Stuff happens on the road, too. Part 1, OTR 1 and 2.
Posted October 22.
The predicament - situation, really - in which i now find myself in the Yukon, is not the first time time stuff happened to me on the road, or or any of my heavy duty backpacking trips, first mainly in the Shenandoah mountains near my home and then in the wildernesses of Alaska and Russia in the '90s. Stuff happens, at home, in the wilderness, and on the road. Wherever it happens, however, it takes more than the old Boy Scout motto, Be Prepared, to manage the situations, a lot more.
A friend of mine wrote to me applauding my handling my present predicament with equanimity. Another wrote that if anyone can work his way to a solution, i can. Still another wrote that he has never seen anyone with such discipline as i have shown on my journeys, and let me tell you, that man has known quite a few public individuals with discipline, and at least one very public figure with a lack thereof (sorry, i cannot tell you who that is). While i sincerely appreciate all those comments, i would have to disagree with them, at least in part, but admit that they are on to something that is applicable here..
I have long believed that everything we do in life informs what we do afterwards, regardless of what spheres of our lives those after-activaties occur
I also have long believed that "there is solution for every problem" and those who know me know thst i do not give up until I find that solution. Carrying out this mantra started to eat up so much of my time thst I hsd to modify it to read, "there is a solution for every problem worth solving and do not give up if the matter is important."
Finally, I have long believed that it helps to know your priorities. As practice, i carry around in my wallet a laminated card with a list of my priorities on it, which i revise from time to time. I rarely refer to this list because the simple act of thinking about and then writing them down is enough to impress them upon my brain for recall when i need them, whether the situation be an expenditure, an appointment, a job or a crisis. I can change these priorities any time i wish , but it helps to have a starting point, especially when an unexpected situation is suddenly thrown at you, like, for instance, en engine failure of your vehicle on a remote stretch of the Alaska Highway in the Yukon more than 5000 miles from home at the very onset of the Yukon winter.
I know that i am not unique with these three beliefs or practices, and those of you who share them know what i am talking about.
Enough prologue. Let me get back to stuff happens on the road.
In 2000, for reasons i explained elsewhere and that have been well documented across the planet, i changed my mode of get-away travel Since then, i have now taken eight long road camping trips with my dogs, all but one more than 40 days and 10,000 miles, to the ends of the roads in the northeast (Labrador) or the northwest (the Arctic in Canada and Alaska). Here are just some of the unpexpected - and needless to say, unwelcome -.situations in which i or my dogs found ourselves and how we dealt with them. Notice, if you will, some of the similarities among certain key aspects of the incidents.
On the first road trip (August 2000), with Sonntag, we got caught in a sudden snowfall north of Atigun Pass on the Dalton Highway, the haul road to Prudhoe Bay. My Defender, then seven years old, handled that pass just fine, and we continued our journey down the Dalton just fine, although i navigated that treacherous pass by partly driving in the ditch on the non- drop off side of the road.
Leaving Anchorage heading for the ferry from Haines Alaska, before i mastered the science of securing things properly on my roof rack, i was just feet away from my target campsite at Lake View Camp on the Alaska Highway, which i was hoped to make before i ran out of gas in the rain, i ran out of gas. No big deal because i had five gallons of gas in a jerry can on my roof rack, which i quickly poured into my tank and then drove into the camp. But what was a big deal was that when i climbed up onto my roof rack, i noticed that something was not right. As it turned out, somewhere along the 350-mike journey to the camp my wardrobe bag had blown off the roof rack without my hearing it. Needless to say, the next day i stocked up on gas and a whole new wardrobe.
A few days later on that trip, when we were hundreds - maybe thousands - of miles from the nearest Land Rover dealer on our route who could read my Defender's computer codes, my red check engine light came on. Concerned that it might be something serious, later, i diverted my return route to Winnipeg Manitoba where i had the Land River dealer check the codes and my engine. Just a reminder to get my emission controls checked, he said. Relieved, we continued on our way to nearby Birds View campground just north of Winnipeg to spend my first worry-free night in weeks. Or so i hoped.
