Everyone was smiling. And I mean everyone. The trainers, the audience and the dogs. This wasn’t a performance. This was happiness on loop. At the dog kennels of Denali National Park lived government employees universally loved. With their grey and blue eyes, they jumped up and down in excitement to be chosen for the demonstration, to be yoked to the sled and make their way forward. For many in the audience, this was the whole reason why they were here in Alaska. This reads like hyperbole but when you are euphoric, all things do seem to be beyond reproach. The Park Rangers told their wards’ stories, of stocking up remote guard cabins and checking on winter visitors accompanied by a whole lot of teeth and fur. Of their impeccable intelligence and vastly varying personalities and of how only how they could do what was needed. Pulling puppies were tied alongside their mothers just to run along, not there for the load but there for the fun. The level of fandom was such that it didn’t even matter that it was summer and in the absence of snow, a sandy circuit was established for that purpose. Sled dogs did their thing and us groupies/stans/superfans let our cheers ring.
[Part of the Series: Notes from the Last Frontier]
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