At the end of the story, Jeff jumped up as if he’d been asleep for a week. That was the longest I would ever see him sit still, though I spent several days with him, his family, and their dogs.
YOU READY?
During my second trip to see Jeff, we were training not far from Mount McKinley. I had been on a snow machine following Jeff and Morten, one of the handlers. Morten, twenty-three, from Denmark, and the other two handlers, Helge and Shawn, lived in a tiny log cabin off in the woods apart from the main dog yard. They kept the newly weaned puppies around them. Shawn Sidelinger was originally from Maine. Morten and Helge, twenty-two, from Norway, were enrolled in a Norwegian college similar to the monthlong wilderness programs run in this country by the National Outdoor Leadership School except theirs was a several-year program. Today Morten ran one team, Jeff another. Training is about determining which dogs that have already run the Iditarod will make the “varsity” again, have no nagging injuries or lagging competitive spirits, and then too, which of the young guns are pushing to make the team. More females finish the Iditarod than male dogs, although probably more males start out.
The thin trail wove through dense evergreen woods. It is so cold around McKinley, here on the outside edge of Denali Park, that trees grow slowly. I had seen instantly that if the dogs went the wrong way, you could crash into trees. I was following them slowly on one of Jeff’s well-used snow machines. I’d seen Helge on this snow machine running the trails with the young puppies already, getting them to love running in the snow. They were already evaluating the pups’ spirits, their minds, their physical prowess.
The trail broke out of the woods, and the two teams emerged into the middle of open, softly rolling country. Was this tundra on frozen wetlands? Jeff stopped, Morten stopped, and then I stopped. Jeff motioned me over to them.
“You ready?” he asked.
The dogs were barking and pulling on their harnesses, they hadn’t even warmed up yet.
“Am I ready for what?” I answered, my eyes widening.
“To take over Morten’s team.”
Jeff looked at me sometimes the way an eagle would a wounded rabbit.
“I don’t know, what do I do?”
The dogs, all of them, were barking even more excitedly. They wanted to take off. Come on, they were saying, let’s hit the trail. They live to zoom across these snow-covered wilds.
“Just hold on, stand on the runners, and watch me. I don’t suggest that you stop, but if you need to, push down on this.” Jeff stepped on a metal bar equipped with long teeth. “Morten, you ride the snow machine, okay?”
I was more than a bit surprised, though I always try to be ready for surprises. We hadn’t talked about me actually taking over a sled. I felt that I should have had some training, education, or at least more time to psych myself up. What if I made a fool of myself while being hauled through the snow by some of the greatest athletes in the world, these refined long-distance runners? But I couldn’t say no. I knew Jeff was testing me. I knew he’d been watching me just to see if I could keep up on the snow machine, following the unmarked trails through this maze of their fierce winter world. I had already taken the wrong trail once and gotten stuck in the deep snow trying to turn the snow machine around. I had come to a fork in the trail, going downhill, and I could see sled trails and dog prints, but the trail split and the prints went both ways. They’d been on this segment maybe a few days before. I wasn’t far down one fork when I realized I’d gone the wrong way. It made me understand why Jeff had waited until we got out into open country before allowing me the chance to ride. Running into an unmovable tree could be really damaging to my health.
Jeff will observe something astutely, whether human or dog. I’m not sure which he prefers or respects more; it probably depends on the individual. Then, if he can, he will push you—again, human or dog—into places within yourself you didn’t know existed. As a trainer of world-champion long-distance racing dogs, dogs that can accomplish feats that are unmatched by any other athlete in the world, Jeff knows what to do. He observes, then makes a highly specific analysis. He then attempts to put the subject of his attention, whether it be a potential lead dog or me, someone who said he wanted to understand what Jeff does, through a system of greater and greater stresses. How will the dog—or the writer—respond, learn, and retain what he has learned. This was my first test; I was caught by surprise and that was part of it.
I gave Morten my camera bag, stepped onto the runners, and grabbed hold of the handlebar on the small, light wooden sled. Morten pulled the hook out of the packed snow, said “Hold on” to me in his Danish accent, and then we were zooming. The dogs were fluid and thrilled. I was stiff, unsure, but trying to let the thrill in. Morten stayed fairly far back, I could not hear him. He was probably thinking that when I fell off, he didn’t want to run over me with the snow machine.
