Daughter of Iditarod legend completes journey of discovery
NOME, Alaska — As the late afternoon sun blazed in the wide-open sky above frozen, jumbled sea ice, an oddly familiar figure in a red snow suit and tan mukluks rode the runners behind a team of eight trotting huskies. It wasn’t “Susan” – couldn’t be – but it was 100 percent Butcher.
Butcher’s daughter, Tekla, completed a personal journey of discovery via dog sled with her father, David Monson, this evening.
They’d set out from Manley Hot Springs near Fairbanks about 10 days and 700 miles earlier, following the Yukon River to Kaltag and the Iditarod Trail to Nome. The 11-year-old musher, daughter of one of the Iditarod’s pioneers and four-time champion, pulled up under the burled arch that serves as the race’s finish line, capping a trip that gave the budding human a powerful glimpse not only of what her mother saw, felt and experienced on the trail, but an unexpected window into who she was as well.
“Susan had a profound affect on people,” Monson said. And those people flocked to meet the younger Butcher when she arrived in villages along the way. “They’d bring out little treasures,” Monson said. “It was, say, a signed photo from ‘86, something she gave ‘em or just to say their son was born the day she came into Ruby first or that she shared cheesecake with my uncle when she was first here.”
That side of the trip was an unexpected gift, Monson said. “I thought it would be a very confidence building thing for Tekla. That changed over the period of the race, er, I mean trip,” he said via telephone while still camped at White Mountain. The response from villages such as Ruby, Galena, Nulato, Kaltag, Unalakleet, Shaktoolik, Koyuk, Elim and White Mountain was “Very emotional, very heartfelt and very deep from people who she stayed with, and they miss her. They were able to tell Tekla how much she looked like her mother. Some were teary because they said she reminded them so much of Susan. So Tekla has learned a lot more about her mother and, frankly, so have I, through the eyes of people she met.”
The biggest reception was probably at Shaktoolik, Monson said. The community “was up till midnight,” he said. Half the town was there, they let off a siren, lit a bonfire, took pictures, gave hugs. Someone held a sign saying “Welcome Home Susan.” Monson said, “People stayed up with us till one or two in morning, then invited us to their homes the next day, fixed my sled, and my snowmachine.”
Susan Butcher was only 51 when she died Aug. 5 at a Seattle cancer hospital, where she’d undergone lengthy treatment for leukemia. Butcher left a singular mark on the sport and the lifestyle surrounding it that far exceeds the boundaries of sled dog racing and the state of Alaska. Butcher sequestered herself in the backcountry for years in her early 20s to learn more about dogs, sleds and winter survival. Then she emerged as a contender in the early 1980s. It seemed like “second-place Susan” was never able to put together a win. Competitors said she babied her dogs too much to win. Her first victory in 1986 was on her seventh relentless attempt, and she would go on to dominate the race for the remainder of the decade. That’s when the so-called “babying” was redefined as “dog care,” in a classic example of spin control. Something about her drive and zest for life sparked interest in the race around the world.
One of Tekla’s friends was along on the trip, as was one of the family’s dog handlers, in addition to a couple of snowmachiners hauling sleds full of supplies. The trip included a 48-hour stay at Old Woman cabin, one of Butcher’s favorite places. The family left a little something of her there, and they prepared meals for passing dog teams in this year’s race.
Sigrid Ekran, the 2007 rookie of the year, was tremendously ill there with suspected food poisoning, so the family was able to help her out a little bit.
Tekla wore her mother’s familiar red snowsuit, which Butcher wore when racing the Iditarod, as well as her mukluks. The suit had to be tailored to fit the still-growing girl. Still, from behind at times, the way his daughter moved, it was eerily similar to her mother, Monson said. And he learned that Tekla, at 11, was already a capable sled handler. “She was able to negotiate hills while I used everything I’d learned over the years just to keep my sled upright,” said the former Yukon Quest champion.
She also has an uncommon connection with her dogs, he said. Tekla lost the sled as her team of eight dogs dropped down onto the Yukon River off a steep bluff at Nulato. “When they (the team) realized she wasn’t there, they stopped and the leader turned them round and they ran back to Tekla,” Monson said. “I was looking for a snowmachine to go chase (her team) down, and my jaw dropped. I’d never seen that before and actually didn’t know it could happen.”
Does all this foreshadow another Butcher racing career in the works?
“I don’t get the idea she’s contemplating anything about Iditarod,” he said. “I think she’s just enjoying the trip now.” Younger daughter, Chisana, now 6, will be next in line for the trip when she’s 11. Although, having toughed out the journey over this bumpy, wind-blown year, which included a few collisions with trees and some rolled sleds, Monson half-jokingly said he’s questioning his judgment in inflicting the journey on any 11-year-old.
Tekla was the first musher out of the gate in Anchorage, wearing bib No. 1, driving the sled for the honorary musher, her mother. She’s likely the only musher to wear that same bib No. 1 right on into Nome. “Technically, she’s still the honorary musher,” Monson said, his smile audible over the telephone line.