Running with Joy

I’ve never seen eyes so blue. On someone else they would have been disarming, alarming even. But on her, they fit. Gazing at me, through me, beyond me at the same time, speaking to me without saying a word.

She was a husky bitch. Literally. Three degrees above the Arctic circle and twenty below freezing, she was better suited for the climate than I was. But I was supposed to feed her, harness her, drive her across the snow. It felt cruel to harness someone this beautiful, someone this wild. The other dogs, left behind, howled with dismay. She and the chosen few roped into the sled pulled, strained, burst forward, shouting for joy all the while.

The stress and pain of the past year began to melt in the cold. How is it possible to be so constrained, and yet so joyous and free? She had cracked the code, blue eyes looking out on the world with love.

Wilderness has a way of driving us inwards. When the pressure around us drops, expands towards the horizon, our inner world often overflows into our consciousness. That which has been kept down by the demands of everyday life, given half a chance, will start to trickle and soon to pour. I half expected to find more pain underneath the pain, grief beneath grief, sorrow on top of sorrow, which is why I kept resisting the quiet. Stay busy, stay safe. Floodwaters threaten to break through and overwhelm.

But here I was, overwhelmed, but by a flood of joy, rising up with my tears. Joy all around, and even – surprise – within. Deep down, underneath the outer shell of duty and expectations and proper behavior, was this wild, blue-eyed joy, leaping, bounding, running free.

Tears can freeze in the cold. Floods don’t flow in the arctic. But joy is always ready to run, no matter how cold the world might be.

Patrick, August 2019

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