a roll of toilet paper hanging from the barrel of a rifle. It’s very convenient for blowing my nose.

Right now, it’s sixty degrees warmer than it was this time last year, and instead of poor Zeus (Alison’s pitbull, who spent a very chilly holiday shivering in the treehouse with me last year) I’ve got Silna here to keep me company, along with Daazhraii, who has flown south for a visit while Geoff does some hard trailbreaking on his snowmachine out in the Arctic Refuge. It’s nice having the Shooper around: I feel a lot safer letting Silna, that lusty little tart, play outside when her big, strong, eunuch bodyguard is hanging around. I’m sure he’d raise a fuss if any strange males came sniffing around. With no one else here, and no real way to go anywhere (since they can’t be left in the truck for very long or Silna will eat the upholstery) I have plenty of time to work on making Christmas presents. When I ask someone to watch Crozier for a few hours so that Alan can come over to celebrate with me on the 26^th, I’ll be able to offer him a homemade stocking (maybe with rabbit-fur puffballs!) stuffed with a few nice, handmade things.

I whittled this widdle fish and then did some woodburning. Shhhh! It’s a surprise!

And that’s not too bad, after all, is it? For an estrus holiday?

Butter, Sugar, Dog Hair

Posted on May 20, 2019 by Keely

Two elementary school girls came over this afternoon to make cookies. They have a sleepover lined up tonight, and I loved listening to them discussing the games and pranks they plan to play.
“What if you hide outside the door and scare them?”
“We could put whipped cream on their face!”

We made a couple dozen tiny cookies and a specially tailored cardboard cookie-carrying box with the words “top secret” printed on the top so that they could transport them without losing them all to nosy neighbors.

It was wonderful and also a little sad for me. Cookie night used to be a big thing in Venetie. It never took off here in the same way, but this felt to me like those old cookie nights used to, with the girls laughing and opening up a little in ways they don’t at school. I am going to miss them. And all of this.

While the cookies were in the oven, J asked to play with Daazhraii. Now, Daazhraii is a pretty good dog. He’s playful, obedient, tough, smart, quiet, affectionate with his people, and sensitive (sometimes a little too sensitive), but he doesn’t like children, especially little girls. He treats kids with extreme suspicion and, if they approach him in an enclosed space, he stiffens, glares, and, if they keep coming toward him, growls. It’s scary and disheartening.

I have done a lot of reading on this, and I try to handle it well. I control any fear or anxiety I feel when kids are around him. I don’t allow him to be cornered, and, when I need to, I remove him from the situation gently. I don’t validate his fears by punishing him, I just watch him carefully and do what I need to do to remain confident that everyone will have a positive experience.

“See how his tail is stiff? That means he doesn’t want to be petted. Let him sniff you and, if he walks away, just let him go.”

It works well, and it seems to be helping him build up his confidence, because when J talked me into letting her play with him, he aced it. fullsizeoutput_228

One of L’s little-kid-sized rubber boots had a tear in it, and I’d just put on an Aquaseal patch, so she and I stood in our socks on the steps and watched as J spoke softly and gently to Daazhraii until – I couldn’t believe it – he let her pick up his rope toy and play tug and chase. They played for at least half an hour, at first on his run by the front door, then running laps around the house, taking turns carrying the rope toy. He was as gentle as – gentler than – I’ve ever seen him, and completely beside himself with the fun of it, totally relaxed and thrilled with his new best friend.

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Daazhraii seems to be mellowing, and I’m glad. There is not much room in the world these days for dogs that can’t be trusted. He may never get to be really trustworthy (I still wouldn’t let him into the house with the kids, where he tends to get more territorial and feel more cornered), but he’s making some progress, and that’s pretty exciting stuff.

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Moose’s Moose

Posted on August 10, 2018 by Keely

It had been a long day.

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My old friend Mark was visiting from the lower forty-eight. We had spent a week and a half touring Alaska together, and man, did we do it all.

