Let
he who has never cried out mush! be the first to throw a snowball.
It’s a visceral reaction. Anytime a human is pulling or dragging something and you happen to be near,
the word invariably bursts from your mouth, usually accompanied by a few faux whipping motions.
To get a taste for the real thing, however, you have to find yourself some dogs and long stretches of snow.
I’ve always thought this was limited just to Alaska, but an interesting article in Wanderlust magazine chronicles the adventures of a first time musher in
northern Sweden. The unidentified author spent four days dragged by a team of three dogs across the arctic
tundra, hanging on for dear life and slowly learning the ins-and-outs of steering his canines.
The escorted tour began in Jukkasjärvi and
included a couple of nights in the town’s famous Ice Hotel, built with
30,000 tons of snow and 4,000 tons of ice. The mushers holed up in more remote lodges during their four-day dog
sledding tour. It seemed like quite an adventure, and a cold one at that judging by the number of spills the
first-time musher had to endure.