The Letters by Luanne Rice, Joseph Monninger Page B

take long for me to understand why we had to approach on dogsled. Any number of times we bogged down into drifts, or had to circle slowly around blowdowns, and the dogs showed their tenacity and strength. More than once they went right into my heart—a little corny, but true. On one occasion we came to a small mound covered by saplings and thornbushes. It didn’t look like much until we realized the snow had drifted against it, pushing up to nearly ten feet high. The dogs couldn’t get a purchase; it wasn’t frozen and it wasn’t soft enough for them to chest through. Martha yelled “On-by” as loud as she could and the dogs heaved and pushed and waded. At times they actually went under the snow. Imagine it—ten dogs burrowing and pulling and nothing of them visible except now and then a tip of the tail. They might have carried the sled down into the earth, for all anyone would know, but they yanked and pulled, and banged the sled against the saplings, and Martha shoved the sled handles this way and that, still yelling, and then little by little the dogs emerged. Magnificent, I promise you, sweetheart. At one point the sled tipped nearly vertical, and Martha almost fell back with it, but instead she grabbed the crossbar and yelled “Get up” and the dogs put their shoulders into it and dragged the sled up and over. They did it for her. It seemed to me that this was a fulfillment of a pact between them—that she would do anything for them, and they for her.
    We camped that evening (or afternoon…there is little daylight left) one day’s journey from Paul’s site. It was the last clear night we had, and the northern lights came out and began dancing as you can only see them in picture books or a nature program. I don’t know what to think of the northern lights. I watched them for a long time, checking them as we set up tents, fed the dogs, and so on. I understand the phenomenon a little, and know it comes from magnetic waves, but I can never make myself believe such a thing exists. Nothing so dramatic, so vivid, can result from the collision of atoms or ions or whatever it is that waves and glows. But it does, of course. Green bands, and curtains of phosphorescent gold. Everything moving. A door to heaven, really, and right beyond it the thing we seek, whatever it is.
    I want you to know this, darling. I wandered off for a few minutes by myself. I don’t know why, but I knelt down and watched the northern lights pulse and dance and I sent my soul to Paul. I don’t believe in God. I can’t. But I believed in our son. I told him that I was here, that I loved him, that his mother could barely go on without him, that if I pushed him too hard to come on this adventure that I was sorry. So sorry. That I would give anything—limb, life—to have him back. I told him that he had been the best of both of us, that if such a thing proved possible in the afterlife, we would not rest until we reunited with him. I said that his parents loved him. I said his leaving had broken our hearts. And then I said goodbye to him.
    I don’t know what any of this means, or if it means anything at all. I teeter between finding it enormously important one moment and insignificant the next. But for what it’s worth, Hadley, I felt connected to our son in that instant. No great miraculous change in my heart, or new understanding resulted, I’m afraid. I merely felt that I had put something in order, arranged it properly, and that perhaps was sufficient.
    Later that night, snow began to fall. It had been falling off and on for a while, brief flurries, but suddenly the world became still and you could hear the slightest movement from the dogs. Then the hiss of the stove became louder, and the tent ceased flapping, and it began to storm. At first it felt welcome. I hadn’t been conscious of how intently I had been listening to the wind. But then the snow increased, and Martha sat up and looked around, and her restlessness affected