Gearing Up- by Tucker
/It was dark and early on my last mornings in Idaho. In the wood-floored wall tent, I squinted at Charlie as he warmed his skinny butt by the stove. The coffee was made, breakfast was coming, and I was waiting for Charlie to say something that, in my morning mood, would surely piss me off. So were going the mornings.
I was squishing job end/start dates together, packing hunters in and elk out for the busiest part of hunting season in the Frank Church Wilderness and then hopping off the horse into the car (after a sojourn home) and hooking onto a dog team at Ryne’s.
In his fifties, with the wiry frame of a boy and facial hair of the Lorax, Charlie had a knack for filling spaces, like the quiet. Today he began with a ballad:
“Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee, where the cotton blooms and blows…”
From there, The Cremation of Sam McGee stumbled along with some pauses and oh-how’d-that-go’s, only to trail off around Sam’s last request. Too soon, I thought, as the redundancy of the new day marched on with talk of politics and hunters, how many mules to take where, and how the earth might not actually be round anymore — pity. My dad had given me a copy of The Best of Robert Service but I didn’t begin to appreciate his poetry until that morning with Charlie.
A few days later, I found refuge at home. With a beer in hand I sat on a kitchen stool, watching my dad put together a pizza from scratch. In a good mood, my mom toodled nearby.
“How now, brown cow?” She asked me, non sequitur.
“Yes, how now, brown cow,” my dad chuckled and continued:
“I never saw a purple cow,
I never hope to see one;
But I can tell you, anyhow,
I’d rather see than be one.”
The radio chattered on the counter.
“That’s just one of those things that always stays in your head. One of those universal things that’s out there. Like The Cremation of Sam McGee,” he added.
Soon enough, out walked the ballad, pulled from the shelf.
Mom read:
“And I burrowed a hole in that glowing coal, and I stuffed in Sam McGee.
Then I made a hike, for I didn’t like to hear him sizzle so,”
“Ha!” She cackled, “That was always my mother’s favorite part.”
I left Montana. The Best of Robert Service sitting shotgun. Memorizing my way along into the Yukon, I slept next to the car just outside of Watson Lake with some foggy northern lights above, passed Robert Service Rd in Whitehorse the next day, and bumped along to Two Rivers by that night. Words from school like iambic and anapestic bobbing around in my head.
Then, it was hum, hum, hum, setting into the rhythm of running dogs; a gear shift after packing. From saddling in silence to harnessing in chaos. From pulling a string of mules to being pulled by a line of dogs. Cowboy boots to rubber boots to mukluks to overshoes to Michelin Man status.
“Tucker, how are you supposed to spot lichen on our lichen quest if you’re asleep?” Ryne asks me as she drives along the Steese Highway.
“I’m resting so I can collect lichen more efficiently.”
Ryne, Sam, and Cartel the husky sit up front, scanning the sides of road for lichen to feed to the reindeer. I stretch my legs out along the back bench in the dog truck and yawn. Out the window goes a birch, a birch, a birch. I think about how I want to buy my own cold weather gear this year.
“Ryne, what over-mittens should I get?”
“Beaver mitts.”
“How much is a -40F sleeping bag?”
“$1000.”
I double check the math in my head: 10 fingers + 10 toes - 0 = Priceless.
I gaze out the window some more to see a birch, there’s a birch, there’s a birch, “And before nightfall a corpse was all that was left of Sam McGee…”
Bounce along the trail, ATV hooked up to the dogs, “Till I came to the marge of Lake Lebarge, and a derelict there lay.”
Chisel at a soft yet solid dog poop during morning chores, “It was jammed in the ice, but I saw in a trice it was called the ‘Alice May.’”
Carry a bundle of firewood up the cabin steps, “And I looked at it, and I thought a bit, and I looked at my frozen chum.”
Watch the daily ravens fly by, “Then ‘Here,’ said I, with a sudden cry, ‘is my cre-ma-tor-eum!’”
Ryno Kennel hosted a spontaneous, neighborly get together the other night. And amidst the conversations across the room, I heard it: “How now, brown cow.”
I poked Sam, who was sitting next to me.
“How now, brown cow?” I asked her, eyebrows raised. She looked at me quizzically as I relaxed back into my chair, took a swig of beer, and settled into the rhythm and rhyme of being back.
