KANABEAR ENTERPRISES

Welcome folks, to a page dedicated to stories, photos, anecdotes and random thoughts. These will range from my childhood, my early mushing years, to my current status as a 'mushing mama.' From my first memories as a wee child, dogs have filled my thoughts and dreams, and there was never a doubt in my mind that my future profession wouldn't revolve around our canine friends.  So here are some snippets from my past and present, I hope you enjoy them. Sincerely, Harmony Barron.

 'MEMORIES FROM THE TRAIL'

5/18/09

   My competitive aspirations at this point, were a thing of the past. I had eight tired dogs wandering down the trail in front of me, with Sage in single lead. There was no moon to speak of and my last fallen tears had nearly frozen my eyes shut. I had just come off a little pit stop where I had endured the excruciatingly cold process of swapping over to my last set of batteries for my headlamp, and the 50 below temperatures were already starting to suck them dry.

  Before the Kuskokwim 300 had started, we were slightly concerned that we hadn't the proper amount of batteries to get both of our teams around the race course.  We scoured the shelves of the local Bethel hardware store, only to come out empty handed. Weeks prior on a sunny day in Montana, we were excitedly planning for our races, and had counted on a set of four alkaline D cells lasting up to five hours. Our 'estimated' trail times were also lot faster than they were proving to be, and the shear amount of darkness that descends upon Alaska's interior in late January somehow had been erased from our memory banks. So needless to say, we were now paying the price for our naive planning.

  I find that when I am exhausted, cold, out in the middle of nowhere and pretty much sucked dry of any happy thoughts, my brain functions in a peculiar way. I get one chain of thoughts {usually a calculation that's not adding up} that replays itself over and over in my mind. At this particular time it was 'How are these batteries going to last me another hundred and fifty miles?'  Back at the last check point of Aniack, we were warned about a series of glare ice lakes, where most of the markers had been blown down. I was slowly but surely approaching them, and this added to my building uneasiness. The perpetual cycle of math equations in my mind got interrupted at one point, by the brightest light I had ever seen. It was rapidly approaching from behind, and my first thought was 'Wow, a silent snow machine!' But when it turned out to be a team of dogs loping by at a magical pace, with Jon Little hanging on with both hands {his wind suit flapping behind him like a sail in a storm,} my heart sank a little deeper. I was certainly the last driver on the trail now, the Lone Ranger, hobbling along in the frigid dark, my hands clutching onto the little cold hand warmers at the bottom of my mittens and barely able to see the tails of my wheel dogs through the pathetic yellow glow of my head lamp. I was truly immersing myself in a big pot of self pity, and to raise the stakes a little higher, I flashed on the memory of sitting in our little hostel style room back at the Bethel dorm, where we were being hosted.

   The night before the race, {because I'm that type of person,} I decided to balance our long abused check book. I had actually brought with us to Bethel, two months worth of receipts from our debit card! Jason never likes to be around when I'm balancing the book, so he was keeping a low profile. I remembered the look I exchanged with him, while sitting in a huge pile of papers and receipts on that orange, seventies style twin bedspread. It was the look of doom. "Two hundred bucks in the hole," I told him. After shaking his head a minute, he responded with; "Don't worry honey, we'll make a couple of good paychecks here..."

  So there I was, meandering down the trail thinking I was the only poor soul on the planet, when it suddenly occurred to me that just because I was having a miserable race, it didn't mean that Jason was suffering the same fate. Yes, the last time I saw him, he was leaving Kalskag, he had dropped three dogs but was still in a good position. Ok, things were looking up, he'll get in the top five, we'll receive a nice paycheck and be back in the money. Looking back, it seems my dogs may have picked up the pace a wee bit with my new hopeful attitude.  I pulled down my fleece gator just enough to thank Sage for keeping us moving forward, and in the right direction. As we continued along, my new fantasy started to become a reality in my mind. And when I saw a dog team with its hood up, parked just off the trail, I thought; 'Wow, now I'm even catching someone!' There was the driver, sound asleep, looking like a cocoon on top of their sled, completely engulfed in their sleeping bag. The dogs were all curled up in tight little balls on the ice; clearly this was not a strategic race move.  As I slowly passed by, I started to get a nauseous feeling come over me. I thought perhaps I recognized that sleeping bag, and that sled... and when Spud sleepily pulled his nose out from under his tail and looked up at me with airplane ears, it suddenly hit me. That poor, sorry sack of a driver, trying to sleep away his misery, was none other than my husband. My knight in shining armor who only seconds earlier, was riding high in the top five.

   My heart sank to the bottom this time, and my dogs felt it, for they all stopped dead in their tracks. My dog team and I stood there silently for some time, feeling like there were no more emotions left out there to tap into. Jason must have felt our presence, for his bag rustled, and his eyes peered out. A sad, groggy voice called out to us; "Honey, is that you?"

