True to my schedule over the past couple of months, it is 4 o’clock in the morning as I begin to pen this note.  Inside the farmhouse it is fifty degrees as we conserve fuel.  I have my fur hat on indoors.  Wisconsin winter temperatures compete with those of the great Northwoods; the last couple of months I have become used to…a few hours of sleep with training and work…balancing how I pay all the bills since Bill’s been unemployed for almost two years.  My five-year journey to become a professional musher has taught me how to better balance the important things in life – the children feel loved, the bills are paid, deadlines for work projects are met, and I did what was needed to complete the qualification process for Iditarod.  I have also learned how one can make many useful things out of a few useful scraps – water from snow in minus fifty degree temps and grand fires from nothing more than an old match, dried cattails and pine boughs; how to make nutritious dog food from hunter’s leftover game and a sharp axe; and how to let those I love know how much I do by pressing nature’s bounty between the pages of a paperback novel that once dried, accompanied a letter written by candlelight.  I also made sure I combined visits with friends and family with trips to Madison to attend work meetings.  I am home now, and at peace.

Last year the Iditarod Trail Committee experienced many challenges as the result of mushers and their dogs almost loosing their life to severe weather, a blizzard of epic proportions to the extent that the teams could not progress forward nor retreat.  As a result, rules were changed after thirty-some years in an attempt to better prepare rookies for what might come on the trail.  It used to be that the ITC allowed up to about thirty days for a musher to get from Anchorage to Nome.  This is no longer the case as dog breeding has changed to produce a less furry, smaller-headed, leaner race dog over the traditional Balto looking sled dog.  Mushers now need to pay strict attention to speed and duration of daily run/rest schedules.  This year there were only three sets of options for drivers to use to complete the qualification process that would allow them to pull the hook on Fourth Avenue in Anchorage, the first Saturday in March – Montana, Minnesota or Michigan.  This year I chose Michigan, although I have trained and raced in all three states.  This year the race sponsors added 125-miles to the race (total of 425-miles), added significantly more lengthy runs between cabin checkpoints (80/110-miles), and mandated that for those sections of trail the driver had to carry his/her drop bags and a bale of straw on the sled, in addition to the other mandatory gear.

It’s race day!  My stomach feels nervous.  My limbs feel like they are shaking – they probably are.  As I drive through the beginning of a blizzard in four-wheel drive, I can barely see the road.  Temperatures dipped below zero overnight and I could hear the snow crunch as I loaded the dogs.  I think about all that I am going through just to get to the start line, and all that I’ve been through to get this far; I sold my business, adopted Alaskan huskies to build my team, and eventually moved out of my home and into a century old farmhouse when the town changed its dog ordinance.  As I pull into the race headquarters, it looks more like the in-field of the Indy 500 than the start of a dog race, as most of the participants have large, new trailers brightly painted with sponsor decals.  I looked for a place to park my old 4-runner that although had logged over 280K miles, had safely pulled my old trailer with the hand-made, wooden dog boxes that were nailed onto it.  And even though most entrants chose their teams from a kennel of over 100 dogs, my team and I had completed the mandatory 1,000 miles this season that would qualify us for the start.

It is still pre-dawn as I unload my sled and begin to sort through my drop bags.  I use my headlamp and the light of a full moon to see the labels; I wrote with marker on each one, the number and location of the checkpoint where they would be used.  I dragged them now to a snow bank where small signs indicate which one goes where.  Some would be transported by handlers on snowmobiles to remote sites, and later bungied to my sled.  Each drop bag has a replacement of dog meals and snacks of thinly sliced frozen raw meat and chicken fat, batteries, dry socks, musher meals and snacks, hand-warmers and Heat.   I returned back to my sled that was already packed with the mandatory gear – a 32” handled axe, snowshoes, cooker, cooler, etc., and optional gear.  I chose to carry a wind and waterproof jacket for each of my dogs.  Later down the trail I was not sorry for that decision.  I looked for a place to snub off to.  Snub is a term for a rope and metal device used to secure a strong team to a tree when snow hooks alone will not hold them.
 
The next thing I did was to take each dog out of his large, straw-filled house and attach them to a drop chain so they could stretch out their muscles before the vet check.  Each musher carries a vet book along the trail, so before the race begins the veterinarian logs a baseline to each athlete.  He listened to each heart and lungs, examined feet, and gave me an identification tag for each competitor that would match what he had written in his notes.  For Iditarod, each dog has a microchip imbedded into subcutaneous tissue.  The veterinarians are selfless volunteers who love sled dogs, and do everything possible to ensure that race conditions do not harm our beloved friends.  On Iditarod, there are several vets at each checkpoint.  No doctors for the mushers – shows who is important!

Daylight was breaking as I waited for the time-keeper to give me the signal before I would bootie forty-eight feet.  I checked my pockets that I still had my extra pair of gloves in the pouch, my line-up with harness sizes in my right pants pocket next to my knife, extra hand warmers and batteries, waterproof matches, foot cream and muscle oil for the dogs that could not freeze tucked away in an inside pocket, and an extra headlamp I could quickly access if the one on my head blacked out.  My mother and dad had given me a pocket watch as a Christmas present, and it was attached to my left pocket by a neckline so that I could easily, and with mitts on, check the time I left the start, time spent on the trail, and time to leave the checkpoint.  Everything is timed in these races.  What makes the race I did different than Iditarod, was that the first one to a checkpoint in is the last to leave, thus making it more difficult for the slower teams to finish.  There were fourteen teams in all, and many Iditarod finishers competing.

