Caravan Draft Chapter Twelve

January 19, 2023 PazloLeave a comment

Dark Horizon

Sasha and the caravan moved for an immeasurable period of time, ever eastward. Her life became a routine of rising, hitching up, and pulling Tun’s sled as the village-sized entourage followed, at the speed of reindeer, the great herds with which they traveled. They would trek through the shortening day and lengthening night when weather was fair, with few breaks for rest or water. When stopped, camps would be assembled hastily and modestly, with an eye toward preparedness to strike them and resume the march.

With hundreds of dogs in the group, they were invariably kept leashed to maintain order. This eliminated any possibilities for Sasha to search through the great camp for her loved ones. She kept their faces and voices in her mind’s eye through the monotonous journey. Those of Mother and Jiak, Bek and Nina, and of her lifelong friend Kotka. The latter’s absence weighed heavily on the little girl dog’s heart. She had lost track of him in the tumult of exodus, and he vanished during the most fearful and deadly time of their odyssey. She vowed she would see all of her loved ones again, inquired after them of every dog they passed. She counted their love daily as the thing for which she was the most grateful. Occasionally, during the long, dark, plodding night, heavy thoughts would enter in. Suppose she might never see any of them again? Suppose they are all dead already, from the soldiers or The Ice Queen, or perhaps simply from the heartbreak of being lost each from the other?
“No!” she would call out into the bitter darkness, “I will never give up. Not until the day I die.”, as she battled these demons across the stark plains of ice and snow. All of her working hours were spent walking, pulling the sled, and her brief rests were spent sleeping deeply, drugged with exhaustion. There was little by way of conversation among the teammates in the time spent together eating or bedding down. Each day brought the same dark nothingness of which to speak, and sleep soon overwhelmed each rapidly when they retired.

On an otherwise unremarkable passage through the endless night, beneath a pitch black sky studded with a million brilliant beacons, Sasha came to a sudden realization that shook her from her doldrums. Immediately she called out to Dak ahead of her on the tandem line, her voice cracking with drought and breathlessness.
“This is the night without day, isn’t it? I haven’t seen the sun in a long time.”
Dak turned his head in a slow, odd rotating motion, like an owl, swiveling at the neck. He looked her right in the eye but made no sign of acknowledgement or recognition. Indeed, his eyes looked as if he were asleep or wild with the lockjaw, and this startled Sasha. Dak turned his head back to face forward without any hint of reaction or response. Sasha felt confused and overwhelmed by the shock of the moment, and seemed to sense she was not thinking clearly. She could not seem to understand how to address the situation.

Before she could collect her thoughts, the still night air began to stir. A backward wind, reversing from the tailwind that had ushered the group along, sometimes with harsh insistence. This was a new wind, and unlike that which blew from the polar ice cap smelling of ice and snow. This wind was filled with an aroma of teeming life. It was an earthy-salty smell, rich with newfound variety, and all the dogs lifted their snouts at its arrival.
“The sea. I smell the sea.” Sasha heard Stone’s thoughts spoken aloud.
Her nostrils filled with the scents on the breeze which seemed warmer than the Arctic night they were leaving behind them. She recalled many tales told by Kotka and Stone, Spring and Lema, of their sojourns to the sea.

The stories seemed like fantasies and imagined things: animals that look like otters but are as big as three reindeer, called walruses; and some bigger than a dog, called seals. There were people of the seacoast who called themselves An’kalyn, and lived strange lives without yarangas, without reindeer herds or traplines. They paddled giant canoes they called baidarkas, big enough for six men, and hunted after the giant otters for meat and oil and bones. The sea itself was unique. It was like water, yet different. It was laden with salt and had a smell that was indescribably vibrant and rich. It was the largest lake one would ever see in a lifetime. So large, its edges stretched to the end of the Earth where they fall off into the sky.

The breeze and the recollections and the smell of the ocean awoke Sasha from the mind and body-numbing trot at which she’d been moving for longer than a moon phase. A hundred questions were rising within her at the prospect of seeing this incredible, mysterious, magical place she had only half-believed in. She wished it was summer, and daylight, so she could see all of these amazing things upon her arrival. Who knows how distant it may be? Perhaps there will be light.

“It’s been a while.” brother Anchu called out from behind her. “The darkness.”
His voice shattered the night, silent but for the sounds of the caravan walking across the top of the world. Sasha realized again how deep was the black of the space above them, how empty her entire world seemed out here, past the end of nowhere on the darkest and coldest night of her short life.
“This is the time into which I was born.” she spoke casually into the ether, as if sitting on the porch of the Dogs’ House at the Lodge, lingering over jukkola. “I see it now. Then will come the time when the sun returns, and I will be getting older.”
She gazed up at the starfield that pierced the black veil, the shining lights of all the spirits gone before. Their whispered calls entered Sasha’s mind; “We are all of us a pack.”
“And a pack is a forever love.” she called back to the frigid sky.

Dak turned at this and stopped, stock still in his traces. Sasha’s chest and harness slammed into his backside and she folded up behind him. Anchu was stepping over her with nowhere to go when his neck line pulled him down onto his sister. Tun awoke with a start from the mindless stupor of night travel, and jammed both feet on the claw brake as Stone, in a rotation behind Anchu, added to the pile at Dak’s feet.

Dak stood like a statue, unmoved by the calamity he had caused. He looked at Sasha. Rather, he seemed to look inside of her, as if her eyes were portals to another time, another world, another life. A smile came to him briefly as he muttered a single word: “Mother?”.
His gaze lost focus. His eyelids looked as if they were frozen open.

Then he fell to the ice.

Growling Clouds And Hummingbirds

August 30, 2022 Pazlo1 Comment

Hello friends!

I’m sorry it’s been so long since my last correspondence. Our days are still a bit discombobulated due to two tumultuous years here for my people and our Wonder Garden. First mom was gone, then my person’s puppy moved in with us. (And on some days, my person’s puppy’s puppies would come over, too, and stay overnight sometimes, like the night they slept in the tent in the yard.)

Earlier this year, the best thing happened! My person stopped leaving for whole, long days to go to that “worky” thing he spent so much time at. I don’t know why he didn’t think of this sooner. I’m here, Doone The Cat is here, and our food is here, so why would you need to go anywhere else? Well, except sometimes when he goes to “The Trading Post”, ’cause he brings home snacks and other grub, but that usually doesn’t take very long. He’s usually home before I even think about worrying he won’t come back.

Now he’s here almost all the time and I can spend the entire day outside in the fresh air, on the cool grass, napping or keeping watch. We take nice long hikes at all times of the day. Today it was just after sunrise, so we could enjoy the cool morning before the late summer heat drives us to our water dishes and the shade of the big trees. He watches every sunset with me, and afterward we go to the south lawn, and he sits on the steps listening to The Lone Ranger radio shows until it’s too dark to see when we come into the house. Occasionally he’ll go somewhere and say “Be a good puppy while I’m gone. I’ll be back after a while.”, but not too often, and never for too long.

Then another thing happened this summer! His puppy found his own doghouse, as is the wont of adult dogs, and now it’s just the three of us! Wow! Let the spoiling begin! The cat looks like she’s gained ten ounces, and I myself must exercise restraint to keep from over-indulging in the plenty laid before us. It also seems more quiet now that it’s just us. My person doesn’t turn on the TV very much. On Big Saturday he makes it a point to see two things he calls Stooges and Svengoolie, but the rest of the time it’s quiet. Well, except when he plays those awful drums. Or the shiny guitar. Or the plastic piano.

So the past couple of weeks I’ve seen and heard some flocks of geese flying around over Maggie’s pond next door. Probably some up by that pond where we go biking, too. The sunsets each day are a little further south, and the nights are getting cool. All these things tell me our trial is drawing to a close soon, and all of this terrible summer business will be behind us. This hasn’t been the most challenging summer. I’ve seen hotter. But I’ll tell you what was off the charts this year, and that was angry clouds!

Holy smokes! Some days they’d all get amassed together, shutting off the sun. They’d bring some of the biggest bruisers you ever saw, too, and mean-looking. I don’t know if it’s mating season and they’re fighting to show off, or if it’s a territorial thing or maybe they get crazy from the heat like people do sometimes. First they flash their big flashlights like a warning so you know it’s coming and boy do you know it’s coming, and the wind picks up and then “BANG- Grrrrrrrrrrrr! Hgrrrrrrr!” they have the longest bark-growl thing of any bark-growl thing I’ve ever heard and loud? You want to get under the end table for this ’cause it shakes our old house and the windowpanes rattle and you can feel the grumbling in the ground, that’s how loud it is. Loud? You haven’t heard loud ’til you hear this! Even that awful drum could never dream of being this loud. It’s like a nillilion drums or something that means a lot of them, you know? Well, luckily there have been only a few really big battles this summer, and now that things are cooling down perhaps the clouds will be in better humors.

I’m glad we’re heading into fall. Mostly ’cause it leads to winter, and but also ’cause I like fall, too. The leaves start to come off the trees in fall, remember? They smell great, but they make stalking game in the Wonder Woods impossible with all their racket. My person purposely kicks at them and cries “Wee!”, and so that doesn’t help either. But a great thing about leaf-off is that we can see a lot farther in a lot of directions because we don’t have all those trees blocking our view from the top of Nishan Hill or even on the trails. Unless we’re in the pine stands ’cause the leaves don’t fall off the pine trees. Well, they do, but in a different way. It’s like pine trees are a lot different from the…the other kind that has their leaves fall off. It’s like they decide to take their leaves off for the winter, or like shedding I guess.

I must confess there are a few things about summer that I enjoy. I like that my person isn’t always in a rush to get the doors closed when I go in and out. I like that all the windows of the house are open, so I can smell what’s going on around me when I’m stuck inside. I like that I’m not stuck inside much! Sometimes in winter, even I like to get warmed up. And sometimes my person makes me come in and says “It’s not a fit night out for man or beast!”

This year I’ve taken a fancy to the hummingbirds. The first time I heard one, I thought it was a giant bee, but once you’ve heard one you recognize it right away after that. We have Ruby-Throated Hummingbirds here, and they come to the feeder at the kitchen window constantly. There must be a whole litter that lives nearby, and by now we see two or three at a time. They’re pretty, they hover cool, they have an aesthetically pleasing long snout, like canines. And they are feisty! These little guys are not cowards, but ruffians. They’ll buzz each other on the feeder and chase each other around like fighter planes! One little guy is the most courageous and defensive, with attitude, and won’t give up his perch at the feeder for anyone! They can buzz him and he sticks his snout out like a sword and says “Bring it on! You want a piece of this? Hah?” or at least he looks like he’s saying that. With a Brooklyn accent. Yeah, I’ll miss them. But I know they’ll be back next year.

