Part II : Reaping What We Sow

It was apparent that being able to live for free would help us reach our goal that much quicker.  Juliet agreed to stay on and do dog sledding for another winter season and I joined her.  While we were both accustom to working hard for what we wanted, the next couple of years were challenging.

When you are living on a farmstead, the changing of the seasons are intensified by the natural processes of the animal world.

Spring, of course, is filled with excitement.  The days become longer and the radiance of the sun more intense.  You convince yourself that every snow fall is the last for the season.  Finally rain falls more often than snow, everything thaws, then blooms, and summer settles in. The dogs want nothing more than to lay around in the shade in an attempt to escape the heat.  The humans seem inclined to follow suit as time spent grilling, swimming, and biking to nowhere in particular increases multifold.  

As fall draws near we get back to work.   The changing colors of the deciduous trees, while beautiful, is also symbolic of the natural declination of the life force that seemed to be fluttering around us unrestrained in the previous months.  We prepare for the dog sledding season by doing trail maintenance, repairing sleds, mending dog houses, and beginning training.

While humans have proved a certain degree of engineering prowess evident in numereous technological advancements, we have yet to invent a material that is able to keep you warm and dry during fall training runs.  Freezing rain and fall flurries leave standing water strewn throughout the trails.  The constant pattering of dog paws as they pull against the transmission of the four wheeler mixes dirt and water into a slurry of mud that gets into absolutely everything. 

But all of the preparations pay off after the first big snow fall of the season.  While winter signifies the recession of life for most organic matter in the great north woods, this is the time when the dogs come alive.  They transmit their excitement to you everyday as they beg to run and run and run.  They truly want nothing else.

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Juliet and I have handled literally hundreds of sled dogs during our two year vocation.  To compare these dogs to a domesticated house dog is misleading and inaccurate both on a physiological and emotion level.  These dogs have a sense of pack which they get both while in the dog yard as well as when they are working as a part of a well trained team.  The dogs need a specialized diet high in protein and fat depending on the time of year, age, sex, and activity which is closely monitored.  The dogs receive vitamin and mineral supplements for skin and coat health as well as regular immunizations and nails must be kept short for running. 

In terms of exercise, sled dogs that are well taken care of will run far more than any house dog.  Even the youngest and oldest dogs will run 500 miles per year while dogs in their prime years will run many thousands of miles in a season in preparation for longer races or expeditions.  As you prepare the sled for a run, the yard explodes into a frenzy of barking and chaos as the dogs beg to be picked for the day's run.  As you hook up your team for a run their instincts take over similar to what might go though Lance Armstrong’s mind as he gets on his bicycle.  They will lunge forward again and again, hungry for the feeling of pulling something.   There is no command for "go full speed" - full speed is the default setting for these dogs.  Maintaining a sustainable speed, braking for turns, and stopping is an art that takes a musher years to master.

And no, your house dog would not make a good sled dog.  I don't know how many times I've had to nod and smile while someone told me that Fido is fit to pull.  I promise that it is not.  Sled dogs are not house dogs.  Proportionately a sled dog will have larger hearts, bigger feet, more efficient lungs, a higher metabolism, and much more power per pound than any house dog.  Sled dogs have been bred to be the best at what they do and there is no comparison.  On many levels, they are simply the greatest athletes on the face of the planet.  They are also the most loving animals on the planet.  And when the dogs are literally your life blood you certainly make sure that they are well cared for. 

How many house dogs get their needs met everyday to such an extent?  Sure, there are sled dogs that are mistreated and neglected, but from what I've seen I can't imagine that the maltreatment rate is greater than that of house dogs, many of whom spend their days locked in a kennel and scarcely see the light of day or smell the scents of their natural environment.

Dog sledding, when done right, is some of the hardest work that can be taken on.  Couple that with a job and the days really tend to escape you.  This is how Juliet and I saved for our trip.  We spent nearly two years sharing a 12' x 12' cabin.  It was simple and beautiful.  We shared a car and commuted together into town for work everyday.  Oftentimes, I would work in the morning and Juliet would work in the evening.  Juliet would drop me off and either go back home to do dog chores or run errands in town until she began work.  Once I was off of work, I would take the bus downtown and wait for her shift to be over.  It wasn't such a bad thing that she worked at a climbing gym as it was a fairly pleasant place to have to spend time.  Our free time was nearly non-existent and our hobbies, other than dog sledding, fell by the way side.  We made a plan to budget Juliet's paycheck for our living expenses and to put my pay checks into a savings account for our trip.  I took all of the web design jobs that I could to help speed up this process. 

Neither one of us made very good money, but we were committed to living well below our means for this period of time.  We talked often about the dream of traveling and being immersed in new experiences and it helped us through the hard times of feeling exhausted and overwhelmed.  The experience, though, was rejuvenating.  We didn't go to an office everyday.  We were both working in our fields of study and dog sledding gave us an excuse to be outside everyday during the long winter.

We had made a goal for ourselves and created a graph to track our savings progress.  Only two months before our departure date we bought the truck that we now live out of for cash.  We cancelled any credit cards and set up all of our unavoidable bills so that we could pay them online.  It's not that we are debt free or free from the burden of bills, but we budgeted for them as we saved.  We are okay with the fact that we are not paying back our student loans as quickly as some of our friends or are investing in a mortgage at the moment.  We are not in a hurry. 

There is a great deal of satisfaction in traveling and doing what you love.  What price could we pay to explore the world around us and ourselves?  We have worked extremely hard to get to where we are and have fulfilled a dream that started as just that.  How many people have the will power and work ethic to see such a dream come to fruition? 

While we receive a great deal of support for what we have chose to do (thanks to all of our amazing friends and family), we have also heard criticism.  Some people may see us as lazy or as leeches on society, but I can assure you that our current state of affairs is a product of dedication to our passions and to each other as well as a willingness to forego living with certain comforts.  The success of our great social experiement can only be determined with time.  Stay tuned... 

(Sigh) The dog yard. They make you love the work.

 

Social hour



Nephew Evan scooping poop. There is no better place to learn good work ethic. And as it turns out if you tell him it's fun... it is.

The rewards are great in this line of work.

Very, very great.

The dogs... I can't tell you how amazing it was to work with such hard working, loving animals.

(Imagine 'The Price is Right') AHHH NEW TRUUUUCK!!!!!!

Our first idea.

During moving we learned that accessing stuff from the back of the underneath storage space was a real pain.

Begin construction of the new idea.

Add curtains and sand the edges with a few helpful tips from the supervisor, and you've got...



Home!!!



Our modest kitchen with plenty of fresh garlic as a going away present from my friend Teresa. (We have eaten it all)