Transcriber: Keira White Reviewer: Sebastian Betti
So a few years ago, I got caught in a blizzard.
I’m a dog sledder and my dogs and I were mushing through Michigan’s Upper Peninsula
which, if you know that area, you’ll know it gets a lot of snow.
So everything’s fine, we’re on a beautiful trail,
and then the sky, which has been blue suddenly gets really dark
and the trees start whipping around us
and snow is coming down.
And just as much snow is rising up from the ground,
until we can’t see anything at all.
The dogs can’t see the trail.
I can’t see the dogs.
The whole team just comes to a stop
and we are not going anywhere in this storm.
Now, when I go mushing, I always carry supplies in my sled.
I have food for myself. I have food for the dogs.
I have blankets, sleeping bags, fire starters.
So, if we need to camp out here for as long as the storm lasts,
whether that’s three hours or three days, we can, we’re going to be fine.
But I happen to know something.
This is a new trail,
but if we could just get a couple miles further, there’s a great shelter.
And if we make it to that shelter,
we're going to spend a much more comfortable night.
Now, the dogs don’t know this. They can’t read maps.
(Laughter)
But I think, “I’ll see how they’re doing, if they’re in a good mood,
maybe we can push through the storm.”
And I make my way, hand over hand,
up to the front of the team, to my lead dog, Pepe, who is a genius.
And I’m talking to her, I’m like, Pepe how do you feel about pushing through this?
She is not going to take a step, too smart for that.
So I think, maybe another dog will do it.
And I go back and I get Pepe’s son Clem,
who is the most well-adjusted dog, or living creature,
I have ever met in my life. He is just up for anything.
Always in a good mood.
And I get Clem and his tail is wagging, it’s thumping my leg
and I bring him to the front of the team and I’m like, “Alright Clem, let’s see.”
“Lead us through the storm.”
Doesn’t take a step.
And I do this with a couple dogs,
I keep thinking maybe one of the dogs will be in the mood.
And nobody wants to do it, they’re too daunted.
I mean, I don’t blame them, who wants to push through a white out like that?
So I’m just reconciling to the fact that we’re going to be sleeping out there
when I have one more thought.
Now there is a dog in the back of a team named Harry, who is kind of an old man.
He’s pushing double digits.
He has been around the block, he has so much experience
but he always runs in the back of the team, because he’s blind.
And the other dogs show him how to follow the trail.
He feels their bodies steering him.
But I remember someone mentioning to me once, years ago that
before Harry lost his vision, before he came to us, he used to be a lead dog.
He used to lead his team, and I think, “What the heck. I’ll give Harry a chance”,
“I’ve given everyone else a chance.” I bring Harry up to the front of the team
and I give the cue to run. “Ready?”
“Alright”.
And Harry starts moving.
He takes a step.
And then he takes another step, and instead of slowing down,
like the other dogs or getting daunted, his ears are perked,
he’s sniffing the air, he’s feeling out the trail with his paws
and he’s actually gaining speed.
He passes me, the other dogs pass me.
I get on the sled as it goes by. I can’t see where we’re going, nobody can.
But Harry, led us all the way to the shelter that night.
He was the only dog in the team who didn’t need to see the trail,
in order to trust his skills in following it.
Now I love this story
because there’s so much about dog sledding that’s ineffable.
But I feel like it gives a little glimpse
of the kind of beauty and teamwork and adventure that the sport is about.
This is the reason that I have shaped my life
around living in the woods with sled dogs.
And together, we have mushed thousands of miles through the Midwest,
different parts of Canada, the boundary waters, the Yukon, Alaska.
It looks something like this.
Those are my babies!
(Laughter)
And the thing about mushing through landscapes like that,
is that it’s completely unpredictable, it’s uncontrollable,
there’s so many things going on.
And if you get into trouble, nobody is going to help you.
You’re on your own.
That is scary. And I am a person who feels terrified by basically everything.
In fact, when I first got into mushing 15 years ago,
I used to cry every time I stepped on a dog sled. Literally.
I would harness up the dogs, they'd be barking, they'd be ready to go.
