Kate Hove Writing Exercise 2

The snow was fast and hard-packed, smoothed over by the runners and drag of the sled so that the edges of the trail were banks so steep and solid that anything running its course would, even without attempt, stay in the grooves. It was like a racetrack for a luge, and it wouldn’t ever melt, not with temperatures like those, not with the absence of the sun, until late spring. Philip used it weekly, familiar with the stumps not fully removed, familiar with the stretches so narrow that birchtrees hugged the brinks and he had to holler to the dogs in caution, had to pull back on the sled to keep things from crashing. He was threading a needle through a harness when his younger brother began putting on his parka. “I’ll whiz down that trail so fast you’ll want me to pull your sled.” This is what Jasper said as he was putting on his boots, wrapping the velcro around his ankles. He was young—only ten—but confident because he knew his brothers envied him for the way he was, which was strong and handsome beyond his years. Philip tried his best to humble him, some days even refused to pull him up the hills on the trail, but in the long run that would, conversely to Philip’s intentions, only make him stronger. Philip kept his eyes to the needle with his head steady and smiled at his younger brother’s remark. Jasper was melting wax onto his skis with the iron and Philip told him it would never set if he kept standing by the fire, indoors, where it was warm. But Jasper was already scraping off the excess with a blade and walking out the door. At the entrance to the drive he dropped them to the snow and snapped them on; the dogs were hooked up, wailing in their high-pitched way to go. He’d have to hurry to get a head start and Philip was walking out the door, hollering at the dogs, enticing them to go, already. Mid-morning was the time to begin, the dogs having had time to digest, time to hydrate. He’d already hooked them up, already had them harnessed, and it was only a minute or two before he’d have untied the rope from the anchor. The dog yard was in an uproar, going wild, singing and wailing and chanting. Jasper’s heart rate was up, gaining more momentum than his slow start mandated because his adrenaline was pumping and he knew the dogs would be behind him in two minutes at the most. The thought of this as he pushed off with his poles and made his way through the flats made him so excited that he could feel a scream, still boyish in its own right, making its way through his stomach and threatening its way past his lips. This made him smile as he pulled his hat down tight over his ears, made sure his gloves were taut. The trail was such—narrow and slick—that once he got going on the downhill it would be hard to clear it without hitting a tree if the dogs and the sled and Philip caught up. And that’s what kept his heart rate up. For fear that the dogs, running in a pack of eight with saliva frozen to their faces because their breath was so fast and the air so cold, would plow him over, the tips of his skis impaling them in irrevocable ways. He glanced over his shoulder to make sure they weren’t nearby, tried to listen as best he could for the sound of them, forgetting that the quiet they emanated in their quickness would be inaudible. But all he saw was crystallized birch and more snow and more snow and a pure blue sky. He went as fast as he could without losing control, which meant he kept his ski tips at a slight angle, pointed toward each other in a wedge. But he could still hear the grain on the bottom of his skis as it ran over the snow with him racing downhill; he was still moving fast. He reached the bottom of the hill where the trail merged into two and stopped in the small section where the snow was still soft, where the dogs wouldn’t run and where he would, inevitably, have to let them go ahead. He stood there for a moment, smiling at himself for reaching bottom before them, and then he saw them coming, their momentum so fast it seemed that the sled might lurch out in front of them. Philip stayed in control though, the colors of the dogs’ harnesses and the nylon webbing of the lines offering a contrast to the stark whiteness of the surroundings. Red, royal blue, primary green. Philip stood on the runners at the back hollering at them to go left, to go haw, and as they passed by Jasper, glancing at him motionless at the intersection, trying his best not to distract their attention, he could see the frost on their lashes and whiskers, along the hood of Philip’s parka lined with wolf, and along his thick, bushy eyebrows. “Did you see those snares?” Philip was yelling at Jasper from up ahead, lodging his snow hook into the hard-packed surface with what seemed like aggression, maybe anger. He stepped on it to ensure its stasis. “Right along the goddamned trail. Right where a dog would wander.”Jasper hadn’t seen them; he often missed what Philip saw, but he figured if they were close enough to the trail for a dog then they were likely close enough for him as well.