We drove Turnagain Arm, we panned for gold (and found some flecks!) we hiked a little of the Kesugi Ridge trail, we rode four-wheelers out to a friend’s remote property in Talkeetna, we picked blueberries, we visited Wal-Mike’s, we ate Kenai River red salmon campfire tacos, we saw the sunset over the volcanoes at Ninilchik, we took a water taxi to Kachemak Bay State Park, we hiked to a glacial lake and Mark swam in it, we packrafted out to some icebergs and I climbed to the top of one, we saw bears and otters and moose. Man did we see moose.

That morning we’d woken up in our tent at Rusty’s Lagoon, across from Homer, which is a beautiful place to camp if you don’t mind bears. We packed up our gear and stashed it in a bear box, then packed the raft the three easy miles to the glacier view. We played there all day with the dog and the raft, then hiked out to meet our water taxi at 6:30 for the bumpy ride back to Homer. Ravenous, we ate dinner, then headed north on the Sterling Highway. I meant to camp at Clam Gulch, but I missed the turnoff just after sunset, too distracted by the road work and the moose cow and calf munching on the roadside to realize what had happened. When I did realize it, I figured I was awake enough to make it another hour to Skilak Lake, so I pushed on.

Darkness came as a bit of a surprise. I’d been adjusting to waking in the middle of the night to find the tent dark, but driving at night is a whole different ballgame. My eyes were starting to get bleary and that warm bowl of seafood pasta in my belly was starting to feel pillowy and warm. The road construction workers were beginning to look like aliens and the reflective cones were sliding around in my peripheral vision when I spotted it: that beautiful triangular tent shape on a brown sign that means “home” in the summer. Morgan’s Landing. Okay.

I’d never been there, but Mark took charge of navigation from the copilot’s seat. We found the campground, mostly empty, and stepped out of the truck with relief. I stretched my arms over my head, opened the back door for the dog, and let out a massive sigh, ready to have the tent up and the sleeping bags laid out so I could hit the hay already, thank you very much.

The sound of hooves pounding on sod jolted me to alertness and I looked over the truck bed just in time to see a huge dark shape disappearing over a rise, maybe thirty feet away, with my dog’s fluffy white tail close behind.

“Shit! That thing was right there! SHIT!”

Barking, quickly receding into the distance.

“Daazhraii, c’mere Shoops! Hey!” I whistled and called and raised all kinds of a racket in a campground in the middle of the night, but the barking just kept fading. I tried to play it cool to Mark, and pulled the tent out of the truck. “He’ll be back,” I said, and snapped the poles together in the glare from the headlights, “he always comes back eventually.”

He didn’t though. After a while I couldn’t tell one distant barking dog from another. The tent was up and I was emptyhanded, starting to feel that vise on my lungs that means the dog has been missing too long. Mark had paid the camp fee and returned from the fee station, so I fired up the truck and backed out of the campsite. The headlights caught that glowing white plume-tail as I turned. The idiot dog was back. The moose must have lost him in the woods somewhere.

Daazhraii trotted up, panting and wheezing and grinning like a gargoyle. I stuck him in the back seat with a scolding and a hug, pulled back into the space and got my sleeping bag and pad laid out in the tent. I opened the door to let Daazhraii out so that he could come to bed, and he was off like a shot, slipping to the ground and around the truck.

“NO!” but it’s like his brain shuts off when there are moose to chase.

Hoofbeats, fading into the night forest.

“How could it be right there? Again!?”

This time we drove after them. We followed the sound of barking across lots in the park and down back roads. We whistled and called out the windows of the truck, but Daazhraii was in a different world. At one point the moose was standing on the side of the road, maybe fifteen feet from the truck, just staring into the headlights while the dog danced around her heels, barking.

“Should we… Should we grab him?” Mark didn’t sound eager.

“No freaking way. That thing has got to be pissed. She could pancake us if she felt like it, no problem. We’re staying in the truck.” The moose stared, the dog barked, I whistled and shouted. After a moment dog and moose faded into the trees again. “Damn.”

It was one in the morning now. We’d spent an hour chasing the dang critters and I was seeing stars. We were following the sound of barking up a backroad when the barking suddenly stopped and there was Daazhraii, grinning and panting in the headlights. I loaded him up and we drove back to camp.