As we pulled into Birds View camp, very low storm clouds started to gather directly overhead, so i made record time in setting up camp. Just as i finished, the rain came. Great timing, i boasted. But so did the thunder and lightning, simultaneously for much of the time, meaning for more than an hour we were right beneath the electrical storm in a tent. Often there was no time gap between the lightning and thunder. I could hear the tent poles cracking with an electrical charge seconds before the lightning and thunder. Sonntag's hair was showing the effects of the static electricity. I tossed everything metal outside the tent, including Sonntag's wheelchair, and huddled with him to reduce our footprint for any stray electrical bolts that might ricochet from beneath. I frantically wrote page after page in my journal as this was happening, not to leave some record of my final profound (and profane) thoughts but to divert my attention from the danger since there was nothing more i could do. After more than an hour, the storm abated and i instinctively ran outside to perform some sort of primitive dance routine to thank the gods for sparing us.
On my second road trip (2001), this time with my new pups, Leben and Erde, the goal of which trip was to scatter Sonntag's and his sister Kessie's ashes just north of Atigun Pass in Alaska, we took an almost 2000-mile side trip up the Dempster Highway before heading up to the Dalton Highway. (We probably were and still may be the only travelers ever to tackle in three weeks the Dalton and Dempster, the only roads in North America that go to the Arctic Circle and then beyond as close to the Arctic Ocean as you can drive. Who else would even want to?) As we neared Inuvik, the northern terminus of the Dempster, at least 800 miles and five days' drive from the closet vet that I knew, four-month old Leben suddenly started limping badly and continued to do so. I pulled out my satellite phone (there is little or no cell phone service in remote regions of Canada) and called Leben's vet. After she had me go through a few rudimentary diagnostic tests, i was assured that we had several months before treatment would be required. Five days later, a vet in North Pole Alaska confirmed the diagnosis. Reassured, we continued our journey. Six weeks later, back home, Leben was diagnosed with an ununited anconeus and successfully treated for it, just in the nick of time.
Crossing over the splendid Top of the World highway from Dawson City Yukon to the Alaska Highway, we stopped at Chicken Alaska. While there, Leben was getting all set to treat himself to a free meal of Foxtail grass, whose long angel-hair strands contain concealed barbed seed heads to protect the plant from would-be predators, including limping four-month old German shepherd puppies. Fortunately, a local resident caught him in time and warned me of the dangers of a dog's eating it - the barbs get caught in the throat and if not purged require surgery. If it happens, he advised, immediately feed the dog peanut butter to drag down the barbs into the stomach followed by bread to coat the barbs as they pass through the system. Whether this was true or not, i did not want to take any chances so I stocked up on peanut butter and bread. Six days later, on returning from the North Slope, i decided to bivouac for the night at a wonderful spot just north of Finger Mountain, 12 miles below the Arctic Circle. As soon as we arrived there, I cleverly averted a potential showdown between a lone wolf a few hundred feet away and two unleashed German shepherd puppies, but the next morning, 200 miles away from a vet, i was not clever or fast enough to divert Leben's attention from the numerous foxtail plants in the area. Within minutes he started to gag and show signs of struggle in swallowing. To make a long story short, guess what Leben had for breakfast? You guessed it - a course of peanut butter followed by a generous helping of bread, and it worked.
The rest of that trip was relatively uneventful except for one little incident. On the Alaska ferries, dogs are not allowed on the passenger levels and must stay in the vehickes except for the frequent walks permitted during the four-day voyage or at the ports, so that's where i placed now-almost-six-minth old Leben and Erde, barricaded really, since i have an easily-torn soft top on my Defender, remembering what Sonntag did to the soft top on my Jeep a decade before when i was visiting my friend Margie in South Carolina, i.e., destroyed it while i enjoyed a game of tennis with Margie nearby. Well, at 6:00 a.m., one or two days into the voyage to Bellingham, the steward got on the loud speaker and announced - pleaded, really - "Will the owner of a small German shepherd dog please return immediately to the car deck; your dog is loose on the deck." Thinking that it could not possibly be one of my dogs, i rushed anyway to the car deck and indeed found Leben (aka Houdini) wandering the deck. I also discovered that the door to the nearby bow of the ferry was open, so that was his lucky day, and mine. How it got out of the vehicle remains a mystery to this day.
To be continued...Part 2, starting with OTR-3, to follow tomorrow
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