Right now I’m getting ready to enjoy the fall. Winter can’t come soon enough for me. But like the freedom, fresh air and hummingbirds of summer, there are a few things I like about fall, too. Who could pass up a nap in a leafpile?

Wag more, bark less.

Sasha

Not Again?!

March 29, 2022 Pazlo2 Comments

Hello friends!

Boy oh boy I’ve had a great winter. Lots of snow and lots of cold. Walks in the Wonder Woods with my person. But, gee whiz, it looks like spring is around the corner. It’s up to 27 degrees F today, and yesterday’s snow is already melting in the bright sun. The last of the snow is just about gone in all those little nooks and crannies amid the tangles and tumble-down rock walls. I suppose I should get used to this, and give up my dream that one day winter will never leave us, and we can have snow all year.

One redeeming quality to spring is that it brings the birds back with it. Black and yellow birds, orange and black birds, red and brown birds, stripy birds, iridescent birds. They really show up now, too, because mostly the world’s gray-ish where the snow is gone but it hasn’t started greening yet. By the porch those first little yellow and purple flowers came up a couple days ago. These get caught in a frog’s throat and make that noise. I know this because my person calls them Croak Assists.

I don’t know what’s happening with my fictional doppelganger up in the Arctic. We haven’t heard from them for months. It can be a pretty rugged place in the winter, and it’s not unusual that we don’t hear from them until spring, which is still another two months away for them. Lucky stiffs. I expect that we will get all the winter’s mail at once and catch up with the many adventures they’ve had in the season of total darkness.

Wandering around the yard by the driveway I found several great bones, some old snack scraps and a few things that I don’t know what they are but they smell edible. Luckily I beat these little yellow birds to them. I guess maybe there’s an upside to putting the snow away sometimes.

I just wish we didn’t have to wait so long for it to come back.

Wag more, bark less.

Sasha

House Tree Season

December 13, 2021 Pazlo4 Comments

Hello friends!

Life is getting better every day here at the Engleville Tick Ranch, growing steadily colder, and snow falling regularly. The trees are bare so you can see the squirrels all the way at the top, but the thick carpet of crunchy leaves makes it impossible to sneak up on anything. My person keeps saying “How pretty!” and walking through the leaf piles, kicking them up and making a tremendous amount of noise.

The Wonder Woods smell great now. Crisp, cold air and all those leaves. It’s a really busy place now, too, as all the critters are getting ready for winter, eating their own weight in beech nuts and stashing them in caches. Or maybe they’re just getting ready for Christmas. My people gather a bunch of things at Christmas, then other people come and take them. Sharing the bounty, I suppose.

Of course they’ve done that crazy winter thing. Maybe it’s the solstice celebration. Or maybe, I’m starting to think, it has something to do with Christmas. So, every year they bring a tree into the house and stand it up in front of the window. But instead of admiring the beautiful tree, they try to hide it with colored lights and things hanging on the branches. Maybe it’s ceremonial, like a totem, ’cause this is where they gather the bounty to be shared.

Things are a little different this year. They put the tree in the living room. It was always in the parlor, but now they have those awful, noisy drums in there. I’d rather have a tree than drums. You can chew on a tree, and lay under it. And it’s quiet. They need to get really big before they make any noise, and then it’s just the tiniest squeaks and creaks when the wind blows them. Birds like trees, too. Do you ever see birds landing on the drums? I think not, and rest my case. Trees good, drums bad.

Here’s hoping your people let you have your own stocking like mine do, and they stuff it with your favorite treats for Christmas. (And I hope nobody in your house gets drums for Christmas).

Wag more, bark less.

Sasha

From Blooms To Booms

November 15, 2021 Pazlo2 Comments

Hello friends!

It’s been quite a while since my person posted correspondence for me. Paws are superior to delicate human hands in many ways, but computers are designed for people, so I need to rely on his fingers.

We’ve had a rough year on the ranch since mom died last winter. My person was distant and seemed inconsolable for a while. That’s when I sat quietly and patiently beside him. That’s what friends do for one another, and he is my closest friend. I know I am his, too, because he tells me he loves me.

Life has taken a new shape now, with mom gone. My person works three days a week, and his puppy Ryan is living with us now, so he is here on most days when my person works. When they both work, Aunt Kerry comes over in the afternoon to visit me. Good thing, too, because I usually need to pee by then.

We’ve watched many sunsets together this year. Each day, the sun is a little further south as it rises and sets. Thank goodness, winter is coming. On Saturday, we saw the first snowflakes of the season. It was a brief flurry that didn’t stick, but it was like a balm to me and my person. The wood stove has been fired up a few times, and the windows are getting taped shut (or whatever it is he does that makes them not open until spring). The plow has been put on the truck, and the dreadful mower has been parked in the cabana. He’s a mowing maniac, though, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see him mow again before snow cover. The outside mower does not work as good as the inside one, which sucks up all the cat hair off the floors. He drives that one around outside and it just keeps blowing the leaves from one place to another. Maybe it’s just a form of entertainment.

In Engleville, we’ve passed the season of blooms, and now we’re in the season of “BOOMS”. Those guys with their long guns are out marching around in the woods looking for things that need to be shot at. Boy do I hate loud noises. So sometimes it’s not bad when they’re far away, but when they’re right behind the house or across the road I need to run into the house. The booms I mean. I’m not afraid of flowers. I just want to be clear that I don’t run and hide from flowers.

Well, my person hastily scribbled another chapter for my book and he wants to put it on my site, but it’s not good. Not good at all. I don’t mean his writing, I mean the story. Here in Engleville, we’re thrilled that the temperatures got down to 23 degrees F, but up on the polar ice cap they’re looking at temperatures that are 30 or 40 degrees below zero, and nothing to stop the wind. While we have been on an extended hiatus, they have been trekking desperately across a thousand miles of frozen wasteland, bound for the sea for which I am named. I hope they make it soon, because everyone in the caravan is starting to wear out. Boy, am I glad it’s fiction!

I’ve heard rumors of the turkey holiday. I know it’s soon after the leaves leave. It sounds like they are planning a gathering of all the family here at the homestead. I’m very happy about that because these people really need each other this year. I’m also happy because it means a lot of turkey and also pies and maybe cookies for me. But mostly I’m glad for them.

It has been a strange year of change. But now winter is returning and maybe things can get back to normal. I’ll be glad for all of us.

Wag more, bark less.

Sasha

Caravan Draft Chapter Eleven

May 29, 2021 PazloLeave a comment

Chapter Eleven
Night Vision

Dorik and Keru allowed a few hours’ sleep for Tun and Rol, then woke them to serve hot tea. This revived them a bit, and they reaffirmed their gratitude and good fortune at the caring friends coming to their aid. The four got underway riding Dorik’s sledge, towing the loaded sleds behind them, and the animal community of the camp following along. The sun, blocked by the blanketing storm, sank below the horizon as the entourage arrived back at the main caravan. As darkness fell, the winds subsided further, the air eventually becoming nearly still.
The pack of thirty dogs in Tun’s group, which included Sasha and the team, joined the assemblage of refugees, and now the total number of dogs in the camp rose over one hundred fifty. All the dogs that had been rescued were treated to warm water and hot chow. They had all been desperately hungry, and some ate ravenously, occasionally over-indulging, resulting in vomiting. They would return for more when their stomachs settled, which took no time at all. Many of the unnamed and unknown tagalongs were thrilled to find their packmates or human friends in the great camp. Joyous greetings, laughter, and cries of surprise bore witness to such happy reunions.
Sasha was eager to look for her mother and her human family from the homestead. Also, she had not seen Kotka for two days now, and this worry simmered in the back of her mind. She was exhausted from all the events hitherto, and sought comfort with her brother, her packmates, and their loyal human friends. She could eat little before her stomach ached, and needed to rest before she could take up the task of searching the massive camp for those she longed to see. She curled at the door of the yaranga in which Tun and Rol now resided, continuing their own recoveries.
An excited chatter of voices came from nearby. Larik and Anchu and a fairly large crowd of new-found friends. It was melodious and animated conversation, punctuated with the Oo!s and Ah!s of the enthralled listeners. A wave of laughter would erupt, and rise like a swell, giggles drifting off like dry leaves on the wind. It was a comforting sound, and a welcome lullaby to Sasha, and she closed her eyes.
Her sleeping thoughts were a rapidly-changing mix of dreams, glorious visions and chilling nightmares. Mother first trotted into her mind, pulling a sled with her first team; Spring and Nib, Lema their pack mother, Yura and Vasa. Aboard was her entire family from her home in the moraine; Bek, Nina and Jiak. They waved cheerily, and Sasha ran to them. Each would reach out and pet her head, but before the sled came to a stop the vision faded.
Dancing through her sleep came a fearful scene, a long string of dogs with Dak at the lead, cresting a blind hill and falling from a precipice into a bottomless blackness. Sasha was third in line, and was pulled by the falling dogs ahead. As each fell, its weight added to the acceleration of the remaining dogs and a sled, driven by Tun. From an omniscient perspective, she watched the team, herself, the sled and Tun disappear into the pit of darkness below, the terrorized screams of man and dog fading away to silence.
From the blackness, faint stars began to emerge, and as they became brighter, the great luminous sweeping fingers of the Spirit Lights joined them in the crystal clear winter sky. Slowly then quickly they move and shift. Red and green then red again then green again. Not far off in the deep night, a pack of wolves sang forth their wailing cries to the waning moon. First one, then two. Then too many to count. The sun began to rise, and as it did, it lit the wolves, and they could be seen to be feeding on carcasses. Beside them were two sleds and a hastily-fabricated skin shelter. Before any more horrific details could reveal themselves, this scene, too, faded.
Sasha found herself sitting on the porch of the Dogs’ House, at the home she’d just left, Tun’s mountaintop Lodge. Next to her was her oldest and dearest friend, her mentor and confidante, Kotka.
“’Kotka The Brave’ we should call you.” She said, staring admiringly at his thick coat and full mane.
“Brave?” he responded with surprise.
“Sure! Bouncing back from all those years with the bad man, before you came to Bek’s. Left alone when the strangers raided the homestead. And still here you are, sticking with the pack under such hardship, still seeking out…”
A clanging reindeer bell shattered this dream, and now Sasha was huddled in the dog pile during the worst of the debilitating gale. She was shivering and her feet hurt. The bell kept ringing, but nothing was happening. No movement. No change. Just freezing to death and the bell ringing over and over.
In a flash, the scene changed again. Now Larik was dancing before a crowd of cheering onlookers. He stood upright and held a polar bear cape over himself like a robe.
“Got this one last year up in the mountains!”
Anchu approached carrying another skin, like a performer’s assistant, and he handed it to Larik, taking the robe from him.
Out of nowhere, the wind suddenly swept past as if a great window had been opened in the face of a hurricane. Larik and the bearskin, Anchu and the robe, the onlookers and everything around them began to blow across the ice, followed by the tumbling sleds, then Tun and Rol, Dorik and Keru. Sasha viewed again from high above, and watched the wind gather up everything in its path like a broom. Yarangas and families, dog teams and reindeer teams, sleds and sledges. Whole herds were tossed like so much dried grass, leaving the bare ice spotless and gleaming. After a moment of unsettling silence, clicking and clacking of dog claws on ice could be heard approaching. In fact, super dogs, as now a pack of wolves, a dozen or more, raced after the rolling pile of the camp’s contents.
A wolf’s howl woke her, and Sasha found herself where she had coiled peacefully in the great camp, her pack and Tun within reach. Except for the ubiquitous noises of the reindeer herd shuffling and chuffing, the night was calm and quiet. She listened, and determined the wolf cry was only in her dream. Silence and stillness enshrouded the dark night, and it seemed she was the only one awake, reindeer notwithstanding.
Her memory took her back to a night long ago. She was camped on a riverbank with her old team and Jiak, when a small pack of wolves appeared on an opposite hill. They sat and sang to the moon, lingered briefly for a second act, and disappeared silently over the horizon, leaving the night as peaceful and undisturbed as it was this moment.
Sasha closed her eyes and fought to return to sleep. She remembered some parts of the disturbing visions her slumber had brought her, and this left her with an underlying uneasiness. She tried to take herself back to the place where she was greeting Mother and Jiak, but no concentrations on the subject were willing to engage the spirit of the imagination.
She wondered what the night visions had meant, if anything. She could find no corollary to the present.
Leastwise, not so within the few minutes allowed, before sleep reclaimed her weary mind.

