mushing magazine 1mushing magazine 1
The magazine of dog-powered adventure
Sept/Oct 2013#154 $4.95 U.S.
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26 sept/oct 2013
Media Review
Lone WolvesBy John SmelcerReview by Suzanne Steinert
We soon discover the driver of the
sled, and Lone Wolves’ unlikely
heroine, is 16-year-old Deneena
Yazzie, a tomboy also known as “Denny.” She
lives in a remote native village in Alaska’s
interior wilderness and, like the book’s
author, John Smelcer, is a member of the
Ahtna tribe. And she loves mushing dogs.
Released October 15th by Leapfrog Press,
Lone Wolves is by no means Smelcer’s
coming-out party. Having penned over forty
books, Smelcer years ago established himself
as a rockstar of Alaskan literature (his middle
name is Elvis). But with this inspiring
young adult novel, which took fi rst place in
LeapFrog’s 2012 Fiction Contest, he promises
to further solidify his status as “Alaska’s
modern day Jack London.”
Of course, every plot has a confl ict and
every hero a worthy adversary, and not long
after meeting Denny on the trail, we quickly
learn who and what she is up against. Though
the story is a work of fi ction, through Denny’s
vantage point & Smelcer’s sobering prose,
the novel offers a blunt look at the very real
struggles many children (and their parents)
living in Alaska’s native villages face. At
school, Denny enounters drug & alcohol
abuse on a daily basis, when kids gather
outside during breaks to smoke pot and drink
booze. “An excellent student with excellent
marks,” Denny, of course, doesn’t partake,
but is made fun of for not going with the grain
-- including by a classmate named Mary
Paniaq, who was raped by her cousin and is
now pregnant. In remote villages, men often
rape their own relatives; according to a recent
Alaska Dispatch article, one out of every
three Alaska Native women will be raped
in their lifetime. Also, right after meeting
Denny, we learn that her cousin Maggie
committed suicide after fi nding that her
inadequate village education would not allow
her to fulfi ll her dreams of being a nurse and
succeed in the outside world. Here, Smelcer
provides another startlingly true statistic,
that the rate of suicide among young people
in native villages in Alaska is a dozen times
higher than the rest of America. As for
Denny’s homelife, her father is never around,
and her mother, who doesn’t understand her
tomboy-ish ways, just wishes she’d “be more
like the other girls.” She also faces bullying
and prejudice for being a “girl musher” and a
“half-breed,” not 100% native or 100% white
(hence her blue eyes).
The only person who understands Denny
is her grandfather, Sampson, who keeps her
grounded and encourages her to stick to her
guns, be brave, and chase after her dreams.
Quizzing her on the Ahtna translations for
everyday words like beaver (tsa’), coffee
(guuxi), and sled (xat), he also encourages
her to carry on their culture’s customs and
traditions -- and teaches her how to mush.
My favorite moments in the novel take place
when they are out in the woods together
running dogs and sitting around the campfi re.
In these moments, Sampson tells stories and
teaches Denny deep lessons about life that
readers will want to dog-ear (pun intended)
for their own memory.
Such passages also showcase Smelcer’s
stylistic mastery of metaphor and simile (he
moonlights as the poetry editor for Rosebud
magazine), devices he fl awlessly employs
throughout the book that evoke the Alaskan
landscape and provide much of the novel’s
richest detail. Motivating Denny to continue
mushing and not give into peer pressure at
school, Sampson explains, “What they do,
what you do - it’s not a matter of legal or not
legal; not even a matter of right or wrong. It’s
about being true to yourself, about deciding
your own path. People are like rivers, and
the hours of our days fl ow to the sea. But no
two rivers are the same, and no river is today
what it was last month or last year. It’s always
trying to fi nd new channels, shifting in its
gravel bed, hurling itself against boulders
and trying to undercut steep banks. Some
people are content to follow the course set
“In a wide valley -- far away from bustling boulevards and traffi c jams, street lights and parking meters, far away from sidewalks and crosswalks, from shopping malls and fast food chains -- a frozen river winds through snow-covered foothills… And on the frozen river, eight dogs pull a wooden sled over the rattling ice.”
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mushing magazine 27
before them. Life easy that way. Others, like
you, jump their banks, daring to be different.
Like rivers, people end up at the same place,
but how we get there is what makes us who
we are.”
When her grandfather suddenly dies of
a heart attack on the trail on their way back
from her fi rst race, Denny’s mother threatens
to sell off the sled he handmade, plus all of
their dogs, in order to pay the bills. So Denny
resolves to enter the Iditarod, the only chance
she has to make enough money to keep the
dogs, her dreams, and her grandfather’s spirit
alive. While spending nights out on the trail
training, she befriends a lone black wolf with
a grayish white ear, whom she names Tazlina
(meaning swift). “Taz” also has blue eyes, and,
just like Denny, doesn’t fi t in with his “pack.”
