Too Big For Publication

Hey, Wannaskan Almanac February 24, 2018 entry writer! Just before Fun Facts of the Week you asked, "What's Your Adventure?" Well, I have a couple true adventure stories about my daughter even though some say I stretch the truth now and then. You decide.

My daughter is 31 years old and no stranger to adventure here in Palmville Township. Raised an only child, she was subject to feats of daring if only because her mother and I didn’t know any better, thinking because she was a girl, she could do anything. We didn’t make her fearful, we made her brave, if just because sometimes she was out of earshot and we couldn’t hear her calling for help. We just thought she was having the time of her life, you know, fun like. Her tears had usually dried by the time we got to her and after a few minutes of comforting, she had forgotten all about it--like when she and I went sledding at Bemis Hill, when she was but four years old.

A brave lass, she sat forward of me with the pull rope in her lap, atop a plastic purple sled that teetered precariously on the edge of the great chasm called Bemis Hill, the only real hill in flatland Roseau County, at 1200’ above sea level. Secure in the affirmation by her mother and I, smiling as we often did when we tried to convince her that she was going to have so much fun, she steeled her resolve and instinctively let her body go limp knowing that rigidness so often only begets injury. Fitting tightly between my knees, my arms to either side, I felt her relax and giving her mother the signal, gripped the handles molded into the sled, tucked my chin to my chest awaiting that wee little push that would send us rocketing down the face of the hill, hurtling between the jackpines and slicing through the air blowing stocking caps off passersby and knocking down those too flabbergasted to get the heck out of the way.

Despite a little rash of frostbite on her cheeks, nose and eyebrow ridge where her facemask was folded back by G-forces we hadn’t anticipated, she seemed to really enjoy the ride although she declined to go again saying something about having enough excitement for one day. I realize this may sound a bit farfetched but all one has to do is ask her about Bemis Hill ... or her sixth birthday party at home, the keywords being ‘huskies’, ‘Dalmatian’, ‘Hike’, ‘Whoa’, ‘Haw’ and ‘Whoa’ again.

This time she was but six--(so appropriate because it was her sixth birthday)--and her mother had a bunch of our daughter’s school friends out for the yearly doings in January. I said I could harness up the sled dogs and give some rides as I had some trails made and everyone would have some real fun. We had two Alaskan huskies, and one Dalmatian that was trained, moreorless, to pull a dogsled, that one of my coworkers at the toy factory had given our daughter for her birthday a year earlier. A neighbor whose daughter was attending the party, brought his VHS movie camera and said he’d film the activities.


Readying the rambunctious barking eager team and harnessing them to the sled, scared the other girls. Although it was tied to my truck, so the dogs wouldn’t take off with it, the sled bounced around and slapped the ground in their excitement and although we two smiled and tried to convince them they were going to have a really fun time once we got going, the girls refused to get on the sled. That’s when our daughter stepped up to the plate. Looks by newly six year olds, don’t get any more contemptuous.

Pulling the wildly anxious team back with the handlebow so I could loosen the knot securing the sled to my heaving truck, our little daughter calmly stood ahead of me, her head below the top of the sled, her feet on the tail of either runner, her two mittened hands gripping the handlebow next to mine. Shot from a cannon when the knot pulled free, our daughter and the dogs evaporated in front of our eyes when they roared from the yard and onto the winding single lane of our driveway high above Mikinaak Creek, swooshing south and west and south again, the dogs flat out running for all they were worth. The other girls were speechless as the neighbor panned his camera, following the pandemonium with its lens.

My wife worried our daughter may not be able to stop and turn the team at the schoolhouse and urged me to walk the .6 of a mile to the schoolhouse and help her out. Hurrying, I took a shortcut through the trees to the east-west township road where she was and watched from a distance as the team slowed down its approach to the intersection. I hoped any cars nearing it would see her and the dogs in time, as it wasn’t normally a very busy place.

Walking toward the schoolhouse, still a hundred or so yards away, I heard her yell “WHOA!” in her little girly voice, then “HAW!” as the team pivoted on the empty county road, her never letting go of the handlebow. The dogs turned the sled around knowing the drill, as much as they actually obeyed her commands, “HIKE! HIKE! HIKE!” she hollered in her excitement and on they came like the sled was on fire, the hyfax runners spitting gravel close to the top of the road, our daughter all serious-like, her face stern behind her scarf, eyebrows angled hard against her cheeks, eyes squinty. I saw her suddenly squat ‘way down to keep her featherweight mass low-centered ‘tween the runners, as the team slowed for the first curve back north toward the house, the lines slackening a little, the sled sliding, skipping as the dogs ran through the turn mouths wide, tongues lolling, all their tails high, twelve muscled legs compressing through powerful strides, no other six year old in Palmville that day could’ve imagined--but likely you don’t believe it, but it’s somewhere on film, thanks Jer.