Caravan Draft Chapter Ten

February 7, 2021 PazloLeave a comment

Chapter Ten
Breath And Life

Long before the humans heard the ringing reindeer bell of Dorik’s team, the racing wind brought the scents to the dogs assembled in Tun’s desperate camp. Speeding past was a rich blend of smells; reindeer, people, leather, smoke and traces of food aromas. Mixed in were familiar signatures, dogs that belonged to this pack.

“Larik!” Alexei was first to respond, and began straightaway to sprint into the headwind to meet the approaching party.

Sasha smelled her brother. She cleared her nostrils of embedded scents and sniffed the air again in short, rapid whiffs. It was true. It was Anchu. Still reeling from the shock that he had ventured out into the deadly storm, a feeling haunted her that she could not yet be certain what might come next. Either her brother will have returned with an excuse, an explanation; or kind-hearted neighbors were returning his corpse to his driver.

The clanging bell now could be heard, and seemed quite near, but the wind-driven snow still obliterated any view of the yet-unseen travelers. Now the click-clack of the reindeers’ hooves could be heard, and the scraping, creaking, rattling noises that accompanied a wood-railed sled as it made its way over the solid ice. Then, Alexei could be heard to yip with excitement. The balance of the team, waiting breathlessly, felt some instant relief knowing Larik had been found. This raised Sasha’s hopes, but did not fully allay her fears.

The first visible thing to emerge from the blinding snow was Anchu, sprinting top speed even after all of his ordeals, and now with a tailwind. He streaked into camp and skidded to a stop. Despite the bone-chilling cold and rampaging wind, an ice-crusted smile stretched across his face, and beneath crystal-flocked eyebrows, his eyes gleamed with energy and enthusiasm.

Sasha instantly felt angry with Anchu. Seeing that he was clearly alive and well, her worries and fears were dismissed, and they vanished behind the curtain of her present emotions. Her brain lined up a dozen things to say to him; “Why would you do such a thing? Larik is much bigger, you shouldn’t have gone with him. You could have died out there! How do you think I would have felt if you died? I almost died from fright!” She was choosing which would be first.

“Sis!” Anchu yelled as soon as he laid eyes on her. He spoke in a fiery, staccato barrage of exclamations. “We’re back! I can’t believe we made it so fast, but this wind! Wow! It really helped on the backtrail.” He was wagging fast and sort of wiggling all over, ebullient, even glowing with excitement. He continued with another flurry of sentences.

“I was starting to get scared! I thought I was going to die! Wow! It is really freezing out there! Then I ran into a guard and almost got into a fight. But I didn’t know Larik followed me, and boy you should’ve seen them run when he showed up!”

Seeing his face, hearing his voice, watching the light in his eyes as he told his tales brought Sasha back from her state of anger. She realized just how much she loved him, and how much he has been and continues to be an integral piece of her life. She remembered her fears and heartache when she thought only moments ago that he might never return. Such a sickening feeling it was to think about life without Anchu. Now she was overwhelmed with the joy of having him back, snatched from the jaws of death, and she was immensely grateful. She ran to him and kissed his face, lavishing her affections on him, interrupting his effervescent narrative.

“I’m so glad to have you back.” She said. “I don’t know what I would have done…”

“And we brought help for the people.” Her brother continued, oblivious to any worries or concerns he may have caused the rest. Oblivious to the import and intent of his sister’s words. “Did you know Larik killed a bear and fought off six dogs at Umkat? Everybody knows Larik. ‘Larik The Bear Killer’ they call him. He’s the best!”

Just then, ‘The Bear Killer’ emerged from the oppressive storm, ambling at a casual trot and talking to a small fan club that trailed him.

“Larik!” Anchu ran off to greet him. They high-pawed one another like old sled-school buddies.

The other five members of the team looked on in astonishment. To be jovial and well accompanied, and enthusiastically friendly with Anchu, or anyone else, was entirely out of character for Larik. The sullen reprobate, unsociable Larik. Larik the rebel. Larik the loner. But Larik ‘The Bear Killer?’ What strange transformation must have taken place deep in the dark night, in the midst of the williwaw, out on the frozen black tundra?

These two, at the least, were laid in the lap of the Ice Queen, for her to do with them as she would. Yet instead of clutching them to her frozen bosom, and keeping them forever for herself, she returned them.

“Don’t you boys do such a thing again.” She would scold them, and the wailing winds now rose in camp, to remind them all of how truly fortunate they had been.

Dorik could hardly believe his eyes. When Keru, his youngest daughter, insisted the dog that woke them wanted help to follow him, he had some doubts. She was of keen insight with all living things, however, and he trusted her instincts in such matters more than he did his own. Indeed, it appeared the dog that materialized out of a deadly blizzard was calling them. Stepping west and stopping, calling again and returning. Larik was still wearing his racing harness, which he’d been in since quitting the team at Tunkan. The trademark color pattern was recognized to be Tun’s.

Now the dim morning light revealed to Dorik an eerie sight fading forth from the snowstorm as he neared the makeshift shelter. At first there was no movement at all, and an alarming feeling struck Dorik in the gut. Then a dog flashed up out of the snow and ran to those alongside the sledge. As the shelter came to be viewed more clearly, a few more dogs rose, and looked to identify and greet the newcomers. This brought hope that the conditions may have been survivable.

From the firepit of the yaranga, Keru had loaded burning dung coals in a cast iron kettle which was then slung from the bottom of the sledge. A rectangular litter covered the top, providing a small cabin. She now moved the coals to the inside of the litter, stoked the fire, and placed a bucket of chipped ice on it to melt.

Dorik proceeded hastily to the windbreak, and found the tiny tent. The hides were rendered solid and inflexible, and were frozen down to the ice. He pulled at the place where the two skins overlapped, and they noisily separated, making crunching sounds, bits of ice falling from them. It was dark inside, and the day itself was dull. It took a moment of staring into the space before Dorik’s eyes could sense and discern the shapes within. Two dogs stirred and scampered out, and what appeared to be several more remained coiled and crowded into the lair. Then a large mass covered with a thin layer of snow began to move. It startled Dorik at first, his nerves tense with anticipation of what he might discover. Sitting upright with a groan, the shape was clearly a man.

“Good morning, Dorik.” Called out a voice, or rather, a sound similar to that of dragging a large rock across hard ice.

“Is that Tun?” Dorik replied.

“Yes!” rasped the frozen giant, “It is Tun. How are you?”

“I’m well. Might I ask the same of you?”

“I’m glad to see you, old friend.” Tun’s throat tightened for a second. He paused to regain his voice. “I’m as best as can be under the circumstances, but my young friend Rol here is not holding up so well. Do you think you could assist me getting him up?” the grating voice faded in and out.

“Keru and I will help you both. Here, let me give you a hand.”

“Thank you, no, Dorik. Please, I must raise myself from this bed. Something I hadn’t expected to do.”

Keru joined Dorik, and they assisted Rol to his feet, then into the litter. Tun was next, gritting his teeth and wincing at the sharp pains in his back. The two laid beside the fire in a state of euphoria, partly induced by exposure, and partly so by this unexpected and miraculous salvation. They had each kept a brave face for one another, while lying down for what they thought would be their final sleep. And now – saved! Had they not been numb with cold and dumb with hypothermia, they would no doubt have danced and sung of their joy and happiness, their love of life, their elation at their return to it. Warmth, relief, rescue. Water. Safety. Caring friends. In a matter of moments, both were sleeping deeply, nearly comatose with exhaustion.

Keru and Dorik set about caring for the animals; their reindeer and Rol’s, and all the dogs. Huddling the three sleds together, and Dorik’s carrying the litter, much better shelter from the wind could be had, and all the animals crowded into this corral of sorts. All were given water in a long, slow process of melting ice one pail at a time. While it melted, a hatchet was used to chip the next bucketful from the rock hard tundra. The dogs and reindeer would go without feeding. The rescue team did not anticipate a congregation of thirty dogs would be encountered, and had aboard enough food for seven or so. It could be cut thinner and stretched to fifteen, but would provide little more than a teasing morsel, or fuel for argument, if split thirty ways.

Neither would the reindeer eat. Some sedge grass was brought expecting two hungry reindeer. Supply was good, but the wind was bad, and grass would be blown away the moment it left one’s hands. For now, the group would hunker down. The day would be spent chipping away at the endless ice, distributing life-saving water in sparing doses. Circle and repeat.

In the span of the next several hours, the frigid breath of the Ice Queen ebbed from its blustering blow, down to a steady wind. Dogs began to rise from their piles and move about, stretch, account for one another. Sasha was riding a joyful high; her brother returned, Larik too; rescue from their perilous situation; the storm waning and hope rising.

