Travis

If you asked me what and where I thought I’d be this summer, it wouldn’t be sitting at home in Seward listening to the rain fall eagerly awaiting Iditarod updates and watching Travis’ GPS steadily move down the Iditarod trail. I wouldn’t be writing this blog post or answering phone calls and emails. I certainly wouldn’t be on facebook! If you asked me what I was going to do this summer, I would have told you that Travis and I had a plan. The plan.

By early June we’d had things worked out for the two of us. This was the year, I told myself, this was the year I was going to be able to run THE IDITAROD! After all, that is why I moved here four and a half years ago. Travis and I had arranged to buy a piece of property with a small cabin on it up north. We had worked out a great owner financing set-up and we were finally going to be up in mushing country. Not just for one season — but indefinitely. We were going to leave snowless Seward behind:no more rain to deal with, just dogs and trails and finding the time to run and explore as much as we were able. And so, with that end goal in mind, I worked hard this summer.

For a little over five weeks I managed our 60 dog kennel and two businesses by myself while Travis was stuck on bed rest after getting severly sun burnt. When it looked like he would finally be back on his feet, he contracted shingles. Looking back now, I’m not entirely sure how I slogged through running tours, keeping guests happy, and managing the early part of our season without my partner. To be fair, we had a great crew and they willingly picked up whatever slack I couldn’t manage. We moved forward as a team and the summer of 2014 was gearing up to be a good one. Throughout the summer I often realized that I wasn’t happy. I never felt like my work was done and the long daylight hours Alaska offers us translated into long work hours. I routinely stayed up trying to tie up loose ends or figure out simply how to do something better. I was terrible at prioritizing, which left me feeling rushed and overwhelmed even at the day’s end.

But I slowly figured things out and it would be ok, I told myself, because I had a goal that I was working towards: Putting a downpayment on this cabin so that I could run dogs and still manage our business.  To me, that was the light at the end of a really long tunnel. When September finally got here and we were ready to close on the property, I almost couldn’t believe that THE PLAN was coming together. My hard work was paying off. I’d already started packing what I could and we were trying to figure out if we could rent our house in Seward out. I could envision myself training first on four wheelers, then sleds. I would stay busy with work but would also reconnect with the sport I was so passionate about but had felt so powerless to pursue these last two years as we tried to grow our business. If we were up north, I figured, I would be able to run our business and train. I had acknowledged the roadblock that was impeding me from moving forward and I was busting through.

That, of course, was when everything changed.

About two weeks from when we planned to move in, the sellers decided they wanted to keep the property. This couldn’t be happening, could it? A few days passed and finally, we realized, we needed a new plan.

The training runs at this point were short and our dogs had run tours all summer so were already in great condition. Travis and I began looking at real estate and, once again, found another piece of property. We talked with the sellers and began arranging our finances. It was slightly more expensive and we’d really have to stretch our budget but we wanted to live our dream! Wasn’t this the point, of, well everything? We finally figured out how we’d make things work and, after a lot of hard and careful thinking, made an offer.

Of course, someone beat us to it.

At this point, we started to get a little nervous. It was already the middle of October. Everything happens for a reason, I kept telling myself. Travis seemed less certain but still optimistic. It will happen, I kept telling myself, because it had to happen.

And then it all came together.

One night on craigslist, I found the dream property we’d been waiting for. This was why everything else had fallen through! We found 3 acres of property in prime mushing country, at a reasonable price. It didn’t have a house but had a small structure that we could make do with for the winter. We made an offer. It was accepted. The sense of relief and freedom I felt was so foreign to me after the constant stress of the last two years. Our hard work had payed off.

Travis went up to the property and began working. We’d signed preliminary papers and ok’ed it with the seller to put a dog yard in. It was starting to get cold and if we didn’t do it right away, we’d have no place to keep the dogs. There was no point in buying property if we couldn’t use it this season so Travis went up there, stopping at Home Depot and buying all the supplies we needed to put in a dog lot. Just a little while longer, I told myself. And I would be up there making things happen!

Travis called me from our new place. “I just drove the last post in!” He said. I could hear him smiling through the phone. Things never looked better.

Of course, that’s when the problems started.

