Quick recap: I ended up at a husky farm, which was not suitable for me (due to floor scrubbing n’ more). I quickly scooted out of there and had an amazing night in the wilderness, before the start off my next day brought me to my next journey. Hopping on a bus, headed to a new husky farm, which I barely spoke with, I wondered, “what am I doing, and will I even be picked up at the bus stop?” Having my worries relieved I was picked up and told I’d be training 26 dogs for a 1,200 km race, while living in a tiny home.

Have you ever noticed how leaving a familiar place and making a change can be nerve racking, even if that familiar place was one that you disliked? I was nervous arriving on this husky farm called Akaskero, which is home to over 500 dogs. I Wondered if the people were going to like me, if I would like them, and heck, what being around 500+ dogs would bring.

I step out of the car and the first person I meet is Jerry, a famous veterinarian from the U.S. who is travelling all around Europe to teach about dog handling and care. In the first few hours of my experience at Akaskero, I’m filled with knowledge, exactly what I was looking for from this experience. The workers come up to me, they introduce themselves, I’m taken care of, brought to a grocery store, and then have a beer with a French and a German. What was I thinking? People seem to be caring, and want to do good no matter where you go. This just strengthens my belief that people are innately “good” and needless to say (but I will say it anyways :p), my worries fade.

My worries for hunger fade too as I find myself the next night sitting around an open fire in a Kota. Salmon is being cooked in the traditional Finnish way with it nailed to a board and stood next to the fire. My senses are being filled, shadows dancing from the fire light, the smell of roasting salmon, the feel of thick reindeer fur under me, and the sounds of three different languages being spoken around me at once. A smile pops on my face as I revel in the present moment.

Of course, with all the foreign languages being spoken, I find myself speaking my native tongue with the only American, Jerry. We reminisce about New England, the clam chowdah, Dunkin Donuts (no donuts were harmed in the making of this blog), and of course he says, “pahk the cah in the hahvahd yahd.” Man, if I had tickle for every time I had heard that maybe it’d actually be a genuine laugh. But in all seriousness, it’s intriguing exploring the world of dog sledding through Jerry’s mind, and come to find out he knows Gary Paulsen, the author who wrote the book that inspired this journey of mine. Actually, he doesn’t only know him, but is good friends with him. I tell Jerry about “Winterdance” and its influence on me, and he laughs saying, “I trained and gave Gary 4 of the dogs that he ran the Iditarod with in that book.” I begin to realize the interconnectedness of it all, and feel I am where I should be.

This feeling was only heightened after I crossed the border to Sweden and I arrived at my tiny house. Nowadays I wake up with a view from my front porch of the dog kennel where 26 racing dogs live. These dogs are super athletes. Yes, they have names like Zephyr, Kobuk, Yeti, but really the names should be like Dean Karnazes, Scott Jurek, Floyd Mayweather, or Tom Brady. Actually, that just wouldn’t do them justice because these dogs, in terms of endurance, blow any human being out of the water.

The other day, for an easy training day, they did over 75km, more than a marathon, and not to mention while pulling an ATV. But that’s what you gotta do when training for a 1,200 km race. What gives these incredible animals the real upper hand in nature and allows them to perform these races is their bodies’ ability to switch their metabolism to burn fat, compared to humans who mainly run off of carbohydrates. In a race of 1,200km, the dogs will burn about 12,000 calories a day and they’re only 40-60 lb beings. Imagine this, an 8 year old boy taking down 24 big macs! Now the documentary “Super Size Me” didn’t shut down McDonalds, but I have a feeling seeing that would.

On that easy training day, we had put the dogs on the gangline and they were ready to run. The excitement from the dogs was unreal. The only thing I could compare it to is a bag of popcorn in the microwave, but instead of kernels popping, it’s jumping barking huskies. They were off, and with power! The training session ends because the musher of 30 years who I am learning under decides the dogs feet are getting too banged up from the rough ground. This is what makes a good musher, knowing the dogs. It’s really not about driving the sled as much as building a relationship with the animals. Dog sledding is not a science, it’s a philosophy.

This is where I went wrong. Coming here I had this Western mindset, I wanted to be told everything, to have all the information given to me, and be rich with knew knowledge. But in an art where there is no right way of doing it, only wrong ways, this is not how it is mastered. Sure, I could ask “what” and “who” is this? I would get the answer that is an Alaskan husky and his name is Rusty, but that tells me nothing about the true nature of the dog. All it does it categorize him so that I can tell him apart from another breed and another Alaskan husky. However, to truly understand and know the dog one must observe it with a silent mind. In Taoism this is called kuan or “wordless contemplation.” This is the secret to the art of mushing.

Maybe this wordless contemplation is what the Chukchi tribe discovered 4,000 years ago in order to use sled dogs to survive. When this nomadic tribe hitched the first dog to a sled it allowed them to extend their hunting grounds in a time of food scarcity. A relationship was formed between two different species, which relied on each other for survival in the harsh Siberian conditions. In order for this to continue the musher needed to know the dogs, and the dogs needed to know they could trust the musher. If the musher observed the dogs, and could see what was best for them, then the dogs trusted him/her.

This is essentially what I am trying to recreate, but without the “survival castaway” drama. I am doing this with 26 dogs, and at the end of the day I find I’m happy. But the weird thing is by society’s standards I shouldn’t be. I’m living in a small house on the back of a truck, I constantly pull dog hair out of my mouth, I don’t have much money and am making none, the little clothes I do have smell like dog, and there is 2 hours of light a day (we lose 25 minutes of light a day, so if you divide, add, do an algebra equation and carry the 1…that means the sun will not rise in 5 days!). However, just typing that out gets me stoked! We need to define happiness for ourselves. Maybe you do define happiness by the million dollar job, the large house, or being famous, but I would challenge you to think critically about that. Go out, learn what it is that makes your insides sing and do it.