To print this page, select "Print" from the File menu of your browser salon.com > Travel June 15, 1999 URL: http://www.salon.com/travel/feature/1999/06/15/boundary Can I trust you? In the wilderness, a woman, man and dog learn the fine art of interdependence. - - - - - - - - - - - - By Carrie La Seur Sophie, my 7-year-old Newfoundland, gets more anxious and alert the farther north we drive, and the route is nearly straight north -- out of Iowa City, Iowa, across the entire length of Minnesota toward the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. She sniffs the August chill as we pull into a motel parking lot late the first evening, stands up on the back seat of the borrowed van and inquires with an earnest black nose about this new place and the unexpected pleasure of cool air in summer. My husband, Andy, and I are stupefied from the drive but she is eager: Water is very near now, and outside town there were deer running so close to the road that she cried for them. Going into the north, Sophie is becoming more alive, and as I stagger upstairs with my backpack I draw on her panting energy. Tomorrow we will drive out to North Country Canoe Outfitters, load a 17-foot canoe with a week's waterproofed supplies, drive deep into the north woods, coax Sophie into the middle of the boat and paddle away from leash laws into a wilderness where we will compulsively keep her tethered. The risk is too great should she chase something and get lost: Any large animal could finish her off, and even coyotes, far smaller than my 120-pound bear of a dog, are capable of luring her away from camp and taking her down as a pack. And wolves -- let's not even get into wolves. My great, lumbering pup, whose presence ensures my security among humans, will be ironically dependent on me in the woods. Perhaps she could survive without me, but afloat for a week with no one to rely on but we three adventurers, we are stronger, faster and safer together. That, whether we admit it or not, is what has brought us here to the jumping-off point of civilization. Andy and I have been married less than two years and we adopted Sophie at the age of 5. By taking this rash leap into a wilderness that could devour us -- no guide, no cell phone, no safety net -- we are asking how much we can trust each other. Modern life offers so few opportunities to answer that question; there are always hidden agendas and ulterior motives. Basically you cross your fingers when you get married and hope that the weaving of the years will show a good pattern in the end. To find out what someone will do when rain starts pouring into the tent at 3 a.m. or you can't find the trail is valuable information that you can't get easily in the information age. The first day is sunny and easy. At the first portage we forget our fishing poles and have to go back, but the second, through marshy, uneven ground, we complete with professional efficiency. In our practice paddles Sophie developed the habit of jumping in one side of the canoe and out the other into shallow water, but portaging teaches her new lessons. This time when she jumps out the other side it's into black water that swallows her completely and leaves her gasping and scrambling while we laugh ourselves limp. For the rest of the week Sophie climbs obediently into the canoe and sits. Forget the theories about repetition and reward: When it counts, she learns instantaneously. As the days pass, I learn new things about my companions. For example: Sophie is inexhaustible at a steady trot. With a fully loaded backpack, doing a 2-mile trail three times because we must carry the heavy aluminum canoe separately, Sophie leads the way as if we were Lewis and Clark depending on her guidance. She is businesslike in her pack, less likely to sniff or wander, and extremely careful to stay between us and the other parties we encounter. The backpack, I imagine, returns to her some ancestral sense of duty and I am touched when she pauses at a bend in the trail or comes back to get me so that we are never separated, even by sight. My husband's woodsmanship is a revelation too. I knew he could do remarkable things with a computer, but now he's telling stories about Boy Scout merit badges and suspending our gear from trees with elaborate knots. When he gets tired he grows exasperatingly patient and quiet until, if I whine, I hear it echo back out of the stillness and feel ridiculous. Andy takes all this very seriously: He does not take chances, and he watches over me and Sophie with a manly strength and self-assurance I haven't seen in him before. There are things that he can lift and I can't; my small fingers manipulate gear that his fumble with. He pulls the canoe along powerfully; I steer and navigate with increasing skill. We are separated naturally, against all egalitarian principles, by what our bodies can and cannot do, and these complementary roles are inexplicably reassuring as we go farther from civilization, deeper into utter interdependence. As we rinse out dirty socks in the lake at an isolated campsite at dusk, Sophie joins us in the water for a long, relaxed swim. She moves confidently away from shore, her long, dark body a vessel in smooth water, watching birds, clouds, the shoreline, us, paddling in the element she owns so certainly. This is my aging girl with the beginnings of cataracts, and at the same time a creature of places and times wilder than anything I know. The water loosens our bond distressingly; at last I swim out to her just to feel her lifesaving instinct turn her toward me, to see how she cares for me in water, even though she knows by now that I don't need rescuing. She circles me, scratches me in long whip marks in an attempt to nudge me toward shore until I acquiesce and she and I swim in together, reunited and content. The most telling moment, as always, comes in crisis. We are on Bald Eagle Lake one afternoon, foolishly striking out in unreliable weather for a campsite on the far shore. A hard, sudden wind catches us port-side and we must tack. I navigate, terrorized, from the stern with my limited sailing skills, keeping the bow into the whitecaps just enough to prevent us from capsizing while making some small progress toward shore. Other than death, Sophie is my greatest worry. Before she became accustomed to the canoe, she had a habit of standing and shifting her weight alarmingly if anything upset her. Now, sitting flat on the cold, wet bottom of the canoe for stability, I talk softly to her under the wind's slap and cry: "It's okay, Sophie. Shhhh. Stay, Sophie. Good girl." I imagine her jumping up and spilling our fragile craft, or panicking and leaping overboard in the middle of the wide, deep lake where we can barely help ourselves, let alone a shipwrecked Newfoundland. I am steering with all my strength and Andy is paddling hard, glancing back at me occasionally with wild, determined eyes, but Sophie's reaction will decide our fate. My girl holds steady. In the rocking, pounded canoe she lies still and tense, watching me as if I had a steak strapped to my forehead. Whatever I do will be her sign, so as long as I sit tight, so does she. Because my dog is watching, and because she, or all three of us, may die if I give her reason to panic or if I pilot the boat astray, I beat down a fear that has become almost asthmatic and steer, stroke after cement stroke, to the island where we will take refuge for the night. As we beach the canoe on steep rocks and stumble ashore, Sophie obeys with a clarity of motion that a thousand obedience classes never would inspire. Tonight we are bound, my dog, my husband and I, by the most primitive survival instincts. We are all quiet as Andy and I work sweatily, bumping and dropping everything, to get the tent up and make dinner before the storm attacks for real. At last there is food on the Coleman stove: pasta eaten from the pot with spoons. Sophie, usually ambivalent about dog chow, has developed a wilderness habit of wolfing her food the instant it appears in her bowl, and tonight our common hunger and nervous exhaustion compels all three of us to snatch and gulp at our meal. Each of us has felt exactly what the others felt in these last few hours -- consuming, inundating rushes of fear, companionship, panic, trust, relief, hunger. The species boundaries have fallen, and I doubt that they will ever be fully intact again. Today we have saved each other's lives. It is the only and ultimate thing anyone can really know about another person or animal or about oneself: Could I trust him with my life? Can she trust me with hers? And there is no way to get to the answer without first offering up the life. This essential need to identify our pack, the ones we can really trust when crisis strikes, is what takes people into extreme wilderness situations in an era when we no longer need to put our lives at risk this way. In the tent tonight under wind and storm -- so worn out that we ignore the basics of hygiene and fall together sticky and smelly -- woman, man and dog are unable to sleep without the comforting contact of the other two, a melange of flesh and fur and Thermarest that is the only safety. salon.com | June 15, 1999