“Your brother is amazing.” Omok said, as Sasha suddenly noticed he was standing beside her.

“What?” Her brain was slow, almost reluctant, to shift from the wash of ecstasy in which she was now bathed, the beauty of life itself.

“Your breath and life.” she said.

“Pardon me? What did you say?” Omok asked.

“Oh. Nothing.” Sasha returned to the present. “Yes. Yes he is.”

Caravan Draft Chapter Eight

November 11, 2020 PazloLeave a comment

Cold Light Of Day

Sasha’s eyes opened. It seemed just a moment ago they had closed as she awaited the approaching dawn. Now she could see, through her tiny eye-sized portal to the outside world, the sun had risen above the storm, and it washed the dusty grey sky with a strange pink-orange radiance. She was eager to find her brother, and the rest of her pack, her family. Strife and danger always seem to elicit this response. A compelling need to seek out those we love and who love us. The trusted few. “We find that together we can face that which we could not face alone.” Mother had taught her.

Buried beneath a mountain of dogs, she began to worm her way up and out into the frigid Arctic world. She pressed against the bottom edge of the hide that formed their shelter but found it frozen fast to the ground. She pressed her snout along the surface until she found the place where two hides overlapped, and they parted. Bitter cold bit the end of her nose, and the brutal wind howled insatiably. She was alone in her movement. All the others seemed frozen solid. A mound of dogs were heaped against the hide tent and were covered with a dusting of snow like so much cordwood.

All around in every direction was a sense of vast emptiness. The sun’s light would brighten here or there, and wherever it did it revealed the same nothingness. Flat, windswept ice as far as one could see. It was a surreal scene, this one amassed pile of life a solitary island in a sea of frozen wasteland.

Sasha began to search for Anchu’s scent, or that of the other pack members. She sniffed at the ice and carefully stepped around the edges of two mounds of dogs. Umka was the first she found, curled at the outer edge of the first furball pile. He rose and looked to her, but said nothing as he came to stand by her side. She resumed the hunt, and now Umka joined her, their mission telepathically understood. Next they found Dak, who slowly crawled out of the pile to join his packmates, a noticeable limp in his step. He began right away to inquire as to which dogs Sasha and Umka had found, and how the two had fared in the night. The conversations attracted the attention of Stone, next to emerge from the huddled group. The oldest of the team, he moved slowly and stiffly, and his pains revealed themselves in his face and voice. He asked as Dak had, how many packmates had been accounted for, his speech raspy and weak. He curled again at the edge of the shelter, shivering a little.

The other three continued their quest until Alexei was found, still within the tiny tent. He immediately asked if the group had yet found Larik. He related how he’d seen Larik rise and walk out into the fierce storm, how he heard him speaking with someone, but had not seen him return from the black night. Now the group began to call his name as they continued to seek his scent. On hearing this, Omok scrambled his way out of the pile to address the others. They crowded close together to be heard above the relentless, cacophonous wind.

“Were you guys with Larik?” Omok asked.

“We’re his pack.” Sasha answered, and introduced herself and the other dogs.

“What do you mean ‘were with Larik’?” Dak barked hastily.

“He went out with the little guy and I haven’t seen them since.”

“Went out?” Sasha exclaimed.

“What?” Dak interjected, “When?”

“Went where?” Alexei was panicked by the news, “Which direction?”

Stone had slowly made his way to the percolating group.

“What’s all the excitement?” he asked.

“Larik’s gone!” Alexei responded, visibly shaken, “He left in the night.”

“The fool.” Stone replied as he shook his head. “Bound and determined to live in the wild, I guess. This is no place to set out on your own.” He shook his head again, looking at the ground, as if he knew already Larik’s fate.

“He went with someone else.” Alexei babbled with a certain numbness, as much from shock as the penetrating cold air, “Out into the storm.” He turned his head and looked outward onto the empty ice, and scanned his field of view as if he might miraculously find his brother standing a stone’s throw away. No such vision met his eyes, and he began to whimper.

“He’ll be okay.” Sasha soothed. “He’s one tough old brute.”

“Who could live out there in this?” Dak blurted out, somewhere between worry and anger. “Why would he do such a thing? Why now?” He turned from the group, seemingly fuming, and scanned the empty tundra as Alexei had.

“Shut up!” Alexei spun and pressed his face to Dak’s, “Shut up! He’s not dead!” A sudden quaking sob burst from him. “You’ve finally driven him away!” he continued through tears, an eruption of angry words. “Nothing he did was good enough for you. Every idea he had you had to kick to pieces. All his dreams and hopes of freedom and happiness, and you guys treated them like worthless scraps.” He turned his railing, crumpled face to each as he accused them of alienating his brother. “It wasn’t enough that he fought a bear for you. That he would rather have died to save Willow and Rika. It wasn’t enough that he invited you exclusively to join his wild dog pack. It was never enough. Nothing was ever good enough, was it? Now he’s gone!” Tears were freezing at the edges of Alexei’s eyes as he looked upon the remains of the pack. These who he loved and trusted, though now it seemed those bonds were to be tested.

To love someone and be indefatigably angry with them at the same time was a complex, vexing and painful dichotomy. The thought raced into Alexei’s mind to yell out ‘I hate you!’, but his heart arrested this before it reached his tongue. No matter his rage, he knew this could never be true. He howled with heartache, and fell to his belly on the ice. “You killed him!” he sobbed. “You killed him! You killed him!”

“He killed himself!” Dak responded in the heat of the moment.

“Stop now!” Sasha raised her voice, “Stop. You don’t know what you’re saying. This is our own Larik we’re talking about.”

“Why don’t we go look for him?” Umka added.

Stone interrupted with the calming voice of the elder, though it croaked a bit. “Hey, hey. Calm down. No one knows Larik to be dead. Let’s don’t get ahead of ourselves. He may even be right here under the dog pile for all we know. Anyway, we won’t help anything by turning on one another.”

Dak reined in his emotions, still hurt by Alexei’s accusations, but more so empathetic to his troubles. “I’m sorry Lexi.” He said, shifting his weight between paws, “We’ll find Larik.”

“Sure we will!” Umka encouraged.

With this, Alexei’s sobbing subsided, and the others stood close, nudged him from time to time, until he could again feel their love. The love of a pack. It is a forever love. Omok held close to the group, and lent his own thoughts, “They’ll be okay.”

Sasha looked up from Alexei, and counted the faces in the circle of hope that surrounded him. An exhilarating rush of true joy raced through her veins, and she vowed to add this moment, this feeling, to her account of good things for which she was grateful. She counted again. She looked behind her, and suddenly her head was spinning like an owl’s. She began to walk, then trot, all around the windbreak and the reindeer and the tent and two heaping piles of freezing dogs.

Her heart sank and pounded against her rib cage. She could barely speak, and kept moving even as she started feeling dizzy and lightheaded. It took will to call out, fearing the answer, the telling silence that might follow.

“Anchu!” she barked, “Anchu!”

Change In The Air

August 21, 2020 Pazlo5 Comments

Bright, hot, sunny days, and cool, clear nights tell me the summer is wearing on. There are a lot of clues that tell us it’s the time of year when the weather begins a turn toward autumn. The air smells a little different. Less of water and more of trees. In the cabana, the spider weaves her last web of the year. After a lot of practice, she sure is getting good at it. The web is a beautiful thing when the morning sun strikes it just right, and rainbows appear in the silk.

It’s a bit chilly now in the mornings, and I can see my breath on the air. Dew sets heavy and cold.

The brood of pewees in the mossy nest left before the little wren nested in the new birdhouse. We were excited to see the wrens nest in the yard again. It’s been a couple years since the old wren house came down, and we’ve missed their lively chatter and captivating songs.

They wasted no time raising their charges, and in just a few short weeks their task was complete, and they have already moved on. It was fun to see them, and nice to have life in the cabana after the pewees moved out.

There are other signs of the progression of the seasons. On the trail, plants are heavy with fruit. The blackberries are almost done, after a banner year. A few still adorn the canes, and even a few red raspberries my be seen. Queen Anne’s lace, black-eyed Susans and mature sunflowers are all signs we’re nearing the harvest season.

So Many Susans

Red Berry

Lush Foliage

Choke Cherry

Flowers of August

The morning sun is getting later. It rises now as my person is almost ready to leave for that place he calls “work”, where they keep him all day for five days in a row. Boy am I glad when it’s the weekend, and we can hang out, ride in the truck to The Snack Store, and go for a great hike on Sunday morning. I wish every day was Sunday.

Starlings are gathering in huge flocks now, and each evening, as we enjoy the sunset from the side porch, we watch them fly over by the thousands. A mile-long line of fluttering birds. When they fly right overhead, you can hear the whispering rush of their wings against the air.

Soon the world will begin to take on a golden glow. The sun will creep southward a little at each sunrise. Deer will be on the move, preparing this year’s charges for winter. The bear and the gopher, and even the despised squirrels begin readying for the next season.

I like summer, and the nice weather and some rain. I must admit I don’t like the hottest days that much, what with a big fur coat and being from Siberia. The flies annoy me a little, too. Not to worry. These days are harbingers, a promise of the seasons to come. When we can be out without pesky flies, and nothing tries to sneak under the lattice because it’s buried in snow. Yes, things will be back to normal soon.

Wag more, bark less.

Sasha

Alone

July 17, 2020September 13, 2022 PazloLeave a comment

I knew when I saw them pull out of the driveway in the black truck with that boat following them. They were going to camp. My person did this last year, too, leaving me alone for the weekend. Okay, so mom was home, but life without my boy is somehow missing something.

Treats, I suppose, are one thing. No Chukchi pops or chicken jerky snacks. No canned chicken dinner. I had to suffer along with hot dogs and hamburgers and some leftover steak.

But there was something more that these days lacked. Hearing my nicknames, Snazzly, Sassy June From Saskatoon. The squealing greetings. And petting. Belly rubs and butt scratches. A long hike.

I guess I never realized how much my person means to me. How much he is part of my daily life. That’s the way of things, isn’t it? Sometimes we don’t know what we have until it’s gone.

One day there were thunderstorms, and I was scared of the noise. I hid in my corner behind the bark-a-lounger, but there was no one there to keep repeating “You’re alright.”

Another day the chipmunks and squirrels were storming the cottonwood trees, but mom doesn’t often move me to “yellow”, my lead on a long run beside the piney woods. Here I can sit at ambush. I had to watch the rodents from my red lead, by the house.

Finally, after what seemed like forever, they came home!

I was so excited to see my person I almost turned inside out. I leaped, I turned circles, I whimpered. I ran back and forth as fast as I could and I jumped up on my boy the way he likes it.