The dogs made little noise as they trotted as fast as their long legs would go. Though the pace allowed larger dogs to keep up an even trot, a couple of the smallest dogs actually ran the whole way. Jeff told me that one of his top all-time leaders, Jenna, was only thirty-nine pounds. She had already guided him to a win in the Iditarod. Although I probably knew a bit more than some about sled dogs, I was astounded at how small and slender these dogs were. And they looked this way with fur, deep, dense hair capable of keeping them warm at way below zero. These races are not weight-pulling events; they are long-distance marathons that happen to pass through some of the most demanding, isolated, frigid, brutal country in the world. It felt as if I had grabbed hold of the rope on the back of a powerful waterskiing boat and the throttle was stuck on.
Some of the best mushers believe that the kind of genetics they want in their dogs are those from animals that have survived the rigors of Alaska for hundreds, even a few thousand, years. Before electricity, planes, boats, trains, cars, government assistance, before it was called Alaska, it was the Eskimo people and the Athabascans that relied on dogs. Really the names don’t work—let’s just say it was the Natives’ dogs, the ones whose lives were even more difficult than people’s. They only got food when there was enough food for all the humans. They had no medicines, they had to fight off each other to keep their food. The dogs that did live were the ones able to convert whatever food they got into sustenance. They could use efficiently however little they got and turn it into energy. They made the best use of available body heat and white blood cells and the pads on their paws. They could travel great distances without food, not really caring if they received human attention. Over hundreds and hundreds of years in arctic conditions, dogs were the only beasts of burden until a relatively few years ago when someone introduced snow machines. Truly, only the dogs with the rarest combination of traits survived the environment and their demanding masters. They had to have great stamina, superior strength, pound for pound—hopefully the fewer pounds the better—the best disease resistance, the best use of instincts and senses, the most unassailable minds, the ability to adjust, the fastest recovery time. Then the best of these dogs were bred to each other by the Native people, who had survived with many of the same traits.
Jeff and Donna King’s dog yard near Denali Park. PHOTO BY PETER JENKINS
This is why mushers who know have searched the isolated Native villages, where distinct gene pools could develop relatively unhampered by someone in the village bringing home a collie, say. They want Native dog genetics in their bloodlines. They understand hybrid vigor. They like to get a superior bitch leader from an Athabascan village in the superfrozen interior and cross her with a long-legged Eskimo dog from a famous line of windswept Arctic Ocean–area dogs. Breed these dogs whose gene pools have never merged and you might get some superdogs.
Natives say that many white men want “a picture dog,” a dog that looks good in a photo. Look at the ads on TV for Subaru. They use a matched set of identical-looking Siberian huskies. If you hooked them up to a sled and raced them against Jeff’s team, they wouldn’t hav
e a chance. The picture has absolutely nothing to do with how capable, sound, and tough a sled dog is. How you look as a dog has nothing to do with how you can handle an open lead on the Yukon River at 2 A.M. when it’s February and thirty-eight below.
I rode for a mile or so, though it seemed to last for an hour, or for just a few seconds. The creaking of the runners over the bumps in the snow was loud at times. I was fully alive, and more. The padding of the team’s feet on the semi-hard trail of snow, the dry kind that falls all around Denali, was a clean sound. Everything was so deeply quiet in winter. It was amazing how the dogs were so jointly focused on just moving fast, covering trail. The occasional smell of dog mingled with the dry, cold, blue air.
I was glad I’d followed Jeff’s suggestion and ordered from Cabela’s a special zip-up bodysuit with a major hood and special rubber boots rated to keep you warm to one hundred below. Your feet don’t move much when you’re on the runners. Plus I was probably holding my body as stiff as a scared child who just had the training wheels taken off his bike. Jeff looked relaxed. Suddenly, he stopped, right before we were to go down a different trail and enter some spruce woods. I lifted my right foot off the right runner and pressed down on the metal brake. To my surprise, the team stopped, though they clearly didn’t want to.
“Let Morten take the team home. There might be some tough turns and bumps and things through here,” Jeff said. One of his dogs, then two and three, began barking; they wanted to crank it back up.
