October 11, 2007: The Shaw Kennel
Jan Shaw is quiet and reserved. The Shaw house is small and cozy. She tells how it used to be a modular home, but she and her husband, Bob, added on to it, creating the cabin-like dwelling that now sits on a dirt road off Seven Mile Fire Line Road, 20 miles outside of Newberry, MI. The doors are always open here. They have about twenty-five dogs in two kennels outside their house; what use have they for locks?
It doesn’t take long to realize this is a musher’s house. Dog harnesses hang from the antlers of a Mule deer, and dirty Carharts hang from several hooks in the doorway. Antlers of every size hang on the walls, along with a badger, an antelope, a small black bear, a whitetail deer, a pheasant, and back in the master bedroom, two Caribou hang from the walls. Walking around their house gives me the opportunity to test my eight-year-old’s – and my own -- knowledge of animals.
After running two teams of dogs, including my own, we clean up gear, feed, and then settle in to feed ourselves. Jan quietly says she has some southwestern stew she’s cooked up. “I hope it’s not too spicy,” she says and she serves up bowls of the piping hot concoction. I eagerly gulp down her hearty meal, gracious for the warmth. It’s good: full of green beans, peppers, broth, vegetables and some fairly large balls of unidentified meat I falsely assume is beef. I at first carefully dodge the meatballs, but then abandon my nearly vegetarian diet and dig in. Sure enough, it’s spicy, and Bob is sure to point out several times through dinner how spicy it is, as only a husband married many, many years can get away with.
“If I’d have made chili like this, you’d holler at me,” he quips with a grin.
Sophie, my eight-year-old, focuses on cottage cheese, bread and some noodle soup; she says, trying to be polite as possible, that the stew is too spicy. It is then Jan says, “She probably wouldn’t eat it anyway if she knew what was in it.”
I brace myself. I assume it’s Elk or Antelope – which wouldn’t surprise or offend me. I’ve eaten game before, including elk and buffalo, in Wyoming and it’s actually quite tasty. But when Jan reveals quietly and nonchalantly what the meatballs are, I have to try very hard to mask my reaction.
"Do you know what it is?” she asks me.
“No, what is it?” I ask, trying to look calm.
“Bear.”
I gulp, thinking in a flash of the Oswald Bear Ranch just 10 miles from here that we visited four months ago. We held two five-month-old bear cubs, and one of them made a bruise on my thumb that lasted two months from biting me in play.
I look at the bear head hanging on the wall.
Later, after dinner, I say to Sophie, “how am I going to tell Chris that I ate bear?”
* * * * * *
Dogs howl throughout the evening and into the night, cutting the silence of the star-filled, brisk UP air. First one howls a lonely wail, then others join in. Soon, there’s a chorus of howls, and suddenly, as sleddogs are wont to do, they all stop in unison. There isn’t a sound after the howling stops.
I lie in bed, looking at the pictures that cover the walls. Some are of family members taken long ago, but most are pictures of dogs: jumping, running Alaskan huskies hooked to lines, smiling, pulling. Nature is everywhere in this house from the knotty pine walls to the figurines and prints of bears, dogs, wolves, and trees. Awards hang proudly on the walls, too, from various sled dog races. I feel safe and warm with Sophie lying next to me, the dogs and the big, quiet UP night all around. I feel privileged to be here, and I never want to leave.
Jan Shaw is quiet and reserved. The Shaw house is small and cozy. She tells how it used to be a modular home, but she and her husband, Bob, added on to it, creating the cabin-like dwelling that now sits on a dirt road off Seven Mile Fire Line Road, 20 miles outside of Newberry, MI. The doors are always open here. They have about twenty-five dogs in two kennels outside their house; what use have they for locks?
It doesn’t take long to realize this is a musher’s house. Dog harnesses hang from the antlers of a Mule deer, and dirty Carharts hang from several hooks in the doorway. Antlers of every size hang on the walls, along with a badger, an antelope, a small black bear, a whitetail deer, a pheasant, and back in the master bedroom, two Caribou hang from the walls. Walking around their house gives me the opportunity to test my eight-year-old’s – and my own -- knowledge of animals.
After running two teams of dogs, including my own, we clean up gear, feed, and then settle in to feed ourselves. Jan quietly says she has some southwestern stew she’s cooked up. “I hope it’s not too spicy,” she says and she serves up bowls of the piping hot concoction. I eagerly gulp down her hearty meal, gracious for the warmth. It’s good: full of green beans, peppers, broth, vegetables and some fairly large balls of unidentified meat I falsely assume is beef. I at first carefully dodge the meatballs, but then abandon my nearly vegetarian diet and dig in. Sure enough, it’s spicy, and Bob is sure to point out several times through dinner how spicy it is, as only a husband married many, many years can get away with.
“If I’d have made chili like this, you’d holler at me,” he quips with a grin.
Sophie, my eight-year-old, focuses on cottage cheese, bread and some noodle soup; she says, trying to be polite as possible, that the stew is too spicy. It is then Jan says, “She probably wouldn’t eat it anyway if she knew what was in it.”
I brace myself. I assume it’s Elk or Antelope – which wouldn’t surprise or offend me. I’ve eaten game before, including elk and buffalo, in Wyoming and it’s actually quite tasty. But when Jan reveals quietly and nonchalantly what the meatballs are, I have to try very hard to mask my reaction.
"Do you know what it is?” she asks me.
“No, what is it?” I ask, trying to look calm.
“Bear.”
I gulp, thinking in a flash of the Oswald Bear Ranch just 10 miles from here that we visited four months ago. We held two five-month-old bear cubs, and one of them made a bruise on my thumb that lasted two months from biting me in play.
I look at the bear head hanging on the wall.
Later, after dinner, I say to Sophie, “how am I going to tell Chris that I ate bear?”
* * * * * *
Dogs howl throughout the evening and into the night, cutting the silence of the star-filled, brisk UP air. First one howls a lonely wail, then others join in. Soon, there’s a chorus of howls, and suddenly, as sleddogs are wont to do, they all stop in unison. There isn’t a sound after the howling stops.
I lie in bed, looking at the pictures that cover the walls. Some are of family members taken long ago, but most are pictures of dogs: jumping, running Alaskan huskies hooked to lines, smiling, pulling. Nature is everywhere in this house from the knotty pine walls to the figurines and prints of bears, dogs, wolves, and trees. Awards hang proudly on the walls, too, from various sled dog races. I feel safe and warm with Sophie lying next to me, the dogs and the big, quiet UP night all around. I feel privileged to be here, and I never want to leave.
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