We’re feeding about 2,000 calories per dog per day, and that will go way up for the 60 or so first-string dogs we’ll start to focus on by the end of November. The folks at Costco and Sam’s already recognize me as a regular; I’m in there every few weeks for a quarter-ton of rice and several jumbo-size boxes of dog biscuits. Ron hits one of the feed stores back down the highway for a dozen, 40-pound bags of high-grade dog food on about the same schedule.
Ron also makes periodic trips to the slaughterhouse at Palmer. Their unfit-for-human-consumption by-products are perfect for the dogs and cook up very well. An average trip to the abattoir will yield half a dozen 60-pound boxes of the kind of stuff you usually find only in hot dogs. Occasionally we’ll also get the results of a freezer cleanout or maybe even the leavings from somebody’s yearly moose. (Moose remnants are especially good—the dogs can gnaw contentedly for weeks on the huge bones.) No matter. It all gets sliced up and tossed into the cooker and it all comes out looking the same. I’ve learned protein and fat come in many different forms and the dogs don’t care a bit.
Many mushers operate do-it-yourself butcher shops to feed their dog lots. Ordinary band saws make excellent meat slicers, but electric circular saws, recipro saws, and even axes work just as well. Most mushers buy frozen meat in blocks of up to 50 pounds to supplement their commercial food, and this must all be reduced to dog-sized pieces. In preparation for the Iditarod, mushers have to slice up as much as half a ton of frozen meat.
Feeding time in the dog yard is an explosion of happy frenzy. The dogs can sense we mean to feed them, even if we make no overt move to do so. They must make a complex association between time of day, elapsed time since last feeding, smell of food in the cooking barrel, and our subtle but unintentional body language. For all I know, they may read our minds as well. I wouldn’t put it past them.
We often feed at night since we don’t like to run them on a full stomach. Besides, we want them to understand finishing a run means food, and they seem to appreciate this cause-and-effect relationship. If the dogs think the time is right, all we have to do is walk toward the cooling cooker and a chorus of barks and yelps and yips and howls instantly erupts. Ron’s dogs will even key on the creaking of his front door, which they must hear from 200 yards away.
As soon as we reappear with buckets of food in hand, the canine concert rises to a crescendo. Every dog has his or her own excited way of greeting us. At night, of course, the dancing, glowing eyes are all focused on us. They all want to be first. Little Penny at the far end of the line bounces at the end of her chain like a crazed popcorn kernel. Pullman hops up and down on a stump next to her house and barks as loudly as a dog three times her size.
Feeding time in the dog yard borders on pandemonium. The pups are especially frantic, since they don’t yet understand they all will get their share sooner or later.
Bear, whose demonic red-reflecting eyes belie his affectionate, playful nature, crouches like a tightly coiled spring with forelegs spread, ready to leap. His brother Chewy has the same eyes and frantically friendly disposition but his shorter legs give him the appearance of a demented bulldog; he is barely a blur as he races back and forth. Silvertip, my personal pet (and surprisingly good sled dog) who is three-quarters wolf, stands on his hind legs at the end of his chain and jumps two feet straight into the air, turning a flip and coming down facing the opposite direction, barking and yipping all the while.
Demure Blues hardly moves, carefully watching everything and giving only an occasional ladylike bark. Her half-sister Bea sounds like a siren and looks like a dervish as she circles her post. Socks, the wise old veteran who knows he is The Lead Dog, takes a watchful but silent stance. And pups on the outskirts keep up a chaotic racket; they don’t yet understand they will all eventually get fed and still treat feeding time as a live-or-die, zero-sum contest.
Some mushers cook for their dogs when they are at home. Big propane crab cookers are the weapon of choice, although wood-fired “Yukon cookers” made from 55-gallon drums work just as well. Ingredients include commercial dog food, fish, frozen meat, meat scraps, rice, fat, and anything else the dogs might eat. Cooking is an especially good way to safely use waste meat and wild game such as caribou which might harbor parasites.