As Travis drove the last of the posts into what would be our dog lot, a man on an ATV drove by with a chainsaw. Travis thought nothing of it. People in Seward cut dead trees up for firewood all the time and he assumed that’s what this man was doing. WRONG! It turns out he had gone down the trail with his chainsaw to cut trees into the trail so mushers couldn’t train. Apparently, our new neighbor was an anti-mushing zealot and he wasn’t afraid of starting a fight.

Being rational, we decided we would try to talk with him. My mom always tells me “you can’t make sanity from insanity” so I don’t know what we expected. The man was polite and he assured us that he had a family now and had moved on from that phase in his life. He’d come to accept mushing as a way of Alaskan culture and whoever cut those trees down it wasn’t him. He didn’t have time for that sort of nonsense anymore. We’d clearly worn out our welcome though. He didn’t want to chat and demanded we leave. The encounter left us feeling more than a little uneasy. But this was it! This was our spot in mushing country that we so desperately wanted! The man had said he wouldn’t be a problem and we took him at his word.

And for a three whole days he wasn’t a problem. On day four though he started hanging anti-mushing and anti-Iditarod signs up.  He posted nasty things with arrows pointing at our soon-to-be property. We asked the local authorities to intervene but they said he could write and hang whatever signs he wanted on his property. We asked them to act as mediators and they told us that wasn’t their job. We weren’t sure what to do, but he quickly made the decision easy for us. He began cutting down trees and other brush to block trails with a new tenacity, not just to prevent us from using the trail, but to prevent all the local mushers. It got so bad that Alaska Dispatch actually wrote an article about the guy.

So we did what any young, smart couple would do: we decided not to buy the property because this was supposed to be our haven, our get away. With a crazy neighbor, we figured it would be anything but that. Travis was devastated. Whatever is beyond devastation, that’s what I was. By this point, it was early November and as much as we’d worked training the dogs around property hunting, we now could no longer do both. There were no rentals available because, in the summer when we would have normally secured them, we had already thought we were set. Besides, who wants to rent a house to someone with 60 dogs?

Training with the dogs slowly began to intensify and runs started to take longer and longer. Up until the end of October we had almost always run our teams together, with me following his lead but one day we were splitting up dogs for the next run and he said, “I’m running now. You run in a few hours. You can’t train with me anymore.”

At the time, I was less than receptive. I was angry and confused. I couldn’t train with him? Who was he to tell me what to do? And why couldn’t I train with him? He clarified: “I’ve taught you everything I can. The rest you have to learn on your own. You can’t train your team for Iditarod with me. It just doesn’t work that way.”

Now that I’m in a better place emotionally and can use my rationality, I understand why. At some point, you have to do things on your own. Mushing dogs is about being out on your own, knowing what to do, and having the confidence not just in yourself but also in your dogs that you can handle any situation that is thrown at you. It’s not that Travis didn’t want to spend time with me out on the trail. He was happy to do that. We love doing that. Travis simply wanted me to train my team. And when we went out together my team wasn’t getting trained — all they were doing was following his team around. Rather than creating my own independent unit, by following Travis around all the time my team and I were nothing more than an extension of his team. We weren’t on our own if we were out there with him and we weren’t going to learn how to do things on our own unless he cut the cord.

“Look, you will have problems. We all have problems. But you’ll manage. Have confidence. You are a problem solver!”

But this winter, it didn’t seem like I could solve any problems. I trained sporadically but without him as my safety net my worry often got the best of me. I got increasingly anxious about all the loose animals in our subdivision — chickens, turkeys, and small dogs — and my worry soon turned to paralysis. Eventually, I simply stopped training.

To top it off, we learned that our biggest vendor of the season was unable to pay us for the services we rendered that summer and we took a massive financial blow. I felt defeated on so many different fronts because, it turned out, nothing that I worked hard for had materialized — not even the money.

The constant rain that plagued Seward only added to my growing sense of disappointment and failure. A the end of November, a friend and mentor committed suicide and I was left with an even deeper sense of loss. Questions haunted me at night and kept me from sleep. Soon even getting out of bed became a challenge. More and more I found myself thinking of the Langston Hughes poem, Harlem.

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore— And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over— like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?

My life, it seemed, would try answering the question Hughes had asked almost 90 years prior.

