by Gary Paulsen, 1994
Very engrossing tale of Gary Paulsen’s first time running the Iditarod race from Anchorage to Nome. He loves his dogs! Cookie was his lead dog. He describes the different aspects and legs of the race so well. The whole thing is crazy like hell. He made almost fatal rookie mistakes – switching his lead dog at the last second, right before the start was one. He put Wilson in the lead instead of Cookie. Wilson took a wrong turn in Anchorage and they tore all through the town, taking down fences, signs, even tearing the bumper off of a car when he threw his snow hook on it to try and stop the team.
Interesting that the start of the Iditarod in downtown Anchorage is all a sham – a made for TV event that is really dangerous because the dog teams are made to be close together in harness for a long, long time – very unnatural. At least he put his in harness too early and once they are in harness, they want to run. The real start is out of town a ways.
Because he was so far behind after going on a mad dash through Anchorage, he also didn’t realize that Cookie, back in as lead dog, followed a snowmobile trail instead of the real trail. They led 20 other dog teams off trail and when he realized it and turned around, the dog teams meet head on and fight at each meeting. Then, another dog team got attacked by a moose that killed the musher’s lead dog. Heart-breaking.
Then the terrain and weather is mostly horrible. The lack of sleep, the hallucinations, the wind, the brutality he witnessed of a musher kicking one of his dogs to death, just awful. Why he kept going, he doesn’t even know, but he did, and I guess he ran it again, too, because the end of the book is him being told by his doctor that he has heart disease and can’t run the Iditarod a 3rd time. He gives all the dogs away except Cookie.
Excellent book. Don’t know how he lived through it. There are so many times he is dragged – down streets of Anchorage, down icy cliffs. The wind and cold in the Yukon were horrible. He learned quickly to run along with the sled to get his heart rate up. He considered minus 20 to be warm, so these had to be minus 60 or worse with the wind chill. But he loved being with his dogs and he loved the beauty of Alaska.
Pat recommended this book, along with Hatchet.