As each dog gets its pan full of food, the din gradually subsides. After the last morsel is ferreted out and the last dish is licked clean there is always a period of complete silence. The dogs are quietly looking at us. It seems as if they are making mental notes, recording who we are, and that we have brought them food and affection once again.
And later—always—comes the thank-you song. One dog will start it with a howl and the rest will join in. Those who can’t howl, bark. Slipper, the old but still excellent leader who spent many years with Libby Riddles, has more than a touch of hound in her family tree. She has an unmistakable comical throaty bellow somewhere between a bay and a bark, and she sounds as if she has a raccoon treed deep in the Georgia woods. Silvertip is her counterpoint, throwing his head back and making the forest echo as hauntingly as his not-so-distant wild cousins.
The wave of sound reaches a climax and continues for several minutes. The effect is other-worldly. Every musher will always stop to listen and none will ever make any move to disturb the purity of the moment.
There’s no doubt the dogs are talking to us, thanking us for their food and care, telling us we are part of their pack. They are reaffirming the age-old bond between humans and dogs that seems to reach its culmination in the dog team.
October 22, 1994
Montana Creek, Alaska
At last I’m back on the runners. Thanks to last week’s storm, we decided to hook up the sleds today for the first time this season. There really isn’t much snow, maybe only a couple of inches, but it’s enough. After playing musher on a four-wheeler all summer and fall, I’m finally back to the real thing.
About mid-afternoon, I hook up five dogs to Bert’s Bernie Willis sled, the same one he used on the 1993 race, and which Bruce Moroney used this year. Willis sleds are very flexible and are built to give; in fact, they give a lot, and seemingly feel like they’re about to fall apart. This is my first time to ride one and I’m not at all used to its very tippy nature.
The dogs are beside themselves with anticipation. They know this is the first run on snow with the sled and are positively supercharged. When I pull the slipknot in the tie-off rope the sled shoots out of the lot like it was fired from a cannon. Unfortunately, our outbound trail makes a tight S-turn, which I impressively don’t negotiate. The sled flips instantly and I drag through the brush with a death grip on the handlebar, yelling “Whoa!” at the top of my lungs.
Old Socks is leading. He’s done all this before to more mushers than I can count. He knew the sled would whiplash and spill on a turn like this, and I’m sure he’s been laughing to himself from the moment we started hooking up. Of course, he also knows to stop the team when the sled goes over on its side, but he makes sure he goes just far enough extra to make me think he’s going to leave me behind.
I manage to hang on somehow and get everything upright in a few seconds. As soon as my feet touch the runners, Socks is off again. We tear across our backyard, half-mile-wide swamp at breakneck speed, and I have no doubt the neck in question is mine. There isn’t nearly enough snow to make a smooth trail. It’s like riding a bicycle over railroad ties at 20 miles an hour as the sled flies from one crest to the next with a knee-buckling series of crashes and thuds. At least twice within a half mile we hit boulder-size bumps while I’m off balance, leaving me looking up at the south end of my northbound wheel dogs and imploring them to stop in my very best and most authoritative “playground voice.”
We finally roar off the swamp onto the overland trail. Unlike the four-wheeler, I don’t have a lot of choice about which side of the trail the sled uses. Almost immediately one runner settles into a deep rut on the right side; I’m suddenly up close and personal with every overhanging branch
and limb. On the outside of one turn a particularly thick clump of willow bushes literally rips me from the sled. Fortunately I have the tie-off rope wrapped around my wrist and am only dragged 20 yards or so before Socks figures he’s made his point and stops the team.
I realize I have to learn to ride this sled. All I can do is hop back on and wait for the next face full of snow. After a couple more belly dances with Mother Earth, I begin to get the hang of it. The Willis sled does have a good feel to it, but it’s an acquired taste, sort of like single-malt Scotch whiskey or sushi. It leans and sways, but if I can control it, it’s like riding a pair of cross-country skis. As I figure out how to shift my weight and play the brake and the drag (a piece of snowmachine track tied behind the brake), and I find I have a lot more control than I think, particularly on turns.
