Epic Solitude by Katherine Keith

Author:Katherine Keith
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
Published: 2019-12-18T20:11:56+00:00

Iditarod, Mile 263

Farewell Burn, Alaska | 2014

You’re never the same after you run the Iditarod, and I still

lust to go out and run with dogs, even though I know that

I shouldn’t. But I’d give just about anything to be able to do

it again. To see the horizon again from the back of a dog

team would be wonderful.

—Gary Paulsen

I clear my head and examine the sled. The brush brow gained a hearty crack from the trip through the Dalzell Gorge and now has failed. This last tree claims victory by inserting itself through the brow, between the runners, and down through the base of my sled, which refuses to separate from it. The dogs want to pull forward; the problem is that the sled needs go backward about three feet. When brute force fails to move the sled, I transfer the gang line to the victorious tree, using spare rope to tie the dogs off to it.

I try to pull the sled free, when Jake Berkowitz comes by. “See? Told you,” he hollers out while putting his hook on a nearby tree to stop his team. After ensuring they are under control, he walks back and helps pull my sled off the tree.

“Thanks,” I say, depressed. I am in serious risk of not finishing my first Iditarod. The tree has totaled my sled.

“Have tools?” he asks.

“Yep! I carry about ten pounds of tools and spare parts. I’m good. Thanks for the help.”

“Anytime!” Jake shouts as he runs back to his team.

I have no clue what repairs I can make out here that would allow me to go another mile, let alone the fifty to Nikolai. The sled will fall to pieces the next time I hit a stump or rock. To make matters worse, the removable plastic runners that let it glide over the snow wore down in the gorge. In fact, the rocks ripped one of them off, and I have no spares. I am running on aluminum. Using wire, I tie the sled up as best I can. I try multiple configurations, but no matter what I do, there is always a piece of plastic from the bottom of the sled grinding into the dirt and creating drag. After my poor fifteen-minute repair job, I transfer the gang line from the tree back to the sled.

“Ready?” I call to the resting dogs. “Up! Up! Up!,” I say, hoping we make it a few feet.

A hundred feet later, my fix-it-up job fails. I find another tree to tie off to and get more serious with my sled repair. Duct tape, ripcord, zip ties, and wire find themselves woven into an intricate spiderweb around the runners and sled bottom. I try again, this time with more success. Mile after painstaking mile, we make our way closer to Nikolai. But there’s no way we are going to reach it. I think up contingency plans in case the sled falls apart. I could walk the entire way, nursing my sled into Nikolai. Fifty miles at two miles per hour? I could be there in a day.

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