Dog Sled

In the thin air,
The sky holds a craggy precipice
Frozen in place in deep snow
Enough to fill meadows
Canyons and crevices.
I saw the photographs
Of the dog sled and team
On the wall in the foyer
Leading to the hotel lobby.
Small black; white glossy photos
With scalloped edges;
Seven dogs and the drover,
A man from Alaska named Jerry.
Driving the dogs, and dog sled,
On an impassable road
Over snow-covered Kaiser Pass,
At 9,305 feet elevation
Delivering the mail,
Library books and medicine.
Only a dog team could cross
The mountain pass
To the construction camps,
One day over, back the next.
Sure, as snow melting,
To the men at the Camp, Number 60,
Tunnel outlet at Florence Lake,
Hard-rock miners, landlocked
By heavy snow, spending days
Boring a tunnel through granite.
Nights feeding the fire,
Throwing on extra blankets
To try and sleep warmly.
From many years of toil
The dogs eventually died.
Their individual graves marked
Whiskey, Babe, and Trim,
On a flat spot at Kaiser Pass.
Jerry departed that last year
The dog sled crossed over
Upturned rock, the ridges
Between two watersheds,
Above where the paved-road ends,
The oiled road begins.