Free Four Quarters of Light by Brian Keenan Page B

measure of accomplishment with only two minor falls that didn’t require Dan’s assistance. I was again becoming quite assured, but this time it was accompanied by an awareness that in this outback world you really have to survive alone, and will was just as important as skill. Sometimes one was the teacher to the other. And so I persevered, always watching the lead dog to see if it would disappear down a crevice or make some sudden turn to avoid what might be a deep snowfall. I wasconstantly trying to ride the tossing currents of this whitewashed land rather than fight them.
    The snow-covered riverbed was a dream to travel down. My sleigh could have been a canoe. The large rock formations and accumulations of fallen timber were easily avoided with my new-found skill of leaning and dragging. Now I could gee and haw and my dogs were happy to oblige. Dan, too, seemed happy to allow me to chart my own course. Part of me wished that Jack and Cal were bundled up in the sleigh in front of me, but they would probably have deserted me for the certainty of Dan’s sleigh after my second tumble. I would not have liked that at all. I watched the dogs charge ahead joyously. These animals seemed to show little in the way of genuine affection. For these dogs, it took a long period of mutual trust, forbearance and appreciation to make a workable partnership. I wanted to think that maybe they had accepted me, or at least wanted to give me a second chance. Somewhere inside me I was sure that by seeking to overcome the failures in myself and accepting that they were in charge, I had been allowed to become one of their team.
    Dan was right about the moonlight on virgin snow; it adds a lunar luminescence to the lift and fold of the land. In a way it had all the pristine quiet of an old Japanese print in black and white. Behind all the intimate softness was that immense sky, just beginning to colour up with approaching night.
    As I continued to ride uncomplaining into the great white eiderdown of the river valley, I heard Dan call out to me. Obviously he wanted me to stop but I remembered he had not given me the word for this command. I let the dogs drift, desperately trying to think what the word might be. Then suddenly, I said, ‘Easy, Ben, easy, boy. Slow up there.’ I called out as clearly and as comfortingly as I could. Ben was a true leader, and the sleigh began to slow, allowing Dan’s sleigh to overtake and stop in front of us. I explained that I had no command for stop and Dan simply stated, ‘Well, you managed it more or less. The old Eskimo words for right and left are part of the tradition of dog mushing. Everybody uses them to honour that tradition. When you are outon the tundra you only need to instruct them right or left; anything else is straight on and sleighs and dogs don’t do reverse. You don’t need much else except stop and go.’ Having communicated this Spartan logic, he announced, ‘It should get just a little darker very soon. But like I say, the darker it gets the brighter it gets. We’ll want to get down across the lake by then. Stick behind me from now on, I have a feeling you might enjoy this.’
    As always, there was something in Dan’s words that left out more than he told me. I wasn’t too sure what it was, or whether it was simply my imagination breaking free in the limitless landscape, but something in me was thinking how difficult we sometimes find it to trust the moment. It was the way Dan said things, emphatically yet incomplete. There was no time for questions anyway. He was soon off at a gentle trot and I fell in behind, accepting that he too was part of the spell of the place and I shouldn’t question what I didn’t need to.
    I wasn’t sure exactly when we reached the lake, but when the low banks of land defining the valley seemed to get further and further apart I sensed we must be near. In front of me stretched a great white plain, a