I did a lot of writing. Looking back at my journals there are lots of statements like “it seems like every day is a fight and I’m barely making it through the rounds” and “I think I’m stuck in the same loops and cycles. Treadmilling myself into exhaustion. Why am I not making any progress?” I just couldn’t shake the feeling that no matter what I did, I wasn’t getting anywhere. All this work and there was nothing to show for it. All these things I had to do and yet I had no idea where to start.

Our financial situation only made things worse: Dog food. Mortage. Heat. Food. Gas. They added up quickly. Soon, my life became a precarious balancing act of figuring out when to pay what bill. It was ridiculous. I was sad. I was angry. Above all, I couldn’t believe any of this was happening because I had always worked to ensure that we would have enough money to feed our dogs. Suddenly, I was no longer sure. I was filled more and more with a growing sense of shame and failure. How could this have happened?

Travis could see me struggling. Through it all, he was there. We both made sacrifices. We worried less about the money. “I’ve always scraped by,” he said. And sure enough, so far, we have. In the good moments, we would joke about  me “going crazy” but then there were times when he would sit down with me, genuinely concerned trying to figure out what he could do. Sometimes it was as simple as a hug. Sometimes it was him leaving to train and giving me my space. Both at times were needed. On more than one occasion I was extremely jealous of him: how did his life have so much definition and structure and mine had none?

After one of his training trips though, Travis came back with a two-place snow machine trailer that I could put dog boxes on. He knew I would feel comfortable towing it with my truck. “So you can train,” he said. “When you’re ready.” His idea was, that when it was done, I’d go train my team with friends. I wouldn’t have as much anxiety about training because I wouldn’t be alone and I would see that I was more than capable to be out there by myself. In short, it was his way of trying to make me a more confident musher. He knew I had it in me, I just needed to see it for myself and running with other people would show me that.

I began working on the project immediately with a friend. Building and painting the boxes flew by but shortly before completion I stopped working. All I had to do was screw the doors on and put a few bolts in but I was in such a funk that I couldn’t find the motivation to even do that.

“You should finish your trailer,” Travis frequently repeated. “Then you could go have some fun and get of the rain.” But I let the trailer sit. Day after day after day. Suddenly, a month had passed. Where had the time gone? The dog boxes still weren’t done. What had I done during that time?

“Really?” Travis said to me one day with a mixture of disbelief, pity, and frustration. “You still haven’t finished it?” And so, late one night, Travis finished my trailer so that I could leave and go train too. After all, that’s what I wanted, wasn’t it?

Days passed after it was completed but I still hadn’t left. “You going to leave?” He asked. “I can watch the kennel.” But I’d make excuses as to why I couldn’t go. My friends would ask why I hadn’t left to see them after promising to come visit and train with them. Often, I’d tell them I wanted Travis to train or that I needed to watch the dogs but, in reality, I simply couldn’t muster the energy to do, well, anything.

Through it all, Travis kept encouraging me to get out of the house, to go do things, even if it wasn’t running dogs — but it seemed the more I stayed at home the more I wanted to stay at home. I watched him day after day work towards his goal of training a competitive dog team. How was he able to get so much done? And, more importantly, why couldn’t I?

To me, my life had become a series of meaningless tasks. Cleaning the house. Doing Laundry. “Background Chores” became the forefront of my life. I never tried to take on anything big. I couldn’t handle big. And not trying to work away at a big project made me feel useless, lazy, and unaccomplished. Because we own our own business, I didn’t even have the structure of a job to fall back on to define my life.

“What are you doing with all your time?” Travis would ask.

I could never seem to find a good answer. What was I doing?

So, when things started to get more difficult, Travis did what he does best. He silently supported me. In January he asked for my help training his team. He wanted me to drive his team. It was very important, he said, that I helped. He needed my advice. It wasn’t true but it got me in the dog truck heading north and it temporarily gave my life more definition than merely eating and sleeping.

We spent a fantastic week running dogs and I felt free. Out on the trail, there were no bills to pay, no phones to answer or emails to respond to. There were no problems that had to be dealt with. Out on the trail, there was just snow, dogs, and a beautiful full moon. Life out there, it seemed, was perfect. Why couldn’t it always be this easy?