I could tell he was pretty glad to see me, too. He hugged me a lot and whispered into my ear.

And there were treats. Chukchi pops and chicken jerky.

I hope he never goes away again.

Wags,

Sasha

Caravan Draft Chapter Five

June 5, 2020 PazloLeave a comment

Chapter Five
Good Things

“And how many good things do you have?” Mother asked Sasha warmly, engaged in the rapt, attentive bathing of her sibling.
Brothers Anchu and Splotch had taken the bone she considered hers, despite her protests, and she now sought Mother’s intervention. Breathless from her frantic flight from the scene of the purloining, she repeated her testimony in anxious and clunky sentences, punctuated by frequent looks at the accused and the rapidly disappearing item in question.
“So I understand.” Mother answered, and repeated, “And how many good things do you have?”
“I don’t know. But my bone!”
Mother addressed her as a teacher would a student, a question to provoke thinking and a reasoned answer, “Don’t you have another bone somewhere?”
“But that was mine and they took it!” Sasha answered without looking to Mother, her eyes fixed on Splotch as he crunched down the last bit of evidence. He and Anchu trotted off between the dogs’ houses, looking for further opportunities this sunny late winter day.
Now, after six moons, Sasha and her litter mates were nearing full size. Alas, they were still very young, still learning to navigate in the context of a social world; elders, leaders, siblings, people, the cat. They had yet to witness babies, puppies, living beings newer than themselves. They had yet to encounter the Great Wide World, with rules of conduct and safety piled atop the rules of civility, and its own complex and fluid laws of territorial and property rights.
Sasha flopped to the ground, hopes extinguished, and heaved a huffy sigh.
“So,” Mother continued, “you say it belonged to you, and you are vexed that you don’t have it.” she restated the facts.
“And Splotch and Anch’ took it and that’s not fair!”
“Okay. So lastly we add injustice to your grievance. Or is it vengeance you desire?”
“No, no!” Sasha sat squarely and looked directly into Mother’s eyes. Despite the current squabble, Sasha’s heart was true, as were her siblings’. “They’re my brothers. I wouldn’t wish anything bad on them.”
Mother’s lips curled into the slightest smile at this, and she went on with her lesson. “So you think there was something the universe made just for you. Specifically and personally, like your teeth or your tail.”
Sasha felt she was in no mood for conversation. Certainly no mood for lessons. Her focus was on the fact that the bone was already gone. She felt a sense of loss. A sense there was something she could have had, and now can never regain. She answered Mother’s question without any thought about its meaning, or what the intent of the lesson might be. She drolled in a conciliatory tone of reluctant and indignant surrender. “I know the universe didn’t make the bone just for me.”
“Only your heart belongs to you, precious one,” Mother cooed, as she looked to her daughter with a warm, knowing smile, “and even that can be stolen from you.”
“What?!” Sasha leaped to her feet, wide-eyed, stricken with fear, “I’ll die!”
“No, no.” Mother calmed her, “That’s just a saying. It means we don’t really control who it is we love. Love happens on its own. It’s not something you can make up and decide for yourself.”
“How does that help me with the bone theft?”
“We don’t really own anything outside of our own bodies. Everything else is part of the world.”
“Then why is it called ‘mine’? What about my rag ball? It’s not mine?” Sasha whined, feeling like she was losing more things. Feeling like she was being compelled to let her siblings help themselves to things she’d become accustomed to, attached to. She whimpered, on the verge of tears.
“Now, now. We’ll call your ball ‘yours’, and you can keep it for yourself. Just because things are part of the world doesn’t mean they can’t be a part of our lives, and sources of joy or solace. But things pass into and out of our lives as easily as the wind.”
“My bone sure did.” Sasha replied. She watched Splotch and Anchu approach Kotka’s dish. He lunged toward them and blasted them with a deafening, growling bark. Both the youngsters yelped and spun, Anchu knocking down Splotch and running right over him in his haste to escape the huge Husky. Kotka turned to hide his face and chuckled. He caught Sasha’s eye and winked at her.

Sasha giggled out loud, the sound decidedly foreign in the roaring, freezing, endless Arctic night. The dogs in the pile closest to her did not respond, did not want to risk any movement that might allow in the frigid air. There totaled about thirty dogs huddled behind Tun’s windbreak, some inside the tiny hide shelter, the rest mounded on and around it.
She was just inside the tent, beside Rol. From where she lay, a tiny gap opened onto the world outside. As small as her own eye, it revealed glimpses of horizontally-passing snowflakes and ice shards. An ear or a tail would shift into or out of view as the dogs continually sought respite from the storm in the heaping pile of fur balls.
“And how many good things do you have?” Mother’s voice repeated the question, like an echo that had taken so long to course its way up the canyon and back. Remembering this lesson was where this started. Frozen and scared and in pain, in the depth of the black gale, Sasha had begun to enumerate her woes. Her desperate thirst, her persistent hunger, the pain in her paws, the fierce cold, the biting wind.

“Okay.” Mother summed up the lesson as she released the sibling from bath duty, and moved on directly to Sasha. She started with the ears and face. “You can look around you any time and count the good things you have. Family and friends. A good home. Your heart and mind. Your body. Even your breath and your life.” She finished with the ears and paused to look her daughter in the eye. “Or you’re free to go on worrying about something that doesn’t exist anymore and didn’t belong to you in the first place.”
Still moping, a short while later Sasha made her way to Kotka’s doghouse. She related the whole tale, from the felonious misdeeds of her brothers to Mother’s lesson.
“I don’t understand. How can I count good things when they are being taken from me?” she posited.
“I don’t really know much about this.” Kotka said rather solemnly. “I don’t even remember having a mother, or brothers, and I never really had anything. Excepting my breath and life as your mother said.” His eyes wandered across the homestead slowly, and his head cocked a little. “Well, until I got here. I’ve come to have family, and friends. Comforts and caring. I have caring. And peace. Now that I think of it…”
“If everything is part of the world and nothing belongs to me,” Sasha rambled, interrupting her friend, “I guess I’ll never have anything either.”
“Oh, I didn’t say I have nothing.”
“That’s what you just said!”
“No. I said I’d never had anything besides my breath and life.”
“But everybody has those things. It’s a given.”
“Not so fast, young lady.” Kotka shifted his weight off his bad leg, “What about Iluk?” he asked, referring to the dog that had died just weeks ago, from unknown and presumably natural causes.
“But he’s dead!”
“Exactly.” He sat, staring at Sasha.
“Okay, so I have my breath and life. There. Two things everyone else…I mean…every living being has. How does that help me?”
“Well, you wouldn’t be able to talk about it if you weren’t alive. There’s that.”
“Great. So I have being alive and agony.” she fumed.
“So how many were there?” Kotka asked.
“What?”
“How many good things did you count?” he queried, turning to chase a bird from his dish.
“I don’t know.” Sasha pouted, “I didn’t count.”
“Well, isn’t that silly? You say you have only three things but haven’t counted?”
“What’s to count?” Frustrated and annoyed, she threw herself down. “All I have is a ball.”
“How about family?” Kotka countered, “You have siblings.”
“Oh yeah, and brothers who steal from me.”
Kotka was looking around the homestead again, enumerating all he saw from his perspective. “You have Bek and Nina. And Jiak.”
“Well, yeah, Jiak.” Sasha conceded briefly, “But I don’t own Jiak!”
He leaned closer and insisted. “But you have Jiak in your life.”
“Yes. That’s a good thing I guess.”
“And your bed. And supper. You never are cold or hungry.” The mentor continued, remembering times when this was not always so for him. He took notice of one precious thing after another that had been missing from his life before Bek brought him home that fateful day. It was easy to see the bounty from his perspective.
“Yes, that’s true too. I am grateful.”
“There, you have gratitude. And friends. How about me? Am I really nothing to you?”
“Oh, no! No!” Sasha ran to him and pressed her snout against his, “I treasure you most.”
“And you have your mother.” Kotka sounded a little sad as he said this. Taken from his own mother earlier than he should have been, watching Mother tend to her brood was the most magnificent and valued reward he had come to know at the homestead.
A tear welled in Sasha’s eye as she sat looking toward the yard.
“So you still feel you have nothing?” Kotka offered.
She was frozen still, her gaze fixed.
“I’m counting.” she replied.

Here in this shivering camp Sasha wondered where Splotch was now. And her other litter mates, Anchu being the only one still with her. She thought of her dear friend Kotka, whom she hadn’t seen since she’d joined the sled team on the mountain ascent. She poked her head up and out of the pile between one dog’s head and another’s butt, and called his name. She discovered immediately the futility of trying to out-roar the storm.
Then she realized that the objects in the tiny gap were becoming brighter. Day was dawning. At first light she would gather up her brother, and they would seek out Kotka. And Stone and Dak, Umka and Alexei and Larik.
She added these now to an account, an inventory of all the good things she was grateful to have.
An account which began, first and foremost, with her breath and life.

Litters Of Critters

May 15, 2020 PazloLeave a comment

Here we go again, with spring birthing season. The birds are crazy these days. It seems like every kind of bird I’ve ever seen is in the yard now, and they’re all building nests, sitting on them, or fetching food for hatchlings. The noise and mess is everywhere, and you don’t see a bird flying without something in its mouth, either a stick or piece of grass or a bug or a mouse.

There’s these little darting birds that built the cutest nest in the rafters of the cabana. It’s way up about five times my height so I can’t see if there are eggs or baby birds in there. This nest is the best ever! It’s built out of sticks and dirt and spit like most nests, but then the outside is carpeted! They get green moss and put it all over the outside of the nest. It makes a great camouflage!

New Brood

Ground Nester

Early Bird

Nest Prep

Courting

Island Life

There are a lot of rabbit babies this time of year. And it seems like there’s more pine squirrels and chipmunks, but I never see them as babies. Or maybe they’re born that big and never grow. Poor things. Wait, what am I saying? A chipmunk as big as a dog would be my worst nightmare! Then again, they could chew some big holes into the house if I let them, (and frankly what choice would I have if they’re as big as me?) then I could sneak into the house through their hole, and I wouldn’t need to wait for a person to open the door when it’s rainy and windy!

Red Fox Kits

Learning To Stand

Doe And Twins

Study In Black And White

Mother

Shh

Birds I get. The animals I get. What I don’t get is the trees. They’re doing crazy mating things, too. Turning all kinds of colors, like turkeys do to lure mates. And some even have little furry kittens growing right on their branches. But I never see the baby trees running around. In fact, I never see trees moving, now that I think of it. How did they get everywhere? Maybe they only move at night?

