DONNELLY — The Copper Basin 300 sled dog race is over. I watched from my computer a time or two, and my feelings about that are mixed.
One of the competitors live-streamed his team running down the trail. Great to watch. I loved it, but I hated it, too.
What have we come to? Am I a dinosaur? Or do I have a perspective most of us have?
I said "most" and I meant that. But have some outdoorsmen and women reached the point where they prefer to dilute their experiences in nature?
Dog driving is a very individual outdoor experience — one-on-one with a team of animals. Is it OK to add electronics and share with the world? Maybe. Does it take away from our focus and the reasons we are on the trail in the first place? Yes.
Agree or not, one probably can see both sides of this issue.
Training and racing dogs is one of the things I have done for years, so this live-stream brought many questions to mind.
My wife, who's also a sled-dog racer, picked up the January issue of Outside magazine, and I found a couple of articles that spoke directly to the topic of "outside."
Freelance travel writer Chuck Thompson wrote a piece about how noise — specifically loud music — enhanced his hiking experience in Oregon. Thompson began the piece by asking readers not to judge him on his viewpoint, but I'd make the point that we judge everything in life.
Listen: an aurora or Thin Lizzy?
I believe tunnel vision enhances experiences in the woods. Open your ears and your mind and listen to what's around you. Even in the depths of an Alaska winter, there are sounds. Can you actually hear an aurora? Not with Thin Lizzy playing "Jailbreak," that's for sure.
Make your eyes see in the dark. Was that a horned owl surveying the campsite as he passed on silent wings? Thompson probably missed it while he was relaxing to the music of Robert Keen. Did Thompson also miss the tiny scratch marks of the deer mouse while he was keeping time to the Marshall Tucker Band during his hike? No doubt.
I'm going with an old man — humor writer Patrick McManus, who called the "bleating of transistor radios in the woods one of the most hideous sounds on Earth!"
Another article, in that same issue of Outside, deals with how the use of psychedelics made editor-at-large Grayson Shaffer feel "better than I ever had in my life."
This article is in a mainstream magazine your teenagers may read. Do you really want your kids thinking that "psychedelics have become the silver bullet of mental health and mindfulness," as Shaffer states in his piece?
These two authors are adults, though a generation removed from me and many of the white-haired folks I see when I am out. Times change, I realize, but the wilderness has not.
Wild places continue to be a shrinking part of our landscape. To me, that makes it more important than ever to truly experience and understand activities that are only available to us when we are out of the house and away from the sight and sound of man-made things.
Mixed feelings
I've nothing against loud music in whatever genre one prefers. But keep it inside or outside in a setting where it can be appreciated without distracting from the limited wild-lands time available.
Recreational mushrooms? Personally, my mind is confused enough from trying to absorb the reality around me without adding an unreal perspective to the natural universe.
To me, loud music and psychedelics in the woods are ridiculous.
Live-streaming your own dog team while racing is more blurred. It's great for fans and sponsors, and without fans, we have no purse for our races and probably fewer events.
I liked the live video. But I hate the fact that we now have the ability to bring the world to our sled and our campsite.
Everyone can see everything. Will we eventually lose the need to tell stories?
John Schandelmeier is a lifelong Alaskan who lives with his family near Paxson. He is a Bristol Bay commercial fisherman and two-time winner of the Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race.