I waited for Morten to catch up on the snow machine. I got off the sled and he took off following Jeff. The trail on the way back had some sharp, severe turns, just about wide enough for the sled alone. Even Morten had to lean way over, as the sled’s left-side runners came off the ground. He almost spilled the sled on its side. And there were bumps and sharp, skidding turns because the dogs sped up as they got closer to home. I didn’t get the feeling they sped up because like a horse they just wanted to go to the barn, they sped up because they liked burning energy, of which they seemed to have an endless supply. They knew where they were, and it was like a runner sprinting the last hundred yards. The dogs are experts at energy use and know how much they can pump through their fantastic motors.
When you think about life before machines, which in the great scheme of things was not that long ago, and how important animals were to man’s survival, you realize that few other animals could handle the work in the Arctic. Mules, horses, ox, require too much fuel because there is too much body to keep warm. Alaskan huskies can dig burrows into the snow to escape the predator winds and storms. They can dig a burrow in the ground to keep their young alive—from whatever might eat them—and keep the species going. Like the camel who is suited to the rigors of the anvil of the desert, so are these dogs to their frozen world.
The two teams roared up the hill to the Kings’ compound. They call it Husky Homestead, as there are about ten times more dogs here than people. Once this was a Native land allotment, owned by an Athabascan woman from Cantwell. At one time individual Native Alaskans could get their own one-hundred-sixty-plus-acre chunks of land in specified areas. The woman used it as a hunting camp, but decided to sell it to Jeff. He bought it before he was a musher, before he was married; he had to borrow money from his family to afford it. Long before any huskies were in Jeff’s life, there was this homestead, quite a ways off the road.
KITTY
The dog yard at the Kings’ is where the “front yard” of a house in the suburbs would be. We pulled in and Jeff and Morten took off the harnesses one by one and brought each dog back to its area. Each was chained to its doghouse via a metal stake that rotated so the chain wouldn’t get tangled. Every dog is different, with its own personality and distinct appearance. Red, a long-legged lead dog, is dark strawberry blond in color. He sits or lies there, holding his pointed snout at a regal angle, his sharp, oversize ears alert. When he is hooked up and standing ready to go, he looks awkward, painfully shy, almost scared. But when Jeff says “Mush,” Red is a trail-eating intimidator, an unrelenting leader who will sacrifice his body. He even pulls too hard sometimes.
Jenna is one of Jeff’s favorites, probably because of her eyes. She has large, dark eyes that seem rounder than the other dogs’, bigger, as if they are better adapted for seeing in the dark. If you saw her on the street, you’d know she was a plain mutt, maybe even a stray having trouble scrounging dinner. She has the coloring of a gray wolf, but her hair isn’t deep. She watches your every move, listens to your every sound, figures out your body language. Then if she loves you, she will do anything you wish, often before you ask. If you love her and she is smart enough to tell, she knows you would never ask her to do something too dangerous. She is discerning and intelligent enough to trust your judgment and know that you will trust hers. She knows you’ll know how to comprehend her way of communicating. Jenna’s run the Iditarod three times, won once, come in third twice. She knows the trail better than Jeff, and they both know that.
Yuksi is a dog Jeff believes will be a superstar. He belongs to Bryan Imus and will be running his first Iditarod in 2000. Bryan’s mother was an outstanding sprint musher, and Bryan used to work for Jeff the way Morten does now. Jeff wants to buy Yuksi, but Bryan isn’t sure. It’s expensive to run the Iditarod—all the dogs, all the equipment, the months and months of training yourself and the dogs. Imagine feeding twenty, thirty dogs, much less eighty-plus puppies. Imagine the vet bills. Bryan, as tough as they come, wants to be like Jeff, a professional, but he must do well enough to get some sponsors, and soon. Bryan’s girlfriend is an officer in training at National Bank of Alaska. How long will she want to live in the bush? Even in Alaska it’s not easy on your neighbors if you have fifty dogs in your yard. So most mushers, like Jeff and Donna, live far enough out that they don’t have close human neighbors. Although Bryan was running the Iditarod, he was renting or “renting to own” Yuksi to Jeff. Yuksi looked to have plenty of “Native village dog” blood, with some wolf mixed in. His legs are long, like those of the best human eight-hundred-meter runners, and he is never still. He prances, he walks around and around his doghouse at the maximum length his chain will allow, having worn a circle in the bare dirt. There is no other dog in this yard with his internal engine, one that could or would not shut off. The only conceivable comparison is to Jeff. It seems that mushers would prefer dogs like Yuksi. Or would they rather have dogs like Red that conserve their energy, that are languid until training or the race?