On our hike I smelled something as we passed Mr. Nishan’s tool shed. Something made a nest under there. A weasel or a skunk, I bet. Or a dragon. I was told there’s a dragon in the cellar, maybe that’s why I’m not supposed to go down there. (I didn’t see it the time I got in there, and was told it was on vacation at the time and I was lucky to escape with my life!) Well, skunk or dragon, I wanted to have a better look, but couldn’t fit under the shed, so I had to dig my way in. I tried at one point to chew through the wood siding or move the shed with my teeth. Even my person tried, but said it was too heavy to pick up. I finally got under there, but then it was too dark to see anything. It smelled good though, and given another few hours I could have dug out the whole underside of the shed. I got called out, finally, and we had to go in, but I’ll work on it more next time.

It’s right here

A little digging

Maybe I can chew it

Hm. Pretty tight

More digging

Maybe I can squeeze in

Let’s get serious

Almost!

Last excavation

I’m in!

Now, how to get out…

A couple weeks ago we had five inches of snow on the trees with little leaf buds. It broke a lot of them, and we have now three places on the trails blocked by downed trees. I’m glad the trees are making more now. The world would look terrible without trees, wouldn’t it?

Clear trails!

Sasha

Caravan Draft Chapter Three

May 1, 2020 PazloLeave a comment

Chapter Three
Man Down

Tun was awakened by his lost-balance alarm as his hands slipped off the back bow. He swatted at the air for the handle as the sled moved out from under him, and he fell, flat on his back on the rock-hard ice, intense pain radiating from his pelvis and lower back. He looked up to see Rol’s reindeer about to walk over him, and he rolled painfully out of the way.
“Whoa! Whoa! Hold up! Whoa!” Tun called as loudly as his hoarse throat allowed, but it was to no avail. The team could not hear him over the roar of the raging storm, and continued to walk at their slow, steady pace.
Rol pulled the reins and halted his sled, stepped off to assist Tun to his feet. Trembling, he moved slowly, stooping awkwardly as an old man. He could provide little help, his muscles weak, and he groaned with his efforts. Tun winced, holding his hand to his back, and urgently spoke to Rol.
“The team! Stop the team!”
The young man chased after the dog sled, taking up a slow and steady trot into the wind. He tried to increase his speed, but his body could not respond. He held this pace as the sled kept moving steadily eastward. The movement generated a little heat, precious little, and Rol welcomed it. Yet simultaneously, the heavy breathing required became painful as the sub-freezing air burned at his throat and lungs. He tried to call out to stop the team, but found his throat dry and frozen. A strange sound barked from his mouth, and he tried again, but now only raspy gasps came out.
Hot blood rushed to his hands and feet, awakening frozen nerves, and the pain grew greater with each step. Several agonizing minutes passed as Rol incrementally gained on the sled team, until he could reach out and grab the back bow, and hop onto the runners. He stepped both feet onto the claw brake, and it dug into the solid ice.
The dogs, who had been plodding so hypnotically they never noticed Tun’s weight come off the sled, now sensed the drag of the brake, the pull on their harnesses. There was not one among them that wasn’t thankful for the stop, and they longed for a camp and a fire. They stood, eyes closed and heads hanging down, hoping in the next few minutes for a man to unhitch them so they could huddle together. They all were desperate with thirst.
The pain in Tun’s lower back was so intense it wracked him with every step. In agony, he walked to the racing sled, stepped onto its runners, picked up the reins and snapped them on the reindeer’s backside. She lurched forward, and stabbing pains ran up Tun’s back. He gritted his teeth and gripped the handle of the sled. There would be no nodding off for him again, as long as this fire burned in his back and stabbed at his shoulder blades.
Several minutes passed as the ambling reindeer caught up to the halted dog sled. Here, Rol stood still as a statue on the runners. His exercise had warmed him, but also formed perspiration on his skin. Every movement brought a new sensation of cold, and Rol tried to keep his skin from touching the insides of his apparel. The pain in his toes continued to increase as warm blood flowed to them. It felt like being stepped on by a reindeer’s solid hoof, multiplied a hundred times. He tried to wiggle his toes inside his mukluks, but doing so was more painful, and so he ceased.
At the edge of hypothermia, coupled with physical exhaustion and dehydration, Rol’s eyes, too, closed as he stood gripping the sled. His knees unlocked and he awoke instantly, catching himself by wrapping a mitt around the handle at the wrist, like a paw, his hands unable to clasp fingers to thumb. Every muscle in his body was shaking, as if in the grips of Saint Vitus’ dance.
The blustering gale jostled both men, shoved at them like an insolent jester. It pushed dogs off their feet, causing them to stumble, and pressed at the sleds as if begging them to remain still. It roared and howled with power, whistled and screamed with ferocity.
Every bump in the solid ice was felt in Tun’s back, as he finally caught up to Rol. For a moment, he stood still as the younger man, clinging to the sled to hold himself upright against the badgering wind. He had achieved this goal, his mind told him, drunk with exposure, spent from his exertions. His brain stood idling. No thought entered into it. “I’m here.” he thought, “I made it.”
Deep from the recesses of his mind, his consciousness called to him. It seemed his inner voice was as muted by the storm as the men were. He called to himself again. An iron will and strong heart broke through the fog. “Keep moving.” was all it said.
“Move!” the voice repeated, and Tun heard the address. “Move!” it said again, as if to imply the last chance to do so may be rapidly approaching. Tun could sense his unresponsiveness. The thought of moving pranced across his mind, but made no connection to the neural and muscular systems required.
It was not logic that parted the curtain of consciousness, but fear. Healthy fear that Tun had acquired through his many years of living in this merciless country. Fear of frostbite, fear of freezing to death. “Frostbite. Death. Frostbite. Death.” The voice continued until he began to move. Slowly at first, as if unsticking himself from the sled. Then awkwardly, as he tried to keep his ailing spine from flexing as he walked.
Suddenly, a picture flooded his senses, returned him to a day and time long, long ago, when freezing and death visited him in the most cruel fashion. He sucked in a breath in shock, as he did that very moment in the past, and immediately his heart was filled with worry for Rol. He made his way to the young man, or the boy, as Tun thought of him, for he was somewhere between the two.
Rol stood hunched over the back bow of the sled. His hood was drawn completely closed, without so much as a gap through which to exhale. Tun placed his hand on the lad’s shoulder, and felt his quaking frame. Rol did not move.
“How are you doing?” the big man shouted at the side of the hood.
Rol made the slightest turn toward Tun, and shrugged his shoulders. He moved his numb, mitted hands to the hood, fumbled with it, trying to find the opening, his hands visibly shaking. He pressed the hood to his face so his mouth was at the gap.
“Wa-when w-will w-we s-stop?” he shuddered forth words in a strange, growling sort of voice, immediately pulling the hood closed again.
“We must keep moving, Rol.” Tun shouted to the hood, “If we stop moving out here, we’ll die.”
Rol made no response for a moment. One could only guess what was happening inside the hood. Then it moved up and down twice, in a silent nod of affirmation.
There was little by way of shock or drama in Tun’s statement. For men or almost-men that live in this harsh place, these were simply facts. Freezing and death were natural elements, like the sun and the snow, and their presence loomed over these men, and all other animals of the peninsula, human or otherwise. Like the wind and cold, death is an everyday part of life for those who live hand-in-hand with the Ice Queen.
Rol stepped off the runners and went limp. He fell face-forward and slammed onto the ice like a rag doll thrown down by an angry child. If not for his thick fur hood, pulled closed all around his head and face, he might have cracked his skull. He laid there, unmoving.
With every ounce of strength, ignoring the searing pain in his back, Tun dragged the boy to the racing sled. He would have lifted Rol, but was unable to do so in his present condition, and he rolled the lad up onto the heap of belongings on the sled. He tied the trailing line of the cargo sled to the reindeer’s harness, and placed several hides over Rol, covering him entirely. He had to lash these in place to keep them from blowing off. With those preparations complete, he moved in his stilted fashion to the cargo sled.
“All dogs up! Let’s go! Eik! Eik! Eik!” he barked out froggy commands. The team did not respond, could not hear him over the wailing wind. In stiff, painful steps, he walked the length of the sled and the fourteen-dog team until he came to the lead at the end of the long gang line. There remained hope as long as his loyal team could hold up. He had pressed them harder than he had ever pressed dogs. Well beyond the limits of reason, bordering now on abuse. Their flight was desperate, and all members of the party were pushing their luck. They needed to keep moving, or die doing so. He found he could not bend, and so fell to his knees and shouted.
“Pick it out, Dak! Eik! Pick it out!”
The dog looked at him in confusion. The sled was not moving and the driver was not on the runners, prerequisites for such a command. His voice weaker with each word, Tun pleaded now.
“Eik! Dak, please! Eik! Pick it out. Eik! Eik!”
Dak sensed urgency and desperation in his human friend’s cries, and responded to Tun’s orders without further delay. He stood on four painful feet, thirteen dogs doing the same behind him, and again the weary entourage moved on.

Snud

April 24, 2020 Pazlo2 Comments

What do you get when snow melts? Snud! Mud made from snow. It’s really amazing how some snow turns into mud. Mostly snow is frozen water, and usually when it melts that’s what you get. Maybe it’s a special kind of snow, or maybe just a special time of year, but the snud season is upon us.

Along with snud season comes the opening of the yard around the back door, where I hang out. The fences come down and last year’s leaves get raked out of the way, and I can get my nose to the foundation. There’s always something trying to get into the cellar. I’ve been down there myself, and I can tell you it’s nice and cool and a little wet. Not snud, ’cause there’s never snow in the house. Must be plain old mud from when the water runs down behind the stone steps.

Pine squirrels are the the most pesky, and the most organized. I think it’s like a little platoon or something, because there’s never just one. If you sit at one corner waiting for the one to come out, the other one runs in through the gap behind the lattice. If you go over there to chase that one, the first one comes out from the corner. I decided to simply lay down in the middle, and when I did they both ran in at the same time! I’m not giving up, though.

It’s been crazy warm some of these days, though still snowing off and on this week, Sunday was like summer, and my person had to peel off a couple of layers on the walk. I smelled something across Widowmaker Field. Something revealed after the last late snow melted. It required some effort to drag my person over the hill. And then, I was vindicated!

The story in pictures:

April 18th Down The Lane

Late Snow

Wild Turkeys

Eagles Raid The Barnyard

Birdwatcher

Mushing Through the Bog

Swampy Spring Walk

Mmm! That Air!

Turkeys In The Field

Dawn Hawks

I smelled something

Had to drag my person

It’s here somewhere…

Yes! See, I told you!

