“Your stepmom looks ready to go,” Matt shouts as he returns with a couple dogs.
“Let’s fucking get on with it, Jesus Christ,” Kathi says.
The dogs, the beasts, they know what’s happening, they know what’s next, howling and yapping, begging for a mission, a purpose. Matt guides them on long connected leashes and starts strapping them to the sled like Santa’s reindeer.
Matt whistles one of those wild shrieks you see on TV but think no human can actually make in real life. A couple of handlers walk over with more dogs, all of them manic, wild, excited to run. They’re all barking or whining, wondering why they’re being held back, all of them ready to be let loose and pull us into the bright yonder.
“Apply the brake,” Matt yells.
CRUNCH!
Kathi jams her boot down hard onto the metal sliver, and it cracks into the icy ground.
Matt and the handlers finish connecting the twelve huskies to the sled, and the steel beams holding me in place suddenly feel electrified. The sled shimmies, shakes with anticipation, the dogs now going insane, barking, growling, ready.
The handlers step away.
Matt steps back and yells, “Whenever you’re ready.”
I look up, up, up, my head craning back, away from our path ahead, over the treetops, across the blue sky, until I’m looking upside down, seeing Kathi’s face, smiling, fierce, determined, the cold breeze forcing her to squint slightly, the glitter on her eyelashes alive and dancing in the sunlight, as if when she looks out at the world all she sees is a rave, a party. She looks down at me and yells over the barking, “Ready, Cockring?!”
I yell back, “Ready, Mom!”
She laughs, looks down at her boot on the brake. She takes one more glance at Matt. “If I’m thrown off this thing and become unconscious, will you be the one to do mouth-to-mouth?”
Matt grins and nods yes as Kathi smiles and lifts her foot off the brake.
We’re transported. The dogs are instantly silent, at peace, quietly fulfilling their life’s mission, doing their jobs—running. The only sound we can hear now is wind, cold and yet comforting—slightly reminiscent of the ocean back home in California, of being a small part of something big.
We’re racing across the earth, over little mounds of snow, breaking through clumps of ice. We could be on a lake, we could be on a pasture, we could be on another planet altogether, honestly. We have no idea what’s beneath us, or ahead of us, for that matter. We have to trust. Our faith now rests in nature, in twelve furry tour guides ahead of us delivering us wherever they want, connected and at one with us through leather straps and clumsy angles of welded metal.
“It’s perfect!” Kathi yells.
I look over the side of the sled as we race along: All the snow is just a blur, like we’re on miles and miles of white paper, like swaths of blank 8.5-by-11 pages begging to be filled with adventure, art, Kathi Kannon’s writings of love and loss and living. We’re here, penning our own journey on these snowy pages, forging yet another new bond, more miles under our belts, just like the dogs. I touch her feet on either side of me, an act of connection, of affection—the best I can manage in the circumstances.
“You okay?” she asks.
Sitting here, a passenger, an observer on this jaunt of my lifetime—both with these dogs in Yellowknife and with Kathi Kannon, film icon—I’m thinking: Yes, it’s perfect. I give her a thumbs-up. She gives me a thumbs-up in return.
The dogs, our partners in this passage of time to the aurora borealis, race effortlessly into the future with us, past an old shack, alongside fallen and frozen trees, their rot on hold, in suspense and on ice until warmer weather, this season, their sweet reprieve. Our dogs run past a frozen pond, up a little embankment, and around a rusty red tractor, circling back, seeming to mark our halfway spot, signaling our return to Matt and the schedule we so gratefully forgot as our minds melded into the snow and spectacular all around us.
Kathi’s feet wiggle in her boots beside me, and I look up to see what’s going on. She’s taking off her hood, her gloves, her knit cap—stuffing them in her pockets. She’s loosening her scarf, her hair now free and flowing wildly behind and atop her. She leans her whole body forward, her waist touching the so-called safety bar. She closes her eyes, she raises her hands, extends her arms like she’s on a roller coaster.
“Jesus! What are you doing?”
“I want to feel it!”
I look ahead at the whites and the blues and the greens of the earth.
I’m thinking, Fuck it.
I pull my hood back, rip off my gloves and knit cap, and close my eyes. Now Kathi and I are hearing the same sounds of metal on ice, of paws on snow, of panting and delight; we’re both breathing the cold air, the same as the dogs, everyone connected and speeding through shared atoms and quarks and doing exactly what we’re meant to do in this moment: the dogs running, Kathi Kannon being, and me learning to let go.
Kathi reaches down and squeezes my shoulder; I reach up and touch her hand. Both of us icy to the touch and yet warm and safe, one with nature, all of us—dogs, trees, sunshine—together.
We fly past saplings and weathered fence posts, dead leaves and fallen branches, whipping along like the tick, tick, tick of a clock, our countdown to this being over, to this ending with real life. Kathi’s hand leaves my shoulder.
The dogs continue our whirl back to the starting point, with Matt coming into view, the handlers ready to corral the pups.
“I don’t want to stop,” Kathi says.
“Me, either,” I say fondly, the dogs still clipping at full pace.
“No, I mean, I don’t want to stop,” Kathi says.
“Um, Kathi,” I warn, the kennel rapidly coming more and more into view, Matt waving his hands: Slow down, slow down.
“Why does it have to be over?” Kathi asks.
Matt is growing frantic, looking around, crouching like a football player in formation, bending over as if ready to make a quick maneuver out of our path if it comes to that. His handlers are pulling other dogs to the side.
“Kathi, please!” I yell.
Kathi places her boot on the brake and, after a couple seconds, pushes down. Ice cracks and crunches under us and the dogs take their cue from the friction, finally starting to slow us down, down, down.
The two in the lead ease forward to Matt and his now-outstretched hands, which they nuzzle into lovingly, gratefully, quietly—no more barking; they’re content for now. They had their fun; time to rest and recharge until the next tourists come running, come paying. They’ll go off to their cages, until their work calls again, and I relate. I feel a little bad for the dogs. They seem to enjoy it so much; do they know they’re trapped? I start to feel a little bad for myself; I wonder: Am I trapped? Am I just pulling Kathi’s sled?
Matt turns to us. “What happened?”
Kathi shrugs. “Sorry. Just couldn’t figure out the brake.”
I look behind us and see where the brake dragged us to this moment, the stretch of earth sliced open as if with a scalpel.
Matt says, “How was it?”
“Fucking freezing,” Kathi says, rebundling herself.
“That was fun,” I say, putting my scarf back on, my knit cap, then turning to Kathi. “Do we still need to see the aurora or does this count?”