As I followed Jeff and the dogs through that fall, winter, and early spring, the retired dog Kitty roamed and watched. She was stiff and moved like any creature that has pushed its body as far as it would go, then pushed it further. She was also clearly a former champion of the world. She reminded me of videos I’ve seen of an older Joe Louis or Muhammad Ali. She was definitely not spry or fast anymore; it was all she could do to walk. But she still had that aura. “I should be revered.” “I should be respected for what I’ve done.” She has always been detached from humans. As Donna put it, “Kitty did not show love or affection for humans, even for me or Jeff. She recognized us and tolerated us, but she lived to run, to race, and especially to lead.”
When the other dogs are being harnessed and unhooked from their doghouses, which are lined with straw in winter, Kitty seems again to feel the excitement of the run. She knows they are training for the last great race, the Iditarod, or the Kuskokwim 300, or one of the others. Kitty, oddly colored, black-and-white like a sheepdog except with shorter denser hair, never raced for the fame; she did not know what that was. Her eyes were almost the color of icy snow, her nose and ears black. She didn’t run for the adulation of fans or for food or prize money. She could have cared less about interviews and TV news. She needed the challenges and she needed to be in charge, to use her superior senses and stamina. She even seemed to be aware of her superiority. Some of her blood came from great Native dogs bred in the villages to help their people survive. Long ago people probably used her ancesto
rs to chase moose into the openings in the ten-mile brush fences her people used.
Jeff and Kitty. PHOTO BY PETER JENKINS
She can no longer do what she once loved so much to do. Jeff and Donna let her roam the dog yard free to keep her blue eyes on everyone, possibly to communicate her strength to the young ones, the rowdy ones. I never saw Kitty stop walking and looking and observing the other dogs. It was all she could do to power herself up the walkway between the dog-food-mixing room with its outside puppy enclosure and the storage building with a guest apartment upstairs. The walkway has a slight incline and it leads to the house. She would look at the house but never go to it. Kitty does not concern herself with humans. It was as if she were making sure they, Jeff and Donna, knew she was still on the job. No dog dared growl or bother her as she checked on them all. She would pace around the yard all day looking at the other dogs. It was impossible to tell what she was thinking; she has always been aloof. She pays close attention to the end of the yard closest to the house, where the best dogs had their houses, including the leaders that have taken over from her. Kitty is now fourteen. She goes into anyone’s doghouse and no one bothers her. Even if she sleeps in there, they’ll sleep on top of their house or on the ground until she leaves. She just has that much influence, somehow all the dogs know it.
Kitty ran in six Iditarods as a main leader from 1991 to 1996. She led Jeff to two wins, in 1993 and 1996. In 1991 they finished twelfth; in 1992, sixth; in 1994, third; in 1995, seventh. In 1993, Kitty led Jeff to a win with only thirty-two minutes separating him from DeDe Janrowe, the powder-blue-dressed favorite of many Alaskans. In 1996, Jeff’s team ran one of the fastest races in history, nine days, five hours, and forty-three minutes. Kitty was nine that time, old for a world-class long-distance racer, and she stumbled just out of Nome. Jeff said he knew she was tired, but the rest of the team, which was much younger, picked up the pace, knowing the end was near. After all those years of pulling Jeff over the finish, Jeff stopped long enough to put an exhausted Kitty in the sled, and she traveled the last few miles as a passenger. She certainly didn’t like it, but Jeff wouldn’t risk hurting her, even if it was tough on her monumental pride as a racer, as a leader, as a winner. Jeff knew she wouldn’t ever wish to be a passenger, she was the captain. She was not only the head of their ship, she was the brains and the muscle and the heart.