After 10 miles, we sweep back into the lot. I haven’t gone down for the last four miles, and I begin to think maybe this dog-mushing thing will work out after all. Whether my battered body will survive long enough to see the payoff is another matter, however. I wonder if Martin Buser and the other Big Names went through a stage like this?
Basket sleds are constructed to be relatively lightweight, flexible, and maneuverable, with an elevated “basket” supported on stanchions several inches above the runners. The handlebar is an integral part of the basket structure. Most Iditarod mushers run variants of basket sleds for the latter part of the race. This is a Bernie Willis model.
Sprint sleds are built to be as lightweight as possible. Some barely weigh 20 pounds. The basket on a sprint sled is very small and the handlebar is located close to the midpoint of the runners to better spread the driver’s weight.
October 29, 1994
Montana Creek, Alaska
As if to celebrate the first real subzero night of the season, the northern lights come out.
All evening they teasingly show themselves in the north, each wave venturing ever more southward and hinting of glories to come. After a break to visit the local lodge for dinner, Barrie, Ron, and I return to finish running the dogs.
About 11, before we get back on the trail, the display begins in earnest as the northern sky begins to glow from horizon to horizon. A bright band of green hovers low, just beneath the Big Dipper. Sensing the show is about to start, I walk out to the road for a better view.
I don’t have long to wait. Within a few minutes soaring spikes and swirls materialize overhead, creating the effect of a Gothic cathedral with iridescent columns of light reaching to the zenith. Simultaneously the northern band of luminescence grows steadily brighter and broader, starkly silhouetting the delicate tracery of the bare birch branches. The intensity continues to increase until I can actually see shadows on the snow-packed road.
Then about 11:30 the northern sky explodes in one of the most amazing displays I’ve ever seen. For 10 minutes, frantically shifting curtains tipped in brilliant crimson race in all directions. The northern third of the sky is completely chaotic, seething and swirling like some glowing, ghostly thunderstorm. Fully formed multi-hued curtains suddenly appear and disappear, tumble and stabilize, careen apart and randomly collide.
The sky is alive and seems to be churning perceptibly closer to me. Now I begin to understand why some traditional Inupiats fear the lights can steal their souls: if I were alone on the winter tundra without the comforting 20th-century knowledge of what really drives the auroral displays, this writhing creature of light might be utterly terrifying.
Scientific theories notwithstanding, I am totally lost in the spectacle until a car horn blasts in my ear. A pickup has come down the road behind me with its lights on, but I completely failed to notice it. I sheepishly hop back into the driveway and the driver eases his truck by with a friendly wave.
I am reminded of my first-ever encounter with the lights, early on a cold February morning 20 years ago, somewhere along the Glenn Highway in Chickaloon Pass northeast of Anchorage. I was headed to my new assignment after returning from Southeast Asia and didn’t have the faintest idea of what I was getting into. I’d just come up the Alaska Highway and had been on the move for a week on highways I’d never traveled before, through country I’d only imagined in my dreams, and in winter conditions I had only seen in my nightmares.
My attention on that long-ago night was suddenly attracted by glowing movement to the north, outside my headlights. I stopped and stepped out into the 20-below cold and came face-to-face with a first-magnitude display. I’d heard of the lights but had never seen them. No description could ever have done them justice. For an hour I stood next to the car transfixed while the lights danced and raced, faded and reformed. No tour company could have arranged a more profoundly impressive introduction to Alaska.
Back in the present, I imagine what this would be like out beyond the Alaska Range, with just me and the dogs and the trail and all of the vast emptiness of interior Alaska. I’ve seen the lights while flying for the race and have watched them from checkpoints along the trail, but I’ve never seen them from a sled. Many experienced mushers have told me all of the months of work and hassle and hardship can be erased by one clear night on a sled on the trail, cruising under the lights behind a smoothly pulling team, headlamp extinguished, and the only sound the hiss of the runners on the crystalline snow.