“To heck with Morgan’s Landing,” I told Mark over the sound of the dog’s panting. “We’re not staying here with a crazy moose.” As I pulled into the campsite, my headlights picked up the shine of two brown eyes five and a half feet off the ground. Her ears flicked and she chewed a mouthful of grass.

“You’ve got to be kidding me. It’s right there. Again.” Mark was staring through the passenger window and across maybe twenty feet into her eyes. “Did it lose a baby here or something? Why does it keep coming back?”

“We’re outta here. We’ll find someplace else to sleep.” I was half crazy with adrenaline.

“What about the tent?” It was glowing in the headlights. My sleeping bag was in there, or I might have pulled out right then.

We had to wait five minutes for the moose to mosey off, and we waited a few more just to be sure she was really gone before packing up the tent in record speed and heading out.

“Sorry you had to pay the camp fee for Morgan’s Landing and we didn’t even stay. What a waste. But that was crazy.”

“That wasn’t Morgan’s Landing, dude. That was Moose’s Moose for sure.”

At two in the morning I found a well-lit parking lot in Cooper Landing and we all crashed out in the truck. I wasn’t taking any chances.

North

Posted on February 19, 2018 by Keely

We finally took off north this weekend. Geoff Nitsiiddhaa

Geoff and I have been talking about heading for the continental divide all year, but it hasn’t happened. All winter we’ve been getting wood instead of working on trail, which is good: I’ve finally hit a groove in my firewood chopping, i.e. chopping not chipping. We’re using less diesel and we’ve adjusted to heating water on the wood-stove as a first choice, but we haven’t been traveling as much as we did last year and even the year before. This weekend we finally took off and made it north of the woodyard for the first time.

We packed up on Saturday, determined to break trail as far as we could, but it was a false start. We got into a herd of caribou a few miles out of town and wound up spending the evening working on meat. Geoff and Vadzaih

I like working on meat in the snow. After the fire ants and heat of Arkansas, the clean, fresh snow is a blessing. Caribou are easy skinning by comparison with pigs, and the work goes fast. It was cold, twenty below on Saturday, and the metal spine of my knife got stuck to my fingertips a few times when the blood froze, but warming up was just a matter of sticking my hands between the hide and the warm meat. A novelty. meat steam While we were working on meat, a friend from sewing night drove by with a load of wood and mentioned that there were hundreds of caribou on Airport Lake, where they used to drop cargo, once upon a time. It was only a few minutes, so I took off on the sassy white bravo to have a look while Albert and Geoff worked on one of the caribou, and I’m so glad.

keely airport lake caribou

I came around the corner and there they were, ranged out over the lake like a broken string of beads spilled across a white tabletop. I turned the key and the bravo shuddered to a halt between my knees. The caribou watched me for a minute, then got on with their evening, fairly unperturbed. I love the way they tip their heads up and back to high-step through the snow with perfect posture. I love the way they stand perfectly still and stare because I am an alien in their woods.

vadzaih Vadzaih Airport Lake 2

I recognize that my pictures pretty much suck at explaining how awesome this was, how the caribou overthrew me. I love that I got to see this alone and under my own steam. I could have sat on the bravo forever and watched them go by, but dark was falling, my friends were waiting, and the meat was cooling in the snow.

albert's antlers

Hot tip: carry a thermos of hot water instead of a thermos of tea: it can be used for tea and for hand-washing and knife-rinsing in cold weather. Man it feels good to not have to wash up with twenty-below snow. bloody bunny boots

We let the blood thaw off our boots in the foyer (ha) and laid out the quarters on cardboard to thaw. Chips of blood-ice scattered everywhere and made little puddles on the floor. What a pain.

Still, we made it out on Sunday. We ran about ten miles out, most of it fresh trail in the deep snow, and Daazhraii ran along the whole way. We made it as far as we could before dark – my headlight is still out – and then turned back. We’ll try and cut across the valley now to a stash of awesome wood we left on the Junjik in the fall. Daazhraii definitely not sneaking snacks

Daazhraii flagged on the return trip but refused to ride the snowmachine, no matter how worn out he got. We had to run slower than slow on the way home, but the boy never quit. He’s one tough pup. He was such a wee cutie a year ago, and now he’s this big, badass ski dog.

Daazhraii one year ago! skidogsmile