Handcrafted Maine by Katy Kelleher & Greta Rybus

Author:Katy Kelleher & Greta Rybus [Kelleher, Katy and Rybus, Greta]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press
Published: 2017-04-12T04:00:00+00:00

“Most of their expenses come in the final months of their lives. A lot of mushers will dump dogs when they can no longer run, but any dog that works for me for ten years is going to get a full retirement.” Polly adds later that some mushers will shoot their dogs once they’re no longer useful; this happened up in the Yukon, where Polly learned to mush, but not at Mahoosuc. “They’re our family, our children,” she says. “They have their own personalities, their own spirits.” In the past, Polly has taken her dogs to an energy healer, where she learned that two of her pups, sisters who were attached at the hip, have been companions through several lives. “Those girls are one soul in two bodies,” she says. Polly and Kevin have no children of their own. “It was never the right time,” explains Polly. And yet their life has been filled with the love for each other and their dogs. Like the sister-dogs, Polly and Kevin believe they were destined to meet. To put it simply, they make perfect sense together. Polly is a softer personality, yet she came to their relationship with years of dogsledding experience. Kevin can be gruff, but he tempers his brusqueness with a wicked sense of humor and a broad smile.

Polly and Kevin lead a life filled with physical labor, early mornings, and sacrifice. Often, they put the needs of the dogs before their own. It would be easy to idealize their lives, to gloss over the smell of dog shit and the challenges of their work, and focus on the serene beauty that surrounds them. Or cast them as trailblazers rejecting the stresses and pace of twenty-first-century life. But Polly and Kevin have worked hard to learn the history behind their skills and to respect the guides who came before. “If you go back one hundred years, a guide who needed a pair of snowshoes or a toboggan for their winter trap line wouldn’t go to L.L.Bean,” observes Kevin. “They would go into the woods, cut down a tree, and make a toboggan themselves. I want to keep that tradition alive.” It also brings him great joy to do this work himself. “When I realized I could live my life outside, spending every day in the woods, it was a no-brainer,” Kevin says, using a favorite term. Build your own canoe instead of buying one? No-brainer. Keep your dogs after they’re useful? No-brainer. Stay with the one woman who matches your stamina, who is the yin to your yang? That’s a real no-brainer.

Due to their busy schedules and the needs of their dogs, Polly and Kevin spend quite a bit of time apart. They can’t always guide together, but when they do, the chemistry is palpable. They work seamlessly, communicating with a look; and when that doesn’t cut it, with shouts that ring across the ice. As the morning turns to afternoon, they take the small group of first-time dogsledders to a wooded camp on the shores of Umbagog Lake.

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