  A strange thing happened next. I suddenly felt at ease. Seeing Jason for a few minutes and hearing his soothing voice seemed to make all of our problems disappear. I felt a great weight had been lifted from me. I realized that my biggest problem hadn't been running out of battery juice or a dry bank account back home in Lincoln, or even a tired, under prepared dog team. It was plain and simple loneliness. We don't build families, neighborhoods, support groups, towns and cities for convenience sake; we build them because we are inherently pack animals, and we don't want to be alone. And when you're thousands of miles from home, on the back of an exhausted little dog team, with nothing but a dwindling candle glow distinguishing you from hundreds of miles of bitter cold darkness that we call the Kuskokwim river, it can really hit you how emotionally vulnerable we really are.

   Jason rooted around in his sled bag, and came up with some extra batteries for me. It seemed he hadn't drained his as quickly as I had drained mine. He then assured me that someone was sure to have some extras in Kalskag, down bound.  We commiserated with each other for a few more minutes, and then said our goodbyes. Jason then crawled back into his cocoon, while my dogs and I headed back into the night, in search of those pesky glare ice lakes. Sage, who had single handedly led my Copper Basin team the year prior, but had never taken a Gee or a Haw command in her life, seemed to develop a telepathic link into my own thoughts, for together we found our way across the dreaded, marker free, windswept lakes with little to no problems.

   I learned a lot about myself, my dogs, and the endurance of the human spirit in the 2004 Kuskokwim 300. I found strengths in myself I hadn't known I had, and also weaknesses that I'm wise enough to recognize.  Both of the Kusko's that I ran with Jason {yes, we went back for more punishment the following year}left a huge impact on me, and hold some of my proudest dog mushing memories. I can't wait to tell this story and others like it to my grandchildren.

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF OUR LITTLEST MUSHER

 5/11/09

  The alarm clock woke us at 4:00am. Oksana's dentist appointment wasn't until 10:00, on a good day you can get from our house to Helena in an hour and a half; this was not a good day.

  It was mid January of this year, and we were having a record snow fall for this part of Montana. Of course it was snowing when we went to bed, {there hadn't been clear skies for six weeks or better}  but around midnight, the wind picked up a head of steam, and the snowflakes turned to the size of meteors adding another two feet to our total accumulation.

 We skipped coffee and tea that morning due to the long task ahead, and set straight to work. Jason strapped on his headlamp, grabbed his buckets of dog food, and set out bullying his way down to the lower dog lot on foot. I was in the process of tip towing out to do puppy chores when Oksana awoke in an early morning, tear flowing frenzy. After calming my little one down, I went outside and shoveled the four foot drift away from the door to the generator shed, then got the power going. Once the house was aglow, I headed back in to put on Oksana's favorite movie/babysitter, 101 Dalmatians. With her wrapped in a blanket on the sofa with her favorite stuffed dog, I once again resumed my daunting task of finding the puppy lot.

   I was three months along and just getting over the worst case of morning/all day sickness imaginable. My candle light glow of a headlamp just barely illuminated the snow fall which was whipping past me sideways. The trail to the puppies was completely gone, and the drifted snow was up to my waist. Every so often, I'd step off the perceived path and sink up to my arm pits. With only half of the food left in my buckets I finally made my way to the first puppy pen gate. I gritted my teeth to hold back a series of negative exclamations, for the pens hadn't escaped the fury of the drifted snow.  After what seemed like an eternity of digging out the gates, I fed all of the frantic little pups, scooped as much snow out of their houses as I could, gave them all fresh straw, fed and watered the horses, then made my way back to the house.

  Thank goodness Oksana hadn't noticed my absence.  I then dressed my sleepy little girl, and shoved her into her snow suit. Any moment now Jason would be showing up with an eight dog team, ready to haul us to the truck which was parked two miles away, {down where the county quits plowing.} When our coach arrived, I killed the generator and loaded Oksana and myself into the sled. Some of Jason's finest up and coming stars had their work cut out for them getting us down the hill. The trail that they just laid in moments before was nowhere to be found. The jerking motions of the sled must have been comforting to Oksana, for she was lulled to sleep within minutes of leaving the house. With constant encouragement from their Papa, the dogs finally got us to our truck, which was, well... completely buried.  Now for the fun part, getting ourselves to the highway! The county plow hadn't been out in days, and with the fury of the current storm, who knew what lay ahead. After shoveling off Maximus, we chained up all four tires, put her in low, crossed our fingers and burled our way out.

  Later that morning, as we sat in the busy waiting room of Helena's pediatric dentist clinic, I looked around at all the kids and their various parents and I had to laugh a little. I wondered what type of morning the other children had encountered, and what kind of effort had been involved in getting them to their appointments on time. Oksana's only two and a half years old, so she certainly won't remember this particular day in her life, but Jason and I are certain that with experiences like this, and with the life style she's being raised in, she is bound to grow into a self possessed, confident, happy, well rounded, tougher then heck individual who loves animals and people, and appreciates the gifts that life brings to her.  Jason and I are 'parents first' and we recognize everyday what a little miracle our daughter is.