Once again, at sunrise there are 2 figures, out on the Kuskokwim River ice, bent low. Deb and I take a detour to check it out. Two local women, not young, are jigging their lines up and down.
One has a bunch of monofilament snarled around a wooden ladle. The other has a piece of wood carved to look like a child’s fishing pole. Between them they have caught a single Grayling in 3 days of fishing. But they are content. Both love fishing, and for them it is unrelated to catching anything. Eva fishes with a piece of macaroni, while Margaret bobs a small chunk of leftover moose pot roast.
The holes have been augured by a man who is preparing for students to have a day fishing. There are 10 students, thus 10 holes. Each is 12 inches in diameter through 4 feet of ice that lays on about 8 feet of river water. Eva said the students will have the good bait, shrimp. We will be there observing and hope to have pictures of whitefish and northern pike.
The museum has been calling us. Today was the first open day after quarantine. Two former high school teachers work there. It is a wonderful repository of local history. They also have every local animal, from a vole up to a wolf. And a large collection of mastedon tusks and teeth.
I bought a local cookbook autographed by the staff who compiled it.
This is a recipe we’ll make for you all on our return.
Margaret is a local photographer. She grew up in Nikolai a village of 75 people 58 miles from here. You can get there by snow machine, boat, plane or dogsled. She said she was both Athabaskan and Yupik. I don’t want to use derogatory terms but Athabaskans are interior Natives and are considered Indians, and Yupik are coastal Natives and are considered Eskimos (which is a derogatory term). She kind of chuckled and said, “you know they are not supposed to get along.”
She pulls her camera equipment around town in the best sled we’ve seen here. She’s been encouraging me to visit both the museum and the McGrath Light and Power office to see her work. With quarantine over, we headed to the electric company office. The only office employee there, a man named Ralph, 29 years old, turned out to be Margaret’s son. Margaret is married to Ralph the mayor. Despite any possible favors from either Ralphs, she had a great shot of two owls, a beaver, and Denali.
It warmed from -6 to 19. A good day to get out on the river. Terry on ski and me winter running shoes. No balaclava, mittens or large jacket. Easier to move and breathe. We found two booties one we could extricate from the ice and the other embedded frozen evidence for the future to postulate on what we were doing to our dogs.
We hoped to get four miles up river, but at three miles we ran into overflow ice and after trying to walk gingerly with spayed toes inside my shoes, and intentional breathing slowly, I’d had enough. The ice is 40 inches thick, so I wasn’t worried about going under, but getting shoes and socks submerged would not be good.
This is a picture from the post office. Can you see the lead dog?
Closer to town, a plane appeared to be buzzing us. It had the blue and yellow colors of Alaska on the bottom. It was the State Trooper’s plane, our landlord. He dipped his wings to wave.
The river is quiet. The orange tipped stakes are the only visible remains of the Iditarod Trail. A fresh coat of snow hides dog excrement. The telltale signs of 600 dogs. We didn’t see any fishing or snow machining. This was the last event before break up. As the snow stops falling and the junk that lies beneath the white blanket prevails the complexion of the town is transformed from winter wonderland to a continuous junk yard. We’ll miss out on that part. Our memories will look beautiful. We fly out of here on March 31 and arrive back home on Poisson d’Avril.
It was 3 above in the morning and reached 16 above during my run/walk accompanying Terry skiing. I didn’t need a jacket or gloves.
Terry left his quarantine and went straight to the store. It was great for him to be out of my shadow and have freedom to buy what he longed for and see new masked faces up close.
Dallas Seavey was born in Virginia and his family moved back to Seward when he was five. He is a third generation musher who grew up helping his dad, Mitch, the 2004/2013/2018 Iditarod champion, train his racing teams. He ran the Jr. Iditarod four times and in 2005, Dallas became the youngest musher in history to run the Iditarod. He also wrestled for Sky View High School and spent one year training at the U.S. Olympic Training Center. He is a High School State Champion, a Jr. National Champion, and was on the 2005 Jr. World team. In 2011, he won the Yukon Quest and in 2012, he became the youngest Iditarod champion in its history. He is one of four mushers ever to hold a championship in both the Yukon Quest.
The last mushers have turned toward the finish in Deshka Landing, but there is still plenty going on in McGrath.
In spite of toe tingling temperatures, spring is bearing down. Ravens are pairing and gathering nesting material. They fly some crazy patterns and emit a wide range of sounds, around 280 different vocalizations ranging from a telephone ring to caw caw. There was a giant unkindness, term for a group of ravens, of them going crazy at the site of mushers’ straw. Discarded trail booties have become impossible to find, probably becoming part of raven’s nest also.
