According to GPS tracking, a group of Iditarod teams has left Nikolai. They should start arriving between 8:00 and 9:00 Alaska time. We’ll be out watching the river.
The following is from my Grayling Journal, March 9, 2001 when the first Iditarod musher arrived:
By nine we had been hanging around the river banking waiting for an hour under cloudy skies. But it was worth it. We could see the musher’s headlight shinning off in the distance and then the outline of movement, then we could make out the team and see the musher swaying from side to side, and when they got close the silence was incredible. Anything else you see coming at you with a light, makes noise. Here we’re used to the annoying sound of snow machines. But this is silence. And then you hear the musher call out “haw” for left and next “gee” for right and the dogs snake up the hill in fluidity.
We followed them up and watched Jeff King work on his dogs. Each musher has two or three human-sized bags of food and equipment shipped into every checkpoint. They open a bale of straw and fluff it under the dogs and then they start boiling water to mix food for the dogs. The musher can’t accept any outside help. They do all the work. One of the vets starts checking the dogs. They listen to their hearts and lungs and check shoulders, and feet, and hides for harness burns. Friday night was a zoo because the Iditarod checker and volunteers hadn’t fallen into a routine. They put the first musher’s dog alongside the community hall and even thought the hall was housing all these people, the villagers couldn’t forgo a Friday night without bingo, so all the Iditarod people were displaced. The locals had their snowmachines parked in the musher’s paths and they left their kids outside the hall.
The beauty of the dogs and mushers as one, really moved me. I’m looking forward to seeing this soon.
Back then, we had been in the village seven months. Here we are barely acclimated. Terry is still in quarantine. Therefore, so am I. We focus on the things we can do. Mainly cooking and outside exploring. We were working on skiing distance. But I don’t think I’ll be skiing due to my broken boot. Yesterday, Terry was in his skis, and I ran in my winter running shoes. We were the same pace. So I’ll pack my snowshoes for the deeper snow on our next outing. Yesterday, we made it twelve miles on the road. The last mile wasn’t plowed, just a snow machine trail. It was hard for me.
We’ve been comparing our outings to the one’s we experienced twenty years ago. Grayling is a couple hundred miles from here, in the same school district. But! There’s a 15 mile road here. It’s plowed to mile five. Trucks, SUVs use the first five miles. Snow machines use all of the road. At least one truck passes every hour or so and snowmachines are more frequent. There’s a clinic here and a State Trooper. It doesn’t seem dangerous by comparison, and not as adventurous.
I guess domestic duties have their own adventure. Terry treated me to dinner late night. He’s been ever increasing his repertoire of recipes since getting involved in The Great British Bakeoff. This was last night’s treat.
Mountain Peace 