Unfortunately, we had to return to the real word. I got back to rainy Seward and started worrying about Iditarod Food Drops. By this time, I’d known I wouldn’t be running — how could I, I hadn’t trained! — but there was still the problem of Travis’ food drops. When it’s all said and done, food drops cost around $10,000. We didn’t exactly have that type of money lying around — we were living off of the few scant tour gigs we could manage this snowless year. Fortunately, we got lucky and signed on to do some film work. We did a short gig for TLC and another for Chick-Fil-A which helped break up the monotony, gave my life some temporary focus, and helped us cover our expenses. The change of pace and constant barrage of new scenery also started to break up the funk I had found myself in since the fall.

Slowly, I started figuring things out. I knew that this  was not how I wanted to live my life yet I wasn’t making any effort to change. Here I was, with the person I love most in this world, living a life most people dream about and yet, I wasn’t living it. I was running from it. Why?

Something obviously needed to change.

For a long time, I couldn’t figure out why I was so unhappy. I loved our dogs. I loved Travis. I loved work. I had a lot of really great friends. From the outside, my life was perfect! Something, however, was amiss.

Slowly I came to the self-realization that I was overwhelmed by all that we had on our plate: two businesses, 60 dogs, and the logistics of Iditarod. I spent a lot of time worrying about what could happen and what we should do, rather than simply doing things. Worry had paralyzed me.

“I’m worried,” I finally admitted to Travis one night.
“About what?” Travis asked.
“About everything.”
“Everything?” He asked.
“Yes, everything.”
“Well. That’s not good.”

So the next morning I sat down and made a list of everything that worried me. “Are you still at it?” He asked. He knew what I was doing and somehow managed to shower and get dressed before I stopped writing. “Ok that’s enough give it to me,” he said taking the paper from me. “It’s not even 9:15. Why are there 47 items on this list?”

All of a sudden, he just started laughing, which, honestly, was the perfect response.

It was completely absurd for me to have all this on my mind!

“No wonder you feel stuck.” He looked down at the paper and begin reading the items. “God. You think about all this?” He shook his head. “Wow.”

I immediately started understanding why I felt like I couldn’t go anywhere or do anything. There was so much on my plate, I didn’t know where to begin!

Together we looked at the list. What were things that could wait? What weren’t? What on that list did I have no control over? What things on the list did I have some control over, but not entire control? And, most importantly, what on that list could we make disappear by simply saying today I will do this! Together, we found a few things we each could tackle that day to immediately shorten THE LIST.

So far, so good.

Slowly I figured it out. I started coming out of my funk. Travis, on top of training full time, started to take over some of the responsibilities in our business to lighten my load and I began realizing my own personal needs and wants. It seemed like ever since we started running our own business, I had put what I wanted on the back burner. I was living to work and not working to live. No wonder I was so unhappy — I wasn’t taking care of myself!

So in the recent weeks I have set about changing. It hasn’t been easy and it’s been a lot of hard work climbing out of my hole. I’ve focused so long and so intently on working that, honestly, I’d forgotten what it’s like to have hobbies. I started sewing and began writing more. I made an effort to call friends I hadn’t spoken to in awhile and also challenged myself to simply get out of the house.

Travis started cooking more frequently — and by that I mean, he perfected the BLT and the fine art of frying bacon. He started relying on me less for little things and I started to rely on him more for big things. We took a mushing trip together. I remembered that I’ve always known what to do on the trail. Why worry? And more importantly, why let worry stop you?

 

Most of all, I’ve learned to cut myself a little bit more slack, to have fun, to put myself first, and not to worry. Life will always present challenges that push us and force us to grow. I’m choosing to remember my dark time as a period of rest and renewal that led to growth. It’s always dark inside a butterfly’s cocoon but a butterfly needs that darkness to shift and change and grow.

I am spreading my wings.

And by all accounts, so is Trav. I’m so excited for him. I really couldn’t be any prouder of Travis for the race he’s run up to this point. I don’t think any musher out there has had tougher training conditions this year than Travis. He’s had to travel any time he’s wanted to train the team.

Can you imagine doing 15000 miles worth of driving and STILL training for the Iditarod? That takes some serious dedication. And look where he’s at! He’s been around 20th position the whole time. Just imagine how he does when we are able to live in an area that has trails out our back door. I’m super excited.

I don’t care what position Travis finishes in. I just feel like, once again, we are going places.

We are taking flight.