Poplars set buds last fall, those not munched by moose, are sneakily extending, hour by hour.
Earlier today, in the pre-dawn hours, Deb heard the haunting call of the northern hawk owl. It does not migrate, subsisting on squirrels and various rodents. Also we spotted an early bald eagle, motionless, saving energy, being swooped on by adventurous ravens.
The bald eagle is an uncommon sight this time of the year.
All mushers and teams were out of McGrath by mid day. We were free to pick around on the other side of the Mushers, encampment. We followed the trail for a ways up the Kuskokwim to the Takotna River. This wends it’s way through narrow land bridges with winding trails through the trees. Perfect skiing. But my boots are unusable. We had wanted to ski to the village of Takotna 18 miles away. I could walk and watch Terry ski, but with Covid there’s no place to stay. I love the idea of snow camping, but not below zero. Maybe if we have time, we’ll go farther on this trail.
Iditarod trail on the Takotna River good for skiing.
We’ve been glued to the Iditarod Leaderboard. It’s a tight race.
Despite the blackness, I see a mist hover above the ice in a distance. Is it black out or just an absence of anything to see? There it is, a flick of light and then a short stream skimming the surface of ice. This streamer. Catching one at a time. A faint knowledge of paws turning as graceful as Amanda Gordon’s hands. A bird’s flutter. Pattering paws so far away, they sound of exhalations, a mire whisper in time. When that moving dog-powered sled is mid-ship of me, it is haloed in green Aurora. Remember the mystical.
The ballet I was watching at 5:00 am was Paige Drobny’s as she was slipping quietly away from McGrath. She spent the night with her dogs as she did the three previous nights. The night they were in Ophir it was -55. I know mushers have to barehand a number of their chores. How do they do it?
Biography
Paige Drobny, 45, was born in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, and says she moved all over growing up. She graduated from Virginia Tech in 1997 with her B.S. in Biology and from UAF in 2008 with her M.S. in Fisheries Oceanography. Before moving to Fairbanks in 2005 for graduate school, she lived in Colorado and was a fisheries biologist. “I enjoy the outdoor lifestyle. I work as a fishery biologist and help my husband, Cody Strathe, build dogsleds for our company, DogPaddle Designs, during the summer. Our mushing started in 2006 as a way to explore the wilds of Alaska with no plan to ever do any racing. We spent several years camping and traveling with our dogs. In 2010, Cody and I decided to give it a whirl and entered the GinGin 200 together…we had a blast, and suddenly we were on the slippery slope.” Paige has run the Iditarod five times
It’s -36 degrees. I’m not going to linger, the experience will. Back in the cabin, I sit on the mattress in the loft. I set my intention, and start writing this. It’s 75 degrees inside.
The 2021 Iditarod will be over for us by tomorrow afternoon. And the winners will be determined soon. Will I ever see another Iditarod? I hope I’ll remember what it meant to me.
You know it’s cold when the dogs wear their parkas. These are Chad Stoddard’s dogs leaving McGrath at 5:34 PM.
At -34 temperature in the dark, at 4:30 AM, I head to the river bank. It’s only a 50 yard walk. Our landlord had texted last night at 10:30 that the northern lights were out. I read the text at 4:00 am. Who’s up at 10:30 pm? Before leaving the house, I checked the tracker and a couple of mushers in Ophir’s -55 temperature were heading back to McGrath. Mushers don’t usually complain about cold, but they were this morning. Dallas Seavey was ahead. It was clear he’d be back in McGrath this morning.
The Aurora was disappointing. But the quiet and stars were worth the jaunt.
Every morning I wake about 2 hours before Terry. Under headlight glow, I make coffee, gather my laptop and books and teeter up the ladder. The loft is warm. I sit on a mattress on the floor and set my laptop on a bed stand. Now the sun comes early enough that it will grace me before Terry does. I love this space.
When the sun sheds its first light, I reached up to remove my headlamp and the elastic string wound up a clump of hair near my forehead. I heard Terry rising. Help! He patiently tried to unravel it, but the scissors had to be employed.
Our morning brings many futile efforts. We both will need Covid tests to leave here. The clinic’s phone has been down for two days, nevertheless, we keep trying the number. Our Full Circle veggies due Wednesday did not arrive, old story, but we repeatedly check the message board. Even though everyone I know has receive their Covid shots, I can’t get an appointment, but I continue calling around Santa Cruz county venues. Just bothersome problems.
