Mush!

Chester

Someone pulled the fire alarm today – likely some student more willing to face the winter cold than their impending exam. No time to grab jackets from distant lockers, 1,600 teenagers funneled onto the school’s front lawn in a shivering mass. Cursing the transgressions of their anonymous classmate, kids clinched their shoulders as a flurry of exposed arms attempted to burrow into shallow pockets. It was a sea of miserable young people. Save for the five youngsters gathered in a relaxed circle on the periphery of the tightening mass, engaged in laughter-laced conversation that seemed oblivious to winter wind on bare skin. Upon closer inspection, it made perfect sense. They were the dogsled team. At 40oF, the weather was balmy!

A week prior, these five upperclassmen and this tag-a-long teacher had awoken to the howls of a dog yard. Raising bleary heads from the depths of doubled-up sleeping bags, we found the rays of the North Minnesota sun dancing across the white blankets of frozen breath that had crystallized on our bedding. An intense day and night of instruction at Outward Bound’s base camp was complete. Our adventure was to begin.

We loaded up the sleds and dragged them to the dog yard. Our entrance was greeted by a chorus of leaping yaps as fifty canines jumped atop their doghouses to shout “Pick me!” With just enough leash to sniff their nearest neighbors, some galloped in circles around their tethers, while others raised front paws in excited waves as reared bodies pulled against taught ropes. A contest was on to display which twelve were most prepared for the day’s adventure. It was a jubilant frenzy, dotted with a few lookers in luxuriant coats who, well aware of their good genes, laid front paws atop doghouses so they could poise on hind legs and wag cheerful tails.

Luckily, the choosing was left to our guides, who then handed each of us a harness and sent us over to suit up the lucky picks of the day. Upon recognition of making the trip’s roster, bubbling canine excitement quickly heeded to the task at hand, as each dog calmly assisted a city slicker’s rehearsed yet laborious attempts to get them into their harnesses. With the sound of a final clip, seasoned muscles would shoot back to life as each dog dragged their future driver to a sled to get on with the day’s run.

One dog attached to a lead, then two, then three; it seemed the sleds would be torn in half by the yapping huskies and malamutes that were now tugging against the anchors that had been smartly clipped around thick trees. Four, tug; five, tug; six… clip-WOOOOSH, as sleds rocketed forward behind the ecstatic barks of a full team’s run, human drivers leaning left then right around forested turns, staring wide-eyed as sleds were then hurled down a steep hill toward the shoreline of an ice bound lake where humans and dogs settled in for the long-haul across the region’s frozen highway.

Our team had reached this wintry outpost via a fortuitous introduction made by my childhood friend, Patrick. Having pursued the outdoor career we’d both dreamed of as kids, he had invited me to a dinner with Julie Hignell, the first woman to make it via her own power to the North Pole. She volunteered to visit the Chicago Public School where I teach, hit it off with the kids, and offered six scholarships for five lucky students and their teacher to partake in a five-day dogsled adventure across the Minnesota Boundary Waters with Outward Bound.

In the hands of the finest teachers in the outdoor adventure world, my chief task, other than mini-van chauffeur and wood chopper, was the recruitment of a five-student team that could immerse itself in a modern-day chapter of a Jack London novel. Urban natives, most of my students had seldom stepped foot off city pavement. Our trip would not just place them around a forest campfire, but send them bounding on snow and ice behind winter-worshipping cousins of the wolf. Frigid days would not end with a warm bed and dry roof. Rather, dying embers of a Yukon Stove would signal a cold walk to a sleeping bag heated only by hot water bottles placed within wool socks. It was a situation that no teenager (or adult) could well handle alone. A well-balanced team was essential. After much pondering, I recruited the following roster:

Brian Meza: Senior Class President and socialite extraordinaire. The kid is literally friends with everyone. Even gangbangers of every stripe seem to place him on their “don’t mess” list. With three varsity letters to boot, what would six running dogs be but a few more athletes on another new field? Brian would be the rallying spirit behind the team.

Oyute Amarbayer: ROTC captain and seamless logician. Tall, fit, and supermodel buff, she carries an unassuming competence with which other kids simply jump in line when she issues an instruction. A recent immigrant from Mongolia, I think she may be a descendent of Genghis Khan himself.

Briseida Guerra: Calm observer and model student. Her quiet attention is always brought to an easy smile amid the teenage antics rattling so noisily around the room. Yet, every time she’s called on to answer a question, she’s on. Her quiet diligence and easy humor would both absorb and temper the frenetic energy of a teenage team.

Olaleke Allibalogun: Class comedian and ethnic bridge builder. A recent immigrant from Nigeria, in two years he has travelled from a faint grasp of English to seamless movement between his mother culture and the hip-hop lingo of Chicago. Olaleke’s well-timed humor is also dispersed without fail. On such a taxing adventure, this gift would be gold.

Sairabano Makhani: Old soul and sharp intellect. A Muslim from Pakistan, she had never before spent a night out from under her family’s roof. Her parents thought she was crazy to go on such a trip but left the decision to her. She opted in, with little experience in sports and little exposure to snow. Her drive, however, only settles for success, and her keen mind and wisdom would lend a mature focus to a young team.

Team in place, we arrived in Minnesota for training by Outward Bound. For a day and a night we were schooled – on knots, dogs, and winter survival—before sleds were loaded and we were off on our adventure around the chain of lakes that forms the Canadian border. By the end of day one the temperature had dropped to well below zero. The cold was looking to challenge us as much as the miles.

We built an igloo of sorts to shelter ourselves from the arctic wind and placed hot water bottles between the frost and our bodies and minds. Undeterred, the thermometer continued to drop until it fell to -40o the second night. Removing a glove for mere seconds to tend a zipper or knot resulted in a tingling numbness zipping over white skin. Yet the dogs were unfazed. Following their jubilant cues, we coupled diligence with a smile and carried on. And over evenings around the fire, we learned from one another.

Saira had been at school in Pakistan when the attacks of 9/11 occurred. She recalled vividly how her fellow classmates had cheered when the planes hit the World Trade Center. She knew at that moment she’d been raised differently, and that her fellow countrymen were wrong. She also shared her desire to be a writer, and her plans to study both journalism and medicine as a means to fulfill both her and her parents’ dreams. Olaleke reflected on the academic plight of African-Americans and how his own African upbringing and values stood in sharp contrast to those of others with whom he shared a common ancestry but whose families had been thrown down slavery’s destructive path many centuries before.

Briseida reflected on the fact that she had never really noticed the stars before in Chicago, and how in Minnesota they danced in a bright carpet over the black night. Oyute talked of her many jobs outside of school and the down payment she had just placed on a new Nissan Xterra. Brian reflected on the forty years of rock and roll music he had collected on vinyl records and his desire to become a history teacher.

In five short days, six very different team members bonded on a level that only Mother Nature can provide. We chopped enough wood to fill a small truck and withstood some of the coldest temperatures the Lower 48 ever see. And we did more than just survive. We returned to Chicago with the embers of adventure well kindled in our souls, having in our possession a new power that was perhaps best summed up by Olaleke during an exchange with a skeptical classmate over his pursuit of a new idea. “Are you kidding? I just dog sledded through minus 40 degrees – I can take on the world!”

(2/21/06)


Mush!


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