I remember standing on the river bank at the Galena checkpoint during the 1994 race, waiting for the last-place musher to straggle in from Ruby. A small group of us had watched the bobbing speck of her headlamp for what seemed like hours as she worked her way slowly down the darkened, mile-wide Yukon. At the same time, we were listening on the radio as Martin Buser closed in on the finish line at Nome. As much as I respected and admired Martin, I couldn’t identify with him; he was—and is—on another level from me when it comes to driving dogs. I was with that lonely musher far out on the ice, who could just as easily have been me.
As the long minutes crawled by, a magnificent display of the lights began to build in the northern sky, over the distant and unseen Brooks Range. They intensified and expanded, shading from green to yellow, and finally danced from horizon to horizon, tinged with deep red. I was transported to the pinpoint of light still miles away on the river, wondering what it would be like to be out there with my own team under those same shimmering curtains, making my own way across the vastness of the Last Frontier.
Now, less than a half a year later, I might get my chance. The lights fade as quickly as they came and I return to the more mundane business at hand. But another piece has fallen into place. I have yet another experience to anticipate and savor on my pilgrimage to Nome.
Without good feet under them, the dogs can’t do their job. Every musher spends inordinate amounts of time checking dogs’ feet for everything from cuts to broken toenails to sore wrists. Martin Buser calls the process “praying to the dogs”; by this standard, mushers might be considered among the most religious people in the world.
November 5, 1994
Montana Creek, Alaska
The past week brought a decent dump of snow and we’ve got at least eight inches on the ground. Our nearby trails are finally in fairly good running condition with most of the bumps smoothed out. I decide to try the 20-mile loop for the first time.
The sun is well down by the time I’m ready to go. I’ve seen the long trail from a four-wheeler during the day in the summer, but it’s an unknown quantity now. I have an ace in the hole, though—Socks. He will undoubtedly make me work for the roundtrip ticket, but he will ultimately get me through, just as he has Bert and other mushers on the Iditarod in conditions more like Antarctica than North America.
This is the first time I’ve really realized how much I will have to depend on and trust the dogs. This trail isn’t really remote, but it has enough hidden dangers and is sufficiently isolated to leave me on my own for at least a couple of hours while everyone figures I’m late and then mounts a search party. The temperature is hovering down around zero as well, so any mistakes on my part will be m
agnified by the cold. I’m doubly glad Socks is up front for this particular run. He may have some fun with me, but he’s as reliable as they come. In any case, I have little choice but to trust his proven trail sense.
Socks doesn’t waste any time showing me who’s really running the team, nearly ripping the sled out of my hands as he launches us out of the yard. Somehow I get around the infamous S-turns and out into the swamp without crashing. After a few minutes I pick up my bearings and start to get the feel of the sled and the trail. The dogs continue at a dead run for a full mile, across the swamp and up the hill on the far side.
At the top of the hill the trail opens into a driveway and then crosses a borough road. When we burst out into the driveway I see the taillights of a truck completely blocking the narrow cut through which we must run. I stomp on the brake and yell to the dogs to hold up, but not much happens because the snow is still too thin and too firmly packed. Then I notice there are maybe a dozen people standing around. I don’t have the faintest idea what they’re all doing out here. We’re by in a flash and the last thing I think to do is initiate a casual chat with them.
Meanwhile, the driver of the truck must have seen my headlight bearing down on him because the taillights suddenly turn out onto the road barely 30 yards before what I thought would be a calamitous collision. Of course, Socks would have stopped, but you couldn’t have convinced me. We whistle across the road and over a two-foot snow berm tossed up by the road grader. The sled goes airborne, with me in loose formation, and returns to earth 15 feet down the trail. I follow shortly, miraculously still aboard.
Alaska Dogs and Iditarod Mushers Page 9