We watch the progress of Seavey – he’s getting close. Coming from the west into McGrath, we lack a viewpoint to watch mushers arrive, but Terry wants to go down to the ice and then he can search for more booties. We underestimate how fast Seavey is traveling, bingo he’s in. We guess that he’ll take his mandatory 8 hour rest, so this frees us to do chores until 5:30 when we can watch him leave.
Dragging the sled to the incinerator with our week’s garbage, the packed snow crunches and squeaks. Returning we notice NAC has made an attack. NAC is the Northern Air Cargo jet that arrives on an unpredictable schedule. Locals call it a NAC attack. It’s impressive to see the lumbering 727 jet rising over this tiny village. Will we have veggies and mail today?
No word for three hours, then suddenly it is on the message board. We head straight away to the terminal and sled two boxes home, trying to beat the freeze. PO closes at 5:00. We make it with 2 minutes to spare. We have a box of homemade cookies from Sue Walkup. Thanks so much. Now we have to make it down to the river to see Seavey leave. And there he comes.
Homemade low sugar, high cocoa chocolate chip cookies from Sue Walkup ❤️
At 9:30 PM, we’re back on the river bank watching the headlamp of Brent Sass illuminating the churning paws of his team with a green ribbon of norther lights on the horizon. And the real race begins.
We have our little corner of the river back. Terry was excited to get down on the river. It was cold in the morning -27. Terry exclaimed many times this morning, “Man, it’s warming up so slowly.”
The last time l asked Siri what the temperature was, he replied, “You just asked me that.”
“I know, but Terry wants to hunt for booties.”
Twenty years ago, Terry skied from Unalakleet AK to Grayling on the Iditarod Trail heading the opposite direction of the mushers. It was almost a 300 mile ski trip pulling a sled. He was saying today what a leap of faith it was. Back then he had no tracker or any form of communication. The temperature was mostly in the minus double-digits. He was camping just off the river in any depression in the snow he could find. During his hours of trudgery he would talk to the passing mushers and pick up the doggie booties the dogs lost along the way. He collected a couple hundred.
Now he can ski, pick up booties and return to our cabin with a curl of smoke from the chimney. However, we must wait for the warm part of each day to go out.
There it is, right paw’s missing bootiesTerry’s got Booties!
He looks in good position because he’s currently in 11th place and he’s taken both the mandatory rests a 24h and an 8h
Ryan Redington, age 38. I am racing Iditarod because I love the Iditarod and the dogs. My grandfather is Joe Redington Sr. He is known as the ‘Father of the Iditarod’ for starting the race in 1973. My dad is Raymie who has raced in the Iditarod 14 times. My grandpa, dad and Uncle Joe are all in the Mushing Hall of Fame. I got big footsteps to follow and am glad to be racing in the 2021 Iditarod. In the 2020 Iditarod I had my best finish in eighth place. Henry, Ghost and Splint are my lead dogs. My daughter Eve and son TJ are also carrying on the family tradition racing. They love dogs and mushing. http://www.redingtonmushing.com
The 2020 Iditarod Rookie of the Year, Mille Porsild started mushing in 1992, running a team of Polar Husky sled dogs for polar explorer Will Steger on a three-month-long dog sled expedition in Canada. She was hooked. Ever since Mille has lived with her sled dogs to experience the people and places in the magical North while finding ways to be sharing the adventures with people around the world. She has slept more than 1,000 nights in a tent on the dog sled expeditions and feels home anywhere in the circumpolar Arctic. Mille has done 15 long-haul expeditions with her freight dogs. Each expedition lasted two-six months and was as long as 3,000 miles in greenland, Russia, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Alaska and crisscrossing Canada. In 2011 she entered her first sled dog race, running the 800-mile Nadezhda Hope race in Chukotka, Russia. Mille then moved to Alaska with Team Racing Beringia and her then partner, Joar Leifseth Ulsom. Together they trained and raced with great success that culminated in 2018 with his Iditarod championship.
Mille was born and grew up in Denmark until she came to america and did her first dog sled expedition at 18 years old. Her great-grandfather founded the world’s first Arctic research station in Greenland. His sons traveled Arctic North America by dog team and canoe in the 1920’s, the “normal” son being Mille’s grandfather who left Greenland to live back in Denmark. Growing up, Mille would sit in his basement surrounded by drawings, mystical cravings and seal skin clothing, listening to his adventures as a kid across the ice with his sled dogs. That’s when Mille decided she wanted to grow up to live her life with sled dogs. Mille will be racing the 2021 Iditarod for Team Racing Beringia.
Mountain Peace 