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True Stories of Our Daughter's Childhood 1990-1993
 
"We didn’t make her fearful, we made her brave." 

    

    Turning in at Bemis Hill, in Roseau County, Minnesota, I snapped a few images of the nicely maintained CCC-era log cabin and its immediate sledding hill, but I didn’t stay long. Leaving, I turned west on the road I came in on, then a half mile or so, took the Bemis Hill Forest Road north, along the bottom of the Hill, to get onto smoother county roads again, when my daughter called from Ankeny, Iowa, several hundreds of miles away.

    Even in this day of global communication at our fingertips, it’s strange thing to me, to be in the middle of nowhere, figuratively speaking, leaning against a car along a remote northwest Minnesota forest road with a legendary sledding hill behind me and a forest that stretches for miles all around me, making me its possible total human population for five square miles, conservatively speaking, the thought of which is just awesome stuff.

   Even more awesome is my now adult daughter, Bonny, who, just from being born in Roseau County, is no stranger to wilderness adventure. Raised an only child in Palmville Township, 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 merely by accident because sometimes we were 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 Hell, 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 Hell, 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 Bonny relax, and gave her mother the nod. Gripping the handles molded into the sled, I tucked my chin to my chest awaiting that wee little push that would send us rocketing down the near vertical face of the stump-strewn hill, hurtling between the skinny-trunked jackpines and slicing through the air, ten feet off the ground, blowing stocking caps off passersby and those too flabbergasted to get the hell out of the way. 

   Pitching from one side of the sled to the other in my frenzied attempts at steering an unsteerable sled, I finally opened my eyes when we slid to a sudden stop at the bottom of the hill against the barrier of vertical railroad ties from which the crows and ravens often pecked at the little bits of wool, polyester and flesh embedded in their surface.

   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 Hell ... er, 'Hill'.

   Or, maybe she’d rather recall her Iditarod birthday party at home in Palmville, the keywords of this particular memory being: Black Spot, Two Socks, Beebee, Hike! Whoa! Gee!’ and Haw!

   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 their yearly doings in late January.

   I said I could harness up the sled dogs and give some rides as I had some trails made. Her mother said, "Yes! Everyone would have some real fun.” A neighbor, whose daughter was attending the party, said he would bring his VHS movie camera and film the activities.
 
   My friend, the late Roseau musher Pete Fugleberg a.k.a “The Foog,” had given our daughter two young Alaskan husky pups whose coloration of body and facial expression earned them their respective names of Two Socks:
for his two white front feet and forelegs, and Beebee; for his one blue eye and one black eye. 

    Knowing huskies need to be worked, he threw in an old wood-slatted dogsled that had a handlebow and Hyfax-plastic runners that extended beyond the back of the sled with a ‘brake’ made from a length of snowmobile track, punctuated with several carbon studs, that dangled loosely from a long spring between them (apparently installed to meet OSHA specifications although it had no practical use whatsoever as anyone who has ever mushed behind more than one dog would know).

   We had a two year old Dalmatian named Black Spot, for reasons known only to my daughter, that became trained to pull too, more or less, and matched the full grown huskies in height and speed. It could be a wild ride at times.

   Readying the rambunctious barking team and harnessing them to the sled, scared the other girls. Although the sled 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. Although we two smiled happily and tried to convince the girls that they were going to have a really fun time once we got going, they refused to get on the sled. That’s when Bonny 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 framed below the arch of the handlebow, 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 telephoto lens.


   My wife worried Bonny may not be able to stop and turn the team at the schoolhouse and urged me to run the sixth of a mile to the schoolhouse and help her out. Right

    Hurrying though, I took a shortcut through the trees to the east-west township road that she was on and watched from a distance as the team slowed 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 in January.

   Walking toward the schoolhouse, still a hundred or so yards away, I heard her yell “WHOA!” in her little girly voice, then “HAW! HAW!” as the team pivoted on the empty county road, its momentum pitching her body into the turn. She knew to hold onto the sled no matter what.

   The dogs turned the sled around, knowing the drill as much as they actually obeyed her commands of “HIKE! HIKE! HIKE!” that 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 little daughter all serious-like, her face stern behind her scarf, eyebrows angled hard against her cheeks; her eyes squinty.

   I saw her suddenly squat ‘way down in her snowsuit to keep her featherweight mass low-centered ‘tween the runners, as the team slowed for the first tight curve back north, toward the house; the lines slackening a little, the sled sliding, skipping as the dogs ran low through the turn their mouths wide, tongues lolling, all their tails high, twelve muscled legs compressing through powerful strides, the sled runners sizzling along the far snowplow-curbed shoulder of the road. No other six year old in Palmville that day, could’ve even imagined so much real fun.

   Likely you don’t believe that either, but it’s somewhere on film, thanks to Jerry Solom. You’d believe him wouldn’t you?
Thanks Jerry. 

Comments

Great story, written by the Loose Leader himself!

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