God created the month of March to show people who don't drink what a hangover feels like.Well, Iditarod's over. And there is perhaps no better time than now to quote the above, which I heard on a recent Saturday afternoon on KUAC (our Fairbanks NPR affiliate). If the month of March is a hangover, then Alaska feels it in a very special way.
- Garrison Keillor
In the Great Land, mind you, the weather may not exhibit what Keillor would seem to call the "hangover" effect. I am picturing in my mind the March of many northeastern states: gray skies and slush in the gutters, rain and snow and then rain and then more slush, ice in the driveway followed by mud. That, surely, is a hangover: the headache and soft light that Mother Nature feels after the bender of winter, before getting hydrated with April showers and renewed in May flowers.
For the 49th state, March is less of a mess. In many ways, it's actually refreshing. In Nome, we're currently gaining over six minutes of daylight per day. At Christmas the sun rose at lunch and had set by 4pm; now, it's still twilight at quarter-to-ten. January blizzards and February frostbite gave way, albeit temporarily, to a glorious, sunny period without new snow. (New snow is an Alaskan thing: of course we still have tons of the white stuff already on the ground -- 9-foot-high drifts in parking lots -- but no precipitation in the skies is a welcome state.) With the clouds gone you can see the Northern Lights at night, if you're lucky enough. And recent temperatures have drawn thoughts towards spring. As I mentioned in my last post, 15 above may not be particularly high, but with an afternoon sun to warm your skin, it's enough to enjoy a cold beer outdoors.
Alaska, however, has its own reasons to claim the March hangover.
March is the denouement of a racing season that starts right after New Year's: a season that winds its way through January and February with races of sled-dog and snowmachine teams. (In Bush Alaska, we don't say "snowmobiles"; we say snowmachines.)
Each race of the season is impressive. The "Iron Dog," for example, is the longest snowmachine race in the world; over the course of a week, racers speed their way from Anchorage to Nome, and then from Nome to Fairbanks. For those unfamiliar with the geography of Alaska, that's an incredibly long trail. The Iron Dog is 1,971 miles long: just about exactly the same as a drive from New York City to Aspen, Colorado. The teams that finish this race run that distance in less than a week, even after plenty of mandatory layover (rest) time.
But Iditarod remains "The Last Great Race," and there's some reason for the hype. The race has endured for over a generation - 2008 was its 36th incarnation - and it runs all the way from Anchorage to Nome: just over 1,100 miles. This year nearly one hundred teams started, and an all-time record of 78 finished. For each musher - from first place to last - the experience demands endurance and determination, and, if you hope to be competitive, a lot of strategy, too.
To give you the proper idea, imagine driving all the way from New York City to Des Moines in a slow golf cart. Your cart can go about 10-11 mph in spurts, but most of the time, 6-8 mph is about your top speed. You need to rest strategically. Too little rest, and you'll burn out; too much, and you'll lose momentum and get passed. There are 95 other carts racing with you, and you're all sharing a trail that is not a manicured highway, but rather a winding, sometimes precarious route, one that can become impassible with poor weather. And oh yeah, it's routinely snowing and 30 below, before the wind chill. The Iditarod is hard.
The science of breeding and training dog teams has been honed extensively since the race began in the 1970s, and finishing times have become significantly faster. Still, though, the fastest anyone has ever done the trip was in 2002: multiple-time champion Martin Buser arrived in Nome in just shy of nine days.
So the Iditarod is not just hard; it is long and hard.
The race is a big deal for all of Alaska, and for Western Alaska in particular, since it passes through many of the otherwise isolated villages of our region. Places like White Mountain, Unalakleet, Koyuk, and Shaktoolik have a flurry of race excitement during the first half of each March.
Nome is the finish line, and the city welcomes hundreds or even thousands of tourists who come to see the first or second place mushers finish. (This year, that would be Lance Mackey and Jeff King, respectively. Both have been champions before.)
By the time the top ten mushers have finished and gone off to eat and sleep, most tourists have already gone home. Most of the outside media has trickled away by then, too.
But for those who actually live and work here, the Iditarod is not here-and-gone overnight, confined to 48 hours of excitement. It is a massive project that demands the resources and community involvement of thousands of people, over more than two weeks. At each checkpoint, volunteers are needed to feed the mushers, to give them housing, and to guide them, if needed, back onto the trail. These volunteers work at all hours of the day and the night, often in weather conditions that beguile even the hardiest.
For the small handful of employees at our station -- which converts from its normal business hours into a round-the-clock, 24-hour race schedule -- the Iditarod becomes a labor of love. Our interest does not peter out with the top ten; we are in it for the long haul.
Although this year is an exception -- we have just begun to cover the centennial running of another sled-dog race, the All-Alaska Sweepstakes -- the Iditarod is typically the last hurrah of the winter races. For months, this race season dominates the attention of all the Alaskan Bush, and the Iditarod is its concluding flourish. These months are the most difficult in terms of winter weather: they are the most precarious for personal safety, the most prone to blizzards, and the least hospitable for the transport of the necessities -- such as mail and food -- that can only come by airplane. And yet, it is at this time that the spirit of Western Alaska shines. It is at this time that our station kicks its coverage into high gear.
In this context, even if a few, smaller races trickle in afterwards, Iditarod is a grand finale for us all: radio and non-radio folks alike. After the last Iditarod finisher -- called the "Red Lantern" -- passes through the finish arch in Nome, we all exhale a little bit.
And suddenly, it doesn't seem like too far away until spring. Easter is soon to come, and within weeks after that, the big thaw that Alaskans call "break-up": the time when the snow and ice gradually melt away from the land, while the ice of the sea recedes back North.
If winter and its racing festivity are all one long party, then the remainder of March, after Iditarod, is indeed a time for a hangover of sorts. It is a time for fatigue and rest; lots of race-season exertion take their inevitable toll. But these weeks are also a time for taking stock of winter's last gasps, and a time for anticipating new warmth, new daylight, new transformations.
As March becomes April, Alaskans may rub their eyes and reach for their coffeepots, but they also take heart that -- however long and hard it may have been -- winter is almost over.
And I'll drink to that.
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