Hawaii might have more snow than parts of the Northeast do right now, but it will never host the Iditarod.
As explained in this 2015 video.
Back in the 1980s I learned that this sport is not spectator friendly.
I was up in the Adirondacks, literally living on Easy Street and attending college, when some people invited me to come watch them compete in local trials for the big dog-sledding event.
This sounded like fun, since the one group more energetic and joyous about sledding than the mushers is the dogs — they really do act excited and happy all the time like those shown at the start of this video; and their humans are just as hard workers and into it as these people are (my Adirondack friends didn’t have such a large operation):
It’s rough on spectators, though.
Your friends drop you off in a random part of the Adirondack wilderness and drive off to the race start site.
There is a trail nearby through the snow. It looks like pretty much every ski-mobile track ever made.
There is much white stuff and sparse, stunted conifers around. You look at it. The hours pass.
You consume all the food and hot drink that you brought along and wish you had put on heavier socks.
A few birds fly by and everyone watches them intently — something new to talk about!
Your feet gradually go from blocks of ice to numb appendages and you start to wonder about frostbite.
Then a sound breaks the still air. It’s hard to describe: snow crunching, wood creaking, breathing in unison…there’s a sled! The dogs and human (no one you know) aren’t really going all that fast along the ski-mobile trail, but they are going, a single unit, and they probably don’t even know that you’re there despite your shouting and waving at this truly wonderful sight.
I’ve only seen that kind of concentration once before, while watching a World Cup biathlon team board a bus to take them to the field (again, in the Adirondacks, an amazing place; I later watched one of them collapse while skiing and helplessly thrash around on the track until help arrived and her electrolytes could be replenished).
The dogsled team vanishes into the distance and your thoughts go back to frostbite and trying to think up more conversation topics.
Soon your pre-arranged ride comes and everyone clumps toward it numbly and climbs in.
Your feet will thaw out within the month, and when you see your friends again, you learn that they didn’t win but they finished.
That is the point. This amazing human-animal combo went out there and completed the course.
No one collapsed or even got close to that extreme. The dogs continue to bounce around happily and so do the mushers, although not too much since tomorrow is a work day and they must go do their day jobs and earn the cash to race again next weekend.
The moose did not survive. The dog did.
A little lagniappe:
The Alaskan high-rise that is also a town:
Featured image: Cheryl Ramalho/Shutterstock
Flight To Wonder 