Feeding him scraps of smoked salmon, she is
able to get Taz to trust her, and the two form
an alliance. She’s also in need of a strong lead
dog for the race, her mother having sold hers
after her grandfather’s death. Despite being
fully aware of the wolf’s wild, dangerous side,
as a teacher in a nearby village was attacked
and killed by a wolf pack at the beginning of
the book (Smelcer himself survived a wolf
attack in Denali years ago), she focuses her
efforts in the weeks before the race on taming
Taz, by fi rst letting him run and eat alongside
her team, then teaching him “gee” and “haw,”
and eventually, hooking him up to the sled.
Of course, the whole blue-eyed wolf
element is mushing romanticism at it’s fi nest.
But for those who might criticise Smelcer for
stretching veracity for the sake of storytelling,
the author encourages you to learn more
about “Romeo,” a 150 pound wild, black wolf
who lived near the Mendenhall Glacier in
Juneau for years, “playing” with other dogs,
and sometimes even allowing their owners to
touch him.
The author certainly does take a couple
of liberties, however, in the logistical
department. In racing today, there’s no way a
16-year-old with only one qualifi er under her
belt would’ve been eligible to compete with
professional adults in the Iditarod. Most likely
she would compete in the Junior Iditarod, a
160-mile race begun in 1977 to accomodate
mushers under age 18. But, as you’ll see,
in light of the race’s climatic outcome, that
wouldn’t have made for quite as exciting a
story. (And yes, we know it’s fi ction, but the
fact that Denny starts and ends the race with
just eight dogs is an unheard of feat!).
Regardless, Smelcer gets most of the
mushing details right, like his spot-on
description of what a slog it is to unhook dogs
after a long run, when hot coffee and a warm
cabin are waiting for you. As such, the book
offers an excellent peek into the sport and
the place where it originated. The glossary
of mushing terms in the back is helpful, too,
for rookies unfamiliar with the difference
between gang, tug, and snub lines. Smelcer,
one of the very last speakers of the Ahtna
language, also provides a mini dictionary of
Ahtna words and phrases -- where we happily
learn that “grizzly bear” in Ahtna translates
literally to “bear that smells like poop!”
Overall, Smelcer made a great choice in
employing mushing as Denny’s trampoline
to triumph over adversity. Few sports could
better convey the thematic confl ict of tradition
versus modernity, and Denny’s efforts to
fi nd herself while combating the “universal
hymns of misunderstanding” that plague
teens everywhere. Despite the gravitas of the
very serious issues she confronts (something
tells me Disney might not be making another
one of its cute “husky movies” out of Lone
Wolves anytime soon), Denny’s is an inspiring
and hopeful story. Smelcer explains in an
interview on his website, “I am the father
of two daughters, born almost a quarter
of a century apart. There’s not really a lot
of adventure novels depicting the courage,
determination, and inner strength in teenage
girls. I’ve also mushed dogs occasionally in
Talkeetna, Alaska. As someone who is part
of two cultures, it was only natural for me to
write this very autobiographical novel, which
I dedicate to my daughters.”
Perhaps the biggest lesson Denny learns
comes not from her grandfather, but from
“monotonous hours of self-refl ection”
spent out on the trail. “In the Great Race,
mushers don’t stop just because it gets dark
outside. Instead, they push on through
the darkness, guided by their headlamps,
barely illuminating the trail ahead, the dogs
dimly feeling the trail with their feet.” In
life, man is most often pitted not against his
environment, but himself. And being brave is
not about being unafraid, “but, unlike other
people, hanging on for one more minute.” •
"Suzanne Steinert is a freelance travel writer who earned her fi rst mushing stripes as lodge caretaker at Iditarod's Fingerlake checkpoint in 2010, helping exercise a very fat & non-competitive dog team. She spent this past winter working for Iditarod veteran Ken Anderson in Fox, Alaska."
who never knew the meaning of the word
quit.
As the miles slipped by I found it was not
necessary to watch the team as closely as I
had before. With the addition of this one dog
everything thing seemed to have changed. As
they worked away on the trail my mind was
left to wander, to truly miss my dear friend
and realize that in some mystical way we were
still sharing this life together, only in a much
different form.
Those quiet hours on the trail seeped into
my soul and my heart again was fi lled with
inspiration. The passion began to grow in my
work again and my creativity soon fl owed
like water. I found new inspiration in Ursa’s
life as I left the sorrow of her death behind.
Through my art I began to see her life did not
end but that the bond we felt for each other
was growing in other ways as I created her
essence on paper.
In the years that followed I spoke to many
people who had never met Ursa, had never
even seen her, and yet somehow she lived
within them as the light danced in their eyes
when they too spoke of a bond they once
shared with a dearly departed friend.
On those dark moonless nights in the dog
yard as my headlamp swung towards Ursa’s
old circle it would fall on Salmon’s face taking
my breath away once again. For a split second
Ursa was alive but in the next moment she
was gone. In this way Salmon remained a
constant reminder that life does move on in
wonderful ways, through many forms. That
no matter how much we love and miss those
who have gone before there will always be
another friend waiting in the wings to show
us the way out of shadow, out of grief and
out to the quiet trails where the stars shine
brightly, where the wildlife silently walks
through deep snow and the wind whispers
of days long passed and the quiet stillness of
nights on the trail yet to come. •
Off The Trail, continued from page 21
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