A debate was underway in the Senate chamber of the Alaska state capitol. The governor had hauled lawmakers back to Juneau for a special session to resolve a longstanding conflict over hunting and fishing rights. My newspaper, the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, had sent me down to cover the bickering between unyielding Bush and urban factions, a boring assignment that threatened to waste my fleeting Alaska summer. At the press table, I turned my attention to an application that could change my life.
Mushing experience? All I could list was the Montana Creek Cheechako Race, a 2.3-mile run for novice mushers I had chanced into several years before. At the time, I was working for the Frontiersman in Wasilla, a booming highway town of about four thousand located an hour’s drive north of Anchorage. Mowry, our stocky sportswriter, was writing a first-person story. I was on hand to shoot photos of his debut as a sled-dog racer.
It was a crisp, brilliant December morning. The temperature was holding in the high 20s. One by one, dog trucks claimed spots near the mushers’ clubhouse. The snouts of curious dogs poked through holes in the boxes mounted on the rear of the trucks. Some barked frantically; others harmonized in a howling chorus.
Iditarod veterans Ray and Diana Dronenburg had brought over a dozen dogs to the track that morning, planning to let one of their kennel sponsors compete. Afterward they would take larger teams out on a serious training run. The sponsor was late. The Dronenburgs went ahead and drew for him, pulling the third position. With time running out, he remained a no-show. Diana asked if I wanted to fill in.
No one could challenge my credentials as a “cheechako,” a gold-rush term for newcomers to the North. Originally from the East Coast, I was just starting my second winter in Alaska. I’d never touched a dogsled. My professional driving experience consisted of two and a half years of driving a cab in New York City.
Within moments, I was wearing the number 3 bib and testing my balance on the thin sled runners. Diana coached me on the dogs’ names. Ray held them back.
“Three! Two! One!” The sled jerked forward, and we were off.
I wobbled around the opening turn, precariously maintaining my balance. Then I nearly fell off trying to imitate a real sled-dog racer, kicking my heel backward to spur on the dogs. I didn’t dare shout “Gee” or “Haw,” uncertain which of those fundamental commands meant right and which meant left. Instead I yelled “Hike, hike, hike,” a mushing term for “go.”
Tongues flapped. Paws flew. Aside from my idiotic cries, the only sound was the panting of the dogs and the whisper of sled runners slicing through the snow.
“Now this is Alaska!” I cried, feeling exultant.
I covered the looping 3-mile trail in 12 minutes, 7 seconds. Good enough for thirteenth place. Better yet, it was 2 minutes faster than Mowry. In the story that resulted, Tim compared his defeat at the hands of this “tall, skinny political reporter” to “a cowboy losing a bull-riding contest to an accountant.”
“A dark day for the sportswriters around this country indeed,” he wrote.
That had been four years ago. Driving dogs leased from Joe Redington, Sr., the founder of the Iditarod, the Mowth had gone on to race in the 1,000-mile Yukon Quest and two Iditarods, winning the “Most Improved Musher” award for a twenty-seventh-place showing in his second trip to Nome. I’d reported on more big races than Mowry had, but I hadn’t mushed dogs more than a handful of times. It was madness to even consider running the Iditarod. But if I didn’t try, the missed opportunity would torment me forever. Aware that I was taking action more significant than anything likely to occur on the Senate floor, I signed the application, listing myself as “driver” for a dog team I didn’t yet possess.
Those who live in dog country dissect the Iditarod’s entry list like the Yankees’ batting order on opening day. So I wasn’t surprised by the question that greeted me as I entered Blackie’s Goose Bay Bar in Knik on the return trip from Juneau. “Brian, whose dogs are you using?” yelled Marcie, who was working the bar.
Drawing a brew, she quizzed me about my plans. We talked about budgets, places to train, and who might have extra dogs to sell or lease. Messages were waiting when I got back to Fairbanks late that night. Marcie had a deal. A whole team was for sale. Twenty-eight dogs. Excellent bloodlines. Many were related, she said, to a dog named Elvis from Swenson’s kennel, a claim that later proved untrue. Bottom line: $4,000 cash.
The dogs belonged to a young Knik musher named Spencer Mayer. He was what Marcie called a “dream musher”—a guy who put together a good team, trained the dogs to perfection — but never quite got it together to enter races.
Spencer was married, with a young child. He’d landed a construction job in Dutch Harbor, a booming port in the distant Aleutians. It fell on his father, Herman Mayer, to tend the dogs. Spencer’s father had a four-wheel-drive all-terrain vehicle he wasn’t using. Marcie and Kevin needed one for training their dogs in the off season. Just watching that fine machine sitting there rusting was more than Marcie could stand.
“Herman,” she said. “sell me the four-wheeler.”
“I’m not selling my damn four-wheeler,” he said.
“Herman, you’re not riding it! Give it to me!”
“Well,” Mayer said, “I tell you what. You sell my son’s dog team, and I’ll give it to you.”
Marcie always got her way.
Mowry wanted to close the deal without delay. Old Joe Redington had repossessed his dogs, and Tim didn’t want us to miss out on these affordable replacements. I wasn’t so eager to buy an entire yard of sled dogs. I had planned to ease into mushing, lining up lease deals for training in, say, October. But Mowry had it worked out: He would buy the kennel and rent me a team for $4,000. He had already talked to his father about a loan. The Old Man was agreeable. It was the sort of livestock investment that made sense to his folks back at Mowacres Dairy in New York.
The deal landed me a team for the race at a price within my budget, and it provided me with a coach and kennel partner. The Mowth wouldn’t be racing this year, but he owned his own sled dogs at last.
When she felt like it, Raven was our kennel’s speed queen. Refreshed by a full belly and a four-hour nap, she was having fun on the return trip from Skwentna as we made tracks toward the Klondike finish line. Bounding gaily, the princess and Rainy set a blistering pace down the hard-packed river trail. It was a windless, balmy night. Sipping chicken-noodle soup, I danced aboard the sled runners, keeping time to a Stevie Ray Vaughan tape wailing through my Walkman. The river here was about 100 yards across. The ice was concealed under a rolling white avenue. Steep banks rose on either side. Old trees leaned inward at the high-water mark, dark silhouettes against the deep blue sky.
The party ended 10 miles from Yentna Roadhouse. Beast was stumbling. The young female kept tripping on the lines and falling with a glazed look in her eyes. The fun gone, Raven began balking, drawing back against the neckline connecting her to Rainy and searching for any escape.
“It’s OK, princess,” I whispered, stroking the trembling girl between the ears. “You did just fine tonight.”
I switched Raven back and placed White Rat in lead. An extremely intelligent female, she remained my personal favorite despite a tendency to slack off at every opportunity. Rat was on her best behavior tonight, but Gnat, a meek unseasoned male, seized every pause, dip, or tangle to sit down.
We’d covered 120 miles in less than 24 hours, and both Gnat and Beast verged on surrender. Mowry had warned me about this: “The thing with young dogs is they have to get past that point where they think they’re going to die.”