Real Canadians Dog Sled,
Don’t They?
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| Things did get
easier.We traveled across lake after lake,
gaining confidence, exploring nature’s
frozen splendor. Our path was intersected by wild
game tracks - moose, wolf, lynx, otter, marten
and fox. Pure white natural beauty surrounded us
as we escaped the last vestiges of human contact
by traversing what must have been an impossible
portage for snowmobiles. We passed steep rock
embankments and saw the evidence of First Nations
travelers from the past in the form of
Petroglyphs describing their voyages through this
land. Burt pointed out many things that we would
have otherwise missed. |
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| Looking good on the lake |
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| Luxurious sleeping quarters. |
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At night, we slept in trappers’
log huts or in tents that Burt had erected in the fall. During the
first night, after we had taken care of the dogs and had a fine meal,
that little cabin felt real cozy. With the portable stove glowing
away, I felt so warm I stripped down and used my sleeping bag as a
cover. As Burt extinguished the lights for the night, he suggested
I just might reconsider and hop back into the bag wearing another
layer of clothes. I rolled over against the log interior wall and
said something like, "You think us lowlanders are made of jello."
Around about the darkest hour, I woke startled from a dream that some
large creature was about to crush my right arm. |
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| I rolled over
to drop back to sleep – and howled. Burt
clicked on the light to find me nursing my frigid
throbbing arm. Apparently, balsam fire
doesn’t burn very long in a portable stove
and the ambient temperature of the cabins was -
25C. Our breath had condensed, frozen to the log
walls, and welded my naked arm solidly to the
beam. My howl was the result of leaving every
hair on my upper arm on the log. Burt chuckled. |
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| The sled dogs sleep on the
line |
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| I found
out that deep sub zero temperatures have an effect on
other things like dry cell batteries in tape recorders
and contact lenses. Both froze up. However, the climate
and hard eight to nine hour pulling seemed to have no
effect on the dogs. They are an amazing work of God.
Unfortunately the same can’t be said of my clothing
or sled. Although both were well made, especially the
hand made traditional toboggan type sled Burt had
personally crafted, my encounters with immovable objects
had splintered and fractured the vehicle. Burt used duct
tape to make the necessary major repairs. On the final day of the trip I
experienced another high-speed body check by a tree. As
usual, my dogs had hung up on the bush just meters away
and seemed to be looking back at me with a cross between
canine pity and disgust. As I got up, now relatively numb
to the experience and groped in the snow for my dislodged
gloves, I noticed that this last impact had torn my watch
clean off my body. Burt said he would find it in the
spring. By now I believed he actually could but I told
him not to worry. It would remain forever stopped at that
instant on our trail as a memorial to my thick skin and
ineptitude.
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Marten ran the
same gauntlet I did, with the added burden of the
flu. He never complained. He had travelled over
12,000 kms for this experience of the Canadian
winter wilderness and he had no regrets. Burt
emerged from the bush totally unscathed and
nonchalant. In reality, Burt was a perfect guide,
a skilled outdoorsman, artist, and a gentleman to
boot He does this for a living, guiding
inexperienced folk like us. He is an expert at
it. I was
bruised and tattered. However, I had tasted a new
wilderness and tested myself in ways I never had
before.
I’ve only
one piece of advice to the vacationer who seeks
the same rigorous communion with our wilderness
by dogsled.
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| As you
dream of stepping back in time to experience the singing
sound of the sled runners on crusty snow that indigenous
trappers heard many years ago, when you envision your
frozen breath merging in a mystical way with the breath
of your remarkable team and streaming past you into the
wild solitude, remember not to exaggerate your
dogsledding skill levels in any letters to your guide. |
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| Burt and his
guiding company can be reached at:
Borealis Dog
Sled Adventures
Guide: Burton Penner
P.O. Box 303
Vermilion Bay
Ontario, Canada
P0V 2V0
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| Back to 1st page of Real
Canadians.. |
