Wednesday March 7 2007

Work Team

14x17 Pencil Drawing

by Lynn Thomas

The draft horse pencil drawing is called "Work Team". It received a third choice from our peers for the promotional in the Animals category, along with the cranes. Its been a pretty nice feeling to have my artwork chosen along with quite a few other very good artists.

Today is sunny, calm and much warmer. The snow depth is going down, and a few spots where the wind scoured it down the ground is showing through in the yard now. The horses are warm enough that their necks are sweaty as they still have their winter coats. They will need it too as spring storms and wind go through. Winter isn't ready to let go of us yet. This morning the blackbirds were singing, the first bird song I've heard for many months.

Reading the progress of Matt in the Iditarod is almost like an adventure novel with the descriptions of the trail. Tuesday, Race Day 4, Matt made it through trecherous Rainy Pass and got to Rohn in 7 hours 33 mins. Miles Traveled: 272 - To Go: 859 He dropped from 32nd to 33rd place. Wednesday he's traveling with only 15 dogs from Rohn to Nikolai, a distance of 75 miles.The first 20 miles out of Rohn has some of the consistently worst trail on the whole race. The IditarodChampion will receive over $68,000 in cash,and a new Dodge Ram 4x4 pickup. Over $600,000 in prize money is given to the top 30 finishers in the race.

There is, or was, a place in Sublette County that made sled dog booties. They were about the only place in the country that made them then. I suppose now there are more.

There are more people than Matt who have sled dogs here. In fact one has lived for years with his bunch of dogs up in Irish Canyon just over the hill to the north of us. Its quite something to go past the place and see how he lives. There is no house, and not much more than a very small old "trailer" for lack of a better word. You have to snowmachine to it in the winter, and the road is very rough in the other seasons. Its in the pine trees, many miles from anywhere. All the dogs are chained to their small boxes which are scattered through the woods. I think he runs them on the Continental Divide Snow Machine Trail and up into the wilderness. Maybe he runs a trap line. I've seen a pickup load of what looks like bones from a processing plant he must feed them, It was midwinter then and would have been just like they were in a deep freeze. I don't know what else they get to eat. I can never remember his name, I just call him The Dog Man. He's got to be tough.

There's another large sled dog kennel on the way to Jackson on Granite Creek. They take people for dog sled rides up to Granite Hot Springs. There's a nice swimming pool there and you can swim in the winter. You can't drive to it in the winter, so have to ski or snow machine.....or dog sled. In summer there is camping, hiking and swimming plus there's a waterfall on Granite Creek.