Becky Northaven’s recent posting on Facebook spells out her feelings.
It’s a motto, superimposed on a photo of a sunlit horizon: “No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and fight for your dreams.”
Northaven’s dreams are big and small, indoor and outdoor. And though she has faced a serious illness and a difficult recovery, this single mother of two is unwavering in her aim.
At 37, Northaven runs two firms: Dragonrail, the store lined with games, hobby supplies and dragon decor at 803 E. First St., and Northaven Herding, the dog-training business that has her out in tall grass Saturday mornings.
At Dragonrail, Northaven is on a mission here, to do more than make a buck. She hopes to open up the world of non-computer gaming, a world where players sit facing another instead of facing a screen. Together, they tell stories via Dungeons & Dragons, or learn strategy on the chess- or checkerboard.
Dragonrail stocks an array of games across the spectrum, from Pokemon, Munchkin and Killer Bunnies cards to Settlers of Catan, Warhammer 40K and those old board games like Monopoly. Medieval gear, for Society for Creative Anachronism enthusiasts, also is starting to appear here.
Northaven took a risk and opened the store back in November 2006, after leaving her job as a network administrator for Jewish Family Service of Los Angeles.
She and her daughters Kellan, now 7, and Ashlynn, 5, were living in Acton, Calif., when Northaven’s husband left the family.
She knew exactly where she wanted to make a new start. Northaven is a native of Port Angeles, and though she only lived here five years before moving to Oregon, this is her place.
“I had the inner soul pull,” she said. “It had to be Port Angeles . . . Just seeing the Olympics — it felt like home.”
Dragons — “symbol of freedom and flight,” as Northaven puts it — stand at the front of the store. And the game room is in back, though the proprietress can fill the whole space with game tables if need be.
“I want everyone to feel welcome,” Northaven said, “whether they’re 6-year-olds coming in for Pokemon cards or 60-year-olds looking for modeling paints.”
Dragonrail, with its game nights listed on Facebook and its seven-days-a-week operation, has outlasted a few local game stores now. Northaven isn’t shy about discussing why.
“I have tenacity,” she said. And “I do have a passion for the things I get involved in.”
But Northaven faced down a foe that took her by surprise in 2010. She was diagnosed with cervical cancer, underwent treatments and surgery and spent all of last summer recovering.
Once she got well enough to work, she returned with a vengeance. Northaven labors seven days a week at one business or another — yet she takes great pleasure in both.
Watching people play on game nights at Dragonrail, helping people learn the art of sheepherding with their dogs: These feed her soul.
“I get a sense of satisfaction when I see people having fun,” Northaven said. “I’m one of the few nature and computer geeks. I love the outdoors, and I love games.”
Role-playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons, she added, are “nothing more than a shared storytelling adventure.” This and other play teaches young people communication skills along with sportsmanship, Northaven believes.
On this Mother’s Day, she might go out for breakfast with her sweetheart, but then she plans to go in to work. Dragonrail is open from 1 p.m. till 7 p.m. Sundays — and though that closing time is early for the night-owl gaming crowd, Northaven keeps it there on school nights for Ashlynn and for Kellan, who’s in first grade now.
Weekend mornings, though, are for frolic with the family, the dogs and the horses. Northaven teaches sheepherding with the help of her two Border collies, 11-year-old Katie and 3-year-old Knight — the black one — and with her horses: a half-Lippizan, half-Arabian mare named Oshi and a half-Friesian stallion, Dreamtime.
Classes start at 10 a.m. year round on Northaven’s property in eastern Port Angeles, and last about two hours; they’re a blend of agility training and the equivalent of algebra for the dogs.
Her canine students come in many breeds. There are about 30 types of herding dogs, and purity is not necessary, Northaven said.
“We give them an instinct test, since that’s the only thing we can’t teach,” she added.
Northaven got into sheepherding in California, where she rescued Katie, a dog with a troubled history.
Trainers called her a hopeless case and told Northaven the dog would need medication for the rest of her life.
Instead, the two of them clicked. “She was that once-in-a-lifetime, magic dog,” Northaven said.
She later adopted Knight as a puppy, and the pair of collies now shadow Northaven, and the girls, around the house and the store.
As if two businesses weren’t enough, Northaven took up another pursuit in 2011.
This was something that had caught her eye back in high school: Medieval play on horseback.
She’s loved horses since girlhood but wanted to go beyond trail riding. The Renaissance-fair crowd talked about jousting, but charging around with a lance just wasn’t for her.
Enter Lajos Kassai, Hungarian archery superstar. Northaven watched a few video clips of him on YouTube, and was caught, as in arrow straight through the heart, by the sport of mounted archery.
“When I saw [Kassai], I thought, ‘That is just unbelievably cool,’” she said.
So Northaven connected with the local chapter of the Society for Creative Anachronism, and began to practice, first with her two feet on the ground, then moving onto the back of her steed. Shooting with a bow and arrow is a long learning process, naturally, for both horse and rider.
One of the interesting things about mounted archery, Kassai-style, is that one does not simply “sight down the arrow,” or look straight at the target from the arrow’s point.
The eyes, it turns out, are just two tools in the box. To be truly in tune with the sport, an archer must learn to “shoot from the gut,” Northaven said.
She must train her right brain hemisphere, while developing the correct physical posture, to drop the reins, aim and shoot.
All the while, Northaven must train her horse, too, to get used to the sound of the bow and arrow.
“I’m at least a year away from competing,” she estimates.
Last Sunday, she went to the Clallam County Fairgrounds to take a riding test with the Society for Creative Anachronism, to show her equestrian skills are up to snuff. Her daughters went along; Kellan the elder sees herself as a mounted archer one day.
Family trips to competitions elsewhere in Washington state may be in the future. For now, though, Northaven enjoys riding and practicing, working and playing.
On this Mother’s Day, she plans on working as usual — not a bad thing, since this is her business she is building, and the example of independence she is setting for her girls.
Friends often remark on Northaven’s wide variety of passions — and on a personal quality she has. In a word, the woman is gutsy.
“Yes, I’ve been accused of that,” she said.