A whale skeleton maybe!

Now to drag this home

At night it’s still cold, but it won’t last long, I know. I can tell by the molt happening to my coat. The winter hairs are starting to fall out in little clumps. This usually raises mom’s ire, and she crabs that the vacuum cleaner is overwhelmed. I don’t like the vacuum cleaner anyway because it’s so loud (and I’m afraid of loud noises), so maybe they’ll get rid of it so mom won’t need to crab about it. I’d be pleased with that.

Clear trails!

Sasha

So The Snow Goes

March 16, 2020 Pazlo2 Comments

Last time, my person hogged up all my space with the first chapter of Caravan. It’s a bit nerve-wracking for those in the story, so I’m glad it’s fiction. Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

I must admit, even I was happy we had a warm, sunny, springy day to walk in, even if the snow is fading. I really love the snow and the cold weather. My folks are from Siberia, you know, so it’s normal for me. But sometimes the warm sun feels good, and I see we have some different birds in the yard these days.

On the trails, we thrilled to the last of the snow. It uncovers hidden treasures as it recedes, and we can find mouse runs and bits of leftover kills. I found some bunny scraps left behind by Brer Coyote. Scraps is right. Nothing but fur. Ever heard of sharing?

Enjoy it while it lasts

Pussy Willows that don’t look like cats

Crystalline Snow

Last Snowshoe Hike

Yep, it’s melting

Sure smells good

Hidden Treasures

Well, I can read the signs. This is the Melting Snow Moon. I can smell it.

It’s the Snow Geese that take the snow with them. We saw a flock fly over and listened to their funny squeaky honk that sounds more like quacking. Yeah, when the snow geese go north, they take the snow with them. It’s a sure sign.

Windfall, Avenue of the Pines

Snow Geese

Melting Moonset

Taking The Snow

Snow Geese and Moon

In The Pine Stand

Days are getting longer, so that’s a good thing. Gives me a little more time to try to ambush the skunk by the side of the house before the people call me in. And on to the next season!

I like mud, too.

Clear Trails,

Sasha

Caravan Draft Chapter One

February 28, 2020 PazloLeave a comment

Chapter One
Summit

Sasha could hear the pounding of her own heart in her ears as she hastened along the snow-covered frozen trail. Without conscious will, she had assumed the same demeanor and posture as the other dogs. Her tail was pulled down and close, and she hunched as she ran to reduce her profile, ears laid back on her head. She breathed heavily but held in her tongue. Her muscles trembled though she wasn’t cold, and her stomach seemed to be rolling and roiling inside her. These were the physical manifestations of fear, something of which she had learned a great deal in a very short time.

The party with whom she was fleeing stretched out in a single-file line, racing their way over the East Woods trail at a punishing, reckless pace. Ahead of them drove their beloved human companion and driver, Tun, an eight-dog substitute team pulling his overloaded cargo sled. Behind Tun rode their young friend Rol, driving Tun’s slim, ornate racing sled, it too heaped with belongings. Rol drove a single reindeer in harness, and slapped the reins across its flanks, compelling it to move faster. They stole looks over their shoulders, hunching and trembling like the dogs.

Surrounding Sasha was her pack, her dogsledding teammates, her family. Ahead was Dak, the skilled lead dog, and Stone, the oldest. Beside her, her own brother Anchu, and behind them energetic Alexei and his brother, strong wheel dog Larik. Umka, the seventh on the team, ran beside Kotka, Sasha’s mentor and longest-held friend, a slight limp betraying his healed broken leg. The entire entourage ran as fast as they could manage toward the summit of Tun’s mountain to escape their pursuers.

What had been one of the finest days in Sasha’s short life was subsequently overshadowed by harrowing and mysterious events. The Summer Festival at the tiny village of Tunkan brought Sasha and Anchu to their first dog sled race. An unexpected and exciting win was a sweet surprise, and the team reveled in their success.

Before a day passed, they were called upon to travel with Rol to Sasha and Anchu’s birthplace, the homestead of Bek, Nina and their son Jiak, to determine the reason for their absence from Festival. Sasha was eager to see Jiak, her first love and dogsledding driver, after two moons in her new home. She was equally eager, if not perhaps more so, to see Mother again, and relate to her all the exciting things that had passed since their parting. She would see Kotka, and all the dogs of her former team.

Upon arrival the home was found to be deserted, and every dog in the yard was gone except Kotka, who had fled to the woods. He described a frightening incursion by strangely-clad invaders, taking all the dogs and people with them. Bek had called them “soldiers”.

When they returned to Tunkan, the laughing village, host of the Summer Festival, they found it pillaged and torched. The fearsome intruders from the west were responsible for this, and none of it made the least sense to Sasha or her teammates.

Now Tun and Rol pressed eastward, fleeing their persecutors, last to leave in a long string of refugees. Chavchu reindeer herders drove their animals ahead of them, and more than a dozen dog sleds carried people, families and their belongings. A number of orphaned dogs followed with the group, similarly driven from the only homes they had ever known.

Both sleds were loaded to capacity with all that could be hurriedly made to fit. The air was crisp and cold, and the snow well-packed, yet Tun’s team struggled as the trail pitched uphill. He stepped off the runners and trotted behind the sled to reduce the load. Higher and higher they continued to climb until they emerged from the forest near the peak of the mountain. The next leg would be the most difficult, as the steep slope loomed before them.

“Whoa now.” Tun called to the team, ”All dogs down.”

Most of the dogs laid down in their traces, panting hard and welcoming the rest stop. Two dogs up front, who looked enough alike to be twins, stood staring ahead at the trail, awaiting the command to move again.

The imposing peak of the great mountain stood before them. Ancient etched and jagged granite, with strips and stripes of glacier, snow and ice. An intimidating incline without a trail or cover, the wind careened up its face and threw itself from its top to form billowing clouds of blowing snow in the sky.

Tun spoke to Rol and rifled hastily through his sled, extracting a gang line extension and a bag of harnesses. He called his loyal team to him; Dak and Stone, Alexei and Larik, Anchu and Sasha and Umka. One by one he placed their mushing harnesses on them, assisted by Rol, and commenced to connect tug lines to the long gang line, already equipped with eight strong Chukchi dogs. Despite calls, Larik did not report for duty, but Tun wasted no time returning to their climb. With fourteen dogs in tandem, the tiring troupe again attacked the ascent.

The early winter wind brought with it a haunting scent, climbing the slope and stampeding past the party. All the dogs seemed to detect it simultaneously as they lifted their noses to the air.

“The strangers!” Stone called to the pack, and they turned their heads to the timberline as it receded.

Fourteen dogs and a man were no match for the million-ton mountain which has stood for millennia. They slowed to a crawl, frequently coming to a complete halt. Tun would shove and heave, and more than once Rol needed to join him to move the long cargo sled foot by foot up the steep slope. Both men turned their eyes often to the backtrail.

At long last the crest of the summit drew near, as Tun continued to push the heavy sled, and every dog strained at the long gang line. One more step, one more step. Each inch of progress purchased with exhausted muscles and heaving breaths.

Dak, in the lead, was first over the top, right behind him Stone. Before Sasha reached the ridge, they disappeared over it, and so it went with each of the dogs in the long procession.

As Sasha crested the ridgeline, she was startled to discover they were on a bluff that towered hundreds of feet above the base. A narrow shelf ran perpendicularly, barely wide enough for a sled. The whistling wind inundated all with blinding clouds of blowing snow. Winds driven up the face of the cliff would collide with and part the curtain to reveal a vast, featureless plain below. As far as she could see, nothing but flat, frozen windswept tundra greeted her.

“Haw! Haw! Haw! Haw! Haw!” Tun’s powerful, booming voice could barely be heard above the Arctic din cascading over the mountaintop and shrouding everything in white. If not for Dak’s recollections of vague familiarity of this rarely-trod route, the sharp turn might well have resulted in disaster, and a blind helpless plunge into the rock-strewn abyss.

The group skirted along a narrow ledge, twenty feet below the driftcap, parallel to the cliff. The overwhelming blowing snow whited out everything beyond a few feet, making for a nerve-wracking transit, the precipice beside them a constant threat. It seemed one misstep could find them in mid-air at any moment, though the buffeting wind served to shove them back against the wall of granite. They continued along this seismic cut, guided only by Dak’s nose and their faith in his instincts. It crept its way down from the peak of the mountain, leading them eventually to the wide open tundra.

When finally they were on level ground again, they turned due eastward and struck out across the stark landscape. Sunset was drawing near, and here the wind raced across the open terrain without hindrance, and reached phenomenal speeds. Ice bits and even tiny shards of rock peppered the party like miniature gunfire, as they bore down directly into the Arctic headwind. They followed a freshly-laid trail, preceded by the others that had fled before them.

Their breakneck pace waned as the blistering wind blinded them and hammered them with brutal gusts. The sky grew darker and the numbing temperatures grew ever colder. The frantic pace of the hillclimb and the sprinting undertaken when they reached the plain began to ebb. Gallops slowed to trots. Trots slowed to walking.

Now as darkness fell, the gale increased in its fury, and cold was driven through dog’s coats and humans’ alike. Sasha pondered at these strange days.

“Why do the strangers persecute us?” she wondered. Surrounded by all those she knew and loved, led by their strong friend Tun, Sasha was less fearful now, yet apprehensive about the future. Mystery loomed before her, and she thought now of all those she had longed to see since the odyssey began. Her mother, her human family of the homestead on the moraine, all of her former teammates and other dogs from her first home. Dear Jiak.

In the howling wind Sasha swore she heard their voices calling out to her. From someplace deep in the darkness, perhaps high above the smothering storm, they sent their spirits to her.

“We are all of us a pack,” came their soothing thoughts, “and a pack is a forever love.”

The sounds faded into the roar of the polar barrage, and Sasha leaned into her harness, ignoring the pain in her paws.

Skunks And Yoga

February 14, 2020 PazloLeave a comment

Snow! Snow! Snow! Gosh I love snow. You can eat it and dig in it and run through it. You can spin three turns and have yourself a bed in an instant. And you don’t get overheated on your hike.

My person is excited about the third volume of my stories, as he finally got started on Caravan. I’m glad it’s fiction, because it’s a lot colder up above the Arctic Circle than it is here. It’s 16 degrees (F) here today, and with the wind, feels like 2 below zero (F). My team on the tundra is facing far lower temperatures and far greater winds. It must be fifty below where they are. I’ll just lay here by the wood stove and watch the old man write.

Cold, Snow, Perfect!

On Chuy’s Trail

Practicing My Macrame

Sniff, Sniff.

Paw Print

Dog Yoga

Listen!