I’d get on the sled,
I’d start reaching for the quick release,
we were tied to a tree and when I pulled this rope,
we would zoom off down the trail
and my eyelids would start sticking together because I was so frightened,
that my eyes were tearing up
and the tears were freezing in my eyeballs.
Now, all of these things are still true, mushing is still unpredictable and scary.
And I am still fearful but I don’t bat an eye these days when I get on a dog sled.
So what changed?
Well, for one thing, I started understanding the sport differently.
I used to think mushing was about avoiding problems,
and I would spend hours agonizing over everything that might happen on the trail,
and how I would possibly handle it.
What am I going to do if we get surrounded by wolves?
What am I going to do if I’m chopping through lake ice
to get water for the dogs
but my lighter and my matches fall out of my pockets
and then I can’t start a fire and we die?
What am I going to do if the sled breaks?
And so on and so on.
And you have to understand that
the pressure in these situations is tremendous.
Because at the same time as you’re relying on the dogs
to carry you through these landscapes,
they are trusting you to keep them safe.
But here’s the thing.
There are a lot of different ways a sled could break.
And the way you handle that is going to be different if you’re,
say on a wide, flat open lake versus
going over a mountain pass where you need really precise steering to keep from
rolling off a cliff.
And you could encounter a moose at the same time
and she could be aggressive because she’s defending her baby.
And then a storm could come in and, and, and --
The point is,
there are so many variables and they’re going to intersect
differently every single time.
I can never have planned for that day in Michigan.
I mean, it wasn’t a terrible crisis, but it was something of a challenge.
But for one thing, Harry was the one who solved that, not me.
(Laughter)
And his solution depended on all these factors.
Where we were,
you know, the moment the storm came in, how the dogs were feeling,
not just him, but all of the dogs.
Where the shelter was and so on and so on.
He couldn't have planned for that either.
The dogs understand this inherently.
They aren’t trying to think about what’s coming up ahead.
They’re just happy to run, every single time.
Just overjoyed, every single day.
And if they come to something on the trail that’s a little bit of a challenge,
like, let’s say we have to cross a creek or a river and its flowing
and urgh, liquid water, they don’t like that at all, they like the frozen stuff.
But by the time we get to the other bank
and I put their booties back on and they shake off the moisture,
they’ve already forgotten, they’ve moved on.
And if we encounter a moose, which we do,
they are thrilled because they want to eat it.
(Laughter)
And I am the spoilsport who has to stop them from doing that every time.
And if a storm comes in, they either curl up and wait it out
or they push through it.
And either one of those options is fine.
And it was through this process of mushing with the dogs
day after day, week after week, year after year, that I came to understand
what should have been incredibly obvious from the beginning.
Mushing isn’t about preventing problems.
It's about solving them and the things that used to feel like such big problems,
wild animals and weather and team dynamics,
didn’t feel like problems anymore.
They felt like mushing. They felt like life.
It wasn't that I had magically become a fearless person,
but the dogs had helped me to understand courage differently.
Courage in the face of the unknown isn’t about obsessively planning for everything.
And it’s also not about denying that things are going to go wrong.
It's about making the decision to trust your future self.
So when I get on a dog sled these days
and we’re going 50 miles or 100 or we’re going to cross the state of Alaska,
I’m not worried. I know that we’re gonna encounter problems.
But I also know that I trust my future self to handle them for me.
My future self is tough, she’s resourceful, she’s creative.
She has a great track record,
and she is also much more qualified than I am
to come up with solutions because she’s going to know what’s actually going on.
Now I can help her, by getting enough sleep, by packing my sled well,
by always deepening my connection with the dogs,
by taking joy in the joyful moments
so that I have the resilience to deal with the tougher situations.
And she can help me by taking all of these fears of hypotheticals off my plate.
And this is true outside of mushing, too, because life is full of unknowns.
What am I going to do if I lose my job? If I get sick or my loved ones get sick?
If I walk off the stage in two minutes and trip, in front of all of you?
My future self is going to handle that for me. I trust her.
And if your mind works like mine, if you find yourself
planning the unplannable, I’d encourage you to try that too.
Take a deep breath. Come back to the moment.
Feel the sled runners under your feet and trust that whatever happens,
your future self is going to take care of things for you.
Know that you are in your own best hands.
(Applause)