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.
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