(HOST) Commentator Willem Lange recently traveled through the Maine woods with a whole new point of view.
(LANGE) This is a point of view I’ve never before experienced. Just ahead of me, six bushy canine tails wave in the winter sun; and just ahead of each, a pair of short, hairy, erect ears points straight up. Beneath my poorly padded derriere, the sled runners swish, rumble, or grate as we pass from snow to ice to gravel. Stephen Madera, the musher, looms above me behind my right shoulder.
The woods on either side have been scalped several times. The trail is lined with alder saplings, with spruces poking up beyond. This may be the great North Woods, but they’ve long been a working forest more than a sylvan Shangri-la
Thirty feet ahead of me, the leader, Roy, is destroying my preconceptions. Raised on tales of Buck and Sergeant Preston’s famous King, I’ve pictured lead dogs as wise powerhouses. Roy’s powerful, all right, but not much of a disciplinarian. When Steve shouts,"Straight on, Roy!" he does it unfailingly; but "Gee, Roy!" produces the desired right turn about two-thirds of the time. Tussocks of grass beside the trail have to be inspected and anointed. Behind him, Jackson and Keno also make their contributions before we take off again. "That’s one good thing about female dogs," says Steve. "They don’t do that."
The Appalachian Mountain Club has acquired a string of old Maine sporting camps, intending to provide some organization and muscle to the constant effort of balancing logging, development, and recreation in the North Maine Woods. One of the club’s goals is to widen the buffer zone on either side of the Appalachian Trail, which passes nearby. Another is sustainable forestry on a 37,000-acre tract it’s acquired elsewhere in the area. The old camps, spaced a day’s travel apart by foot, snowshoe, ski, or dog sled, will attract a different clientele than in the past; but there’s still old-fashioned fly-fishing for native brookies.
Up ahead of me, the six tails wag happily. Up front, Roy trots beside the aging Stanzi (named for Mozart’s wife). Behind them are Jackson and Ripley. Ripley, a lovely Siberian, is brown as a deer with perfect, tiny ears. She loves physical contact, and keeps slipping under the central line to trot with Jackson, their hips moving in unison. Just in front of me are the wheel dogs, Keno and Little Bug. Little Bug is huge. Now and then he looks around at me as if to ask when I might try a few hundred yards afoot. But of all the dogs, his line is tightest; he leans on his harness with his hind feet wide apart, like a grizzly bear’s.
Steve, who mushes out of Abbot, Maine, is an old Outward Bound instructor like me, so we have lots to talk about – like having found our respective zones of bliss, and enjoying a perfect day in the woods, along with some of the happiest and most enthusiastic companions in the world.
This is Willem Lange near Kokadjo, Maine, and I really oughta get back to work.