I re-checked my sled bag to make sure my beaver mitts were still on top near the driving bow, and that the extra tugs I had made with fids were attached to the stanchions for easy access.  I went behind a tree one last time.  I was given the signal to put the harnesses on.  Methodically I placed each dog in position and attached the neck and tug lines.  Savage with wolf-like amber eyes and Adtka with glacier-blue eyes were in lead and were calmly watching me for the signal to begin.  The rest of the team were screaming and tugging, often standing on their hind legs pawing at the sky in crazed anticipation.  I was given the two-minute warning.  My God.  I stood on the runners, right hand clasped to the driving bow and the left hand pulling to loosen the snow hook.  The race marshal threw his hand down.  It was my turn to go.  I pulled the rip cord of the snub line and we were propelled forward through a crowd of on-lookers, volunteers, handlers and race officials.

Although I have reached the level of professional dog driver, the twisted turns of a narrow trail at warp speeds were still challenging to navigate.  The deep cornices created by the blizzard Mother Nature had conjured up, and the often steep and rugged moguls, made traveling less than ideal, yet the challenge thrilled me.  The breaks on my sled barely worked with the power of the muscled-up team.  The drag that was meant to help slow them was purposeless.  It would take the first hour before they would barely begin to settle down into rhythm we trained with.  The wind picked up and temperatures dropped even more.  The snow continued to fall and visibility was so scant at times I could hardly see my wheel dogs.  Short-lived openings in the storm allowed me to see the most incredible terrain, thick woods and magnificent wilderness vistas.  When I could finally stop the team, I did so.  I gave them each a snack and walked the gangline to give each a hug and tell them how great they were doing.  I checked their feet and re-bootied where some had come off in the deep and punchy snow.  I went through my own version of a vet check, bending wrists and gently pulling out shoulders and wrists to see if any would wince.  I had Algyvil, an anti-inflammatory oil to rub into sore muscles, and wrist wraps you Velcro lengthwise with two toes showing.  I also had two sizes of jackets that I could insert a hand-warmer if someone appeared really sore.  All was well.

By the time I reached the hundred-mile leg I was noticing signs of fatigue.  The cold wind and punchy trails were relentless.  I slowed the team down to a pathetic speed.  Blue started to wobble in line.  Bear too.  Bear was dehydrated.  I gave him water.  Blue had a wrist injury.  Savage and Guiness were coughing.  Adtka had a slack line.  I did not take my eyes off of them, and stopped them way more than necessary for the time on the trail.  Eventually I took out my cooker and Arctic sleeping bag and strapped them to the outside of my sled, making a spot in the sled bag for Blue.  When we got to the checkpoint I asked the veterinarian to check out my team.  Savage, for the first time since I became his Musher Mama, did not eat or drink.  Even after sixty minutes his heart rate was still above 130 – not good.  I was down four dogs.  The plan for the next leg included carrying the extra weight of a drop bag and bale of straw to a very remote section of trail where you are literally at minimum seven hours from anyone, and very close to the Lake Superior coastline where winds would only be worse.  I could not put the remaining teammates through carrying that load, through those conditions.  I scratched.  In fact, no one completed that race to be used as a qualifier. Sickness and injury prevailed.

I paid another Iditarod musher’s handler to drive us in his dog truck to camp – long, lonely, dark ride.  The next day I cleaned the cabin and loaded gear.  Icy roads and poor visibility forced us to stay in a hotel.  48-hours and I am back at the farmhouse with my team.  I am poor yet extremely wealthy.  I look forward to what God has in store for our future.  Hebrews 12:1  “Let us run with patience, the race that is set before us.” 

We got to the Taquamenon River by walking a long and curving footbridge that connects the river to one of our Nation’s obsolete Civilian Conservation Corps.  I wanted to visit the area this weekend as part of their fall festival.  Volunteers served a scrumptious lumberman’s breakfast in the old Cook Cabin.  Afterwards we went through the CCC museum building, watched area youth rake deer apples, and woodcarvers create eagles out of logs.  The museum was filled with antique tools, site replicas, pictures and diaries.  I picked up a book written by the (then 90 year-old) CCC Chaplain and began to read a randomly selected page to Dad (Bill).  In it the author referenced John Denver’s role in the comedy, Oh God. The actor’s lines…“regardless of our particular faith, viz: Catholic, Islam, Jewish or Protestant, any of us sometimes yearn for a visible God that will appear and give us assurance of his credibility and strength”…the most important part of the movie Dr. Frasier said, was to prove that our God (although not visible) could be manifested in our everyday experiences.”  When we got back to the cabin I did something I almost never do in the middle of a Sunday afternoon.  I turned on the television – just in time to see John Denver walk in to one of the scenes of Oh God.