I took up two new hobbies. One is Yoga. I don’t know what it’s about but they have this thing called “downward dog”, and I’m a natural at it. This Yoga thing must be right up my alley.

The other thing is macrame. You know, tying knots. The only thing I have to work with is my jorring lead, but I’m making progress.

Had a skunk come around this week. Time for them to come out of hibernation. He was close to the house in the night, but in the morning was nowhere to be found. I suppose that’s good, cause every time I get a decent layer of skunk scent on me, my people wash it off with this awful-smelling, perfumey shampoo. Eww! And it will be three moons before I’ll be able to find a dead thing to roll in.

Clear trails!

Sasha

Snow And Gunpowder

January 21, 2020 Pazlo2 Comments

Woo! Hoo! More snow!

We had a good snowstorm blanket the ranch with fresh powder up to a Chusky’s knees, and we went for a great hike on Sunday. Uncle Matt cousin Max and some other people friends came over to do some rabbit hunting. I was ready to see them cry when they saw how I could run much faster than them, and I still have trouble catching a rabbit.

Well, I guess the rabbits found out about it, because nobody saw a single one! They must have been hiding in their dens.

We went for a long walk and rooted around through some grapevine tangles, and never scared up a bunny. As we were heading through Chuy’s trail eastward, a war broke out. It was a small war, I guess, and they took their time shooting. Still, I’m afraid of loud noises and the gunfire was between us and the house!

My person ducked into Mr. Nishan’s machine shed, and we waited it out. The wind blew all around and snow continued to fall as we waited. It was really cold, so we were glad to be out of the wind.

At one point, my person pointed to the window and said “Okay, I’m going to knock out that window. You go to Dawson and get Sergeant Preston. Understand? Get Sergeant Preston!” I think he thought he was in the TV show for a minute.

Finally, the shooting stopped, and we came down through the Avenue Of The Pines to discover it was our own people that came for rabbit hunting. Geez, I should have thought of that. They never intended to run after the rabbits!

Rooting Out

Winterberries

My Bone!

Two-pawed Tenacity

Do deer eat bones?

Was that gunfire?

Winter Sunset

I was really tired by the time we came in, and I had a good long nap in front of the wood stove. I pretended I was huddled around a fire with my teammates on the frozen Chukchi Peninsula in Siberia.

When I woke up, I was glad I was home and warm.

Clear trails!

Sasha

My Birthday!

January 10, 2020 Pazlo2 Comments

I forgot all about it last week, until my person came home with a larger-than-usual bag of snacks and goodies. Then he said “Happy Birthday! You’re ten years old!” (It was the day they call “the third”, though it seems like there have been a lot more than three days in the last few years)

I’m not really sure what the big deal is. I didn’t do anything special. But I guess my people thought I was special for the day, and that made me very happy. The Jack Link’s beef jerky meant a lot, too.

Is it spring already?

Tenacious

Receding Snowline

Littered Trail

Off To The Wood!

January Sun

My mark

Sasha Dreams

Most of our beloved snow has melted away, and today it’s rainy. Maybe winter is over? Gosh, it seemed really short, or maybe that’s just because I’m getting old. How often do we get birthdays, anyway? Maybe I’ll have another this week, and more jerky.

Clear trails,

Sasha

Snow Shoe Heaven

December 27, 2019 Pazlo1 Comment

I’m so glad we had plenty of snowfall, and my person finally got out his snow shoes!

We had a great hike last weekend, around all the trails out back. Snow smells great, and it’s really easy to track things like bunnies and mice. Their scent sticks to the snow, and it’s easier than trying to pick it out of grass. We move slower when my person has snow shoes on. It’s kinda nice to go slower sometimes, though I never think of it. Usually I want to cover as much ground as I can, check out all the trails before it starts to get dark. But when I’m forced to slow down, I notice a lot of things I usually just run past.

I noticed a huge wasp nest in the cherry tree, and I was scared at first and wanted to run. I didn’t see any wasps, and in some places the paper-like stuff of wasp nests had begun to tear. I guess they must have moved out or something, or maybe there’s a lot of frozen wasps in there! I better remember that when spring comes around.

On the trail, my person, slow enough as it is, insisted on stopping and taking photographs. At one point, I could smell the bunnies in the thicket right ahead of me, and I forgot that he said the “Hold up!” command. I took off after the bunny scent and pulled him over on his backside! I didn’t mean to, but afterward I thought it was kinda funny.

Snow!

Boy It’s Deep!

North Loop Trail

In The Wonder Woods

Sprint!

Look!

Wood’s Edge

Snowing On Thursday Trail

What’s That I Smell?

Slow Going

Nishan Hill

Where’s That Rabbit?

Great news! I was out in the driveway and smelled something familiar. I dug and dug and guess what I found? It was the bone I thought the snow plow had eaten! It was buried in the snow. I dug down to it, but it was frozen to the ground. Fortunately, my person understood my quandary, and kicked the bone loose! Now I’m ahead of the game, since they put another bone in that sock for Christmas! Don’t tell them, but the “beef tip” snacks were terrible. Maybe Doone The Cat will eat them.

Clear Trails!

Sasha

A Tree In The House?

December 10, 2019 Pazlo7 Comments

Wow! We had a good blizzard drop about a foot-and-a-half of snow on us. It sure looks pretty, but has impeded my person from snow shoeing or ski-joring. Hopes are high for this weekend!

I don’t know what gets into people at this time of year. Maybe it’s to celebrate the return of the snow, or maybe snow makes them crazy. All kinds of decorations come out, and every room is smothered. My person tacked up colored light bulbs on the front porch, and put out his cardboard painted snowman. Then, they brought this little pine tree into the parlor. I remember they did this last year, too. I mean, there are thousands of pine trees around the house, so it seems a little odd. Next thing, they’ll try to hide it. They’ll put colored light bulbs on it and then a bunch of shiny things like birds put in their nests. They’re not fooling me. I know they have a tree in there.

I see the sock hanging up, the one with black paw prints on it. I didn’t walk on it, so I don’t know how that happened. Probably Doone The Cat. The important thing is that not long after they hide the tree in the parlor, they load up that sock with some of my favorite treats!

So I went out to chew on the ham bone Mom gave me, and when I got to the driveway, I discovered the snow plow had eaten it. I never knew a truck would eat my treats, but you can bet I won’t be leaving any lying around again.

Snow, snow, snow!

I know that’s a tree

Unbridled

Maybe a bird took my bone?

On The Trail

Blizzard!

Now where is that hamhock?

Clear Trails!

Sasha

Snow!

December 2, 2019 Pazlo2 Comments

I’m so excited! I knew I smelled it, and as soon as the door opened, there it was, a foot of new snow!
It was really deep over by the pine trees, and I had to hop from one step to the next!

This means my person will get out his snow shoes. Sheesh, if you thought he was slow before!
Or maybe those ski things! Then I can run down the hill!

Avenue Of The Pines

Dig! Dig!

On The Widowmaker

Slow Going

Nishan Hill

Action Shot

Helloo?

To The Woods!

Snowy Wonder Woods

Cool Comfort

We went for a great walk in the snow. Everything smells different, and it’s easier to see tracks than smell them!
Hope you get lots of snow where you are, too.

Sasha

Lodge Release News

November 13, 2019 PazloLeave a comment

Hello everyone!

I’m excited to announce that today my human published my second book, Lodge!

These stories pick up where Homestead ended, and take us through our first summer, our first trip to the Summer Festival at Tunkan, and our first look at dogsled races!

It’s available in paperback and ebook on Amazon. Search for Sasha Of The Chukchi Sea, or go to my human’s author page at: amazon.com/author/scottroconnor.

I hope you’ll enjoy reading it!

Meanwhile, here at home, we’ve finally made a good turn toward winter. Temperatures were down to 9 degrees F last night, and we have a modest layer of snow. Still not enough for sledding.
The smell of the skunk still lingers a bit around the cellar door, but it’s fading.

Clear trails!

Sasha

First Frosts

November 7, 2019November 7, 2019 PazloLeave a comment

Last weekend I saw a few flakes of snow fall from the sky, that’s when I knew it’s almost time for winter! These days are getting cooler, but still mild during the day, but as this moon wears on, it gets colder and colder.

Soon the ground will be frozen in the mornings, frost on everything, little puddles with the thinnest layer of ice on top. Hunters will be out often during this time, and we’ll hear guns going off in every direction in the woods around the ranch. Loud noises scare me a little.

But then, know what’s next? Yes you do! Come on, guess again!
Yes! The turkey holiday!

All my favorite people will come over and there will be the hugest feast of the year. (Must be they need to use up all the old stuff, I guess.) Plenty of turkey and turkey bones (and a strange assortment of turkey-based meals for a long, long time.) And but also pie! Chocolate pie! Okay, so the people always make a big deal over the pumpkin pie. I don’t get that. A gourd in a pie or candy? That’s a choice?

On The Range

White Tailed Deer

Deerstalkers

To The Wood!

Edge Of Frost

South Woods

Wedding Veils

Podcast

North Loop Trail

Fungi And Friends

Velvet Mushroom

Tree Stand

Deer Scrape

Exploring

Mmm!

Last night a skunk got near the house, or under it. Wow! Woke us all up out of sound sleeps at midnight.
So, I need to go air out now. (And make sure she doesn’t move in to hibernate!)

Clear Trails!

Sasha

Weird And Spooky Things

October 30, 2019October 31, 2019 Pazlo2 Comments

Something really strange is happening again around the ranch. This happened last year, too, and the year before that.

Normally, my people decorate our house with pretty things like wreaths, silk flowers, holiday decorations and colored lights. Now they have made the place look terrible on purpose! There are human skeletons, some in pieces, hung and scattered about. Pumpkins bear faces resembling humans. Some kind of ritual or sacrifice, I guess.

On the front lawn is a 9-foot tall man-looking thing with a green face, and nailed to a tree is a small woman, spread eagle as if she’d flown into the tree. Her hands are green and her hair is purple.

There’s a HUGE spider hanging from the kitchen ceiling, and all around the place are more scarecrows than you’d need for a whole sunflower farm. Don’t they know the gardens are dead now? What do we need all these scarecrows for? (Besides, I’ve never seen a crow come in the house.)

Maybe they’re trying to keep the hunters away from the house (and their noisy guns!)

It’s a good thing I remember seeing this holiday before, or I’d be worried about my people.

Bright Autumn Day

In The Wonderwoods

Exploring

Trees Are Bare

Wonder Woods

On The Move

Hunting Season Begins

Was That A Gunshot?

I’ll Wait Inside For That Turkey Holiday

Clear trails!

Sasha

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