Iditarod experience is profound, emotional ride for back of the pack

NOME — Twelve days seems to be a magical dividing line — this year, at least — between mushers who were in the race to compete and those who were here to experience an adventure.

Almost to a person, the mushers finishing the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race in 53rd place and down are describing their time on the trail as a “life-changing experience,” as Zoya Denure put it, or a right of passage for younger mushers, such as 19-year-old Jeff Deeter.

 

Sam Deltour, a young Belgian man with a love for the outdoors and a passion for the north and travel by dog team, could not express the powerful feelings rocking his world in the finish chute. He’d run his dream, and now it was over. He’d completed it, but now came a sense of loss and even mourning for having to walk away from the wilderness, back into the noise and clutter of civilized life. Deltour’s eyes were red and wet with tears as he praised a single dog in his team that he’d had to carry in his sled early on because it worked too hard, but that matured on the trail and eventually became one of his best little leaders. His story ended in sobs that echoed through the PA system set up on Front Street.

Deltour, by the way, is the only musher this year to finish with a complete string of 16 dogs. He said it wasn’t on purpose; just the way it turned out. A handler for Mitch Seavey’s racing kennel, Deltour, along with fellow Belgian Dries Jacobs, was on physical a mission to pilot a young group of dogs to Nome on a steady schedule to teach them the trail. They will have a chance to graduate to Seavey’s racing team next year. But running the 2008 race with young Seavey dogs meant more to Deltour than fulfilling a job.

With the interview obviously over, the choked up musher silently drove his team to a parking area about a block a way, and Mitch Seavey’s wife, Janine, commented, “I think this race does it. They accomplish something that takes it down to raw material.”

Denure, eating two different desserts and a coffee at a beloved Nome eatery and brew pub called Airport Pizza, still hadn’t gotten any sleep about 9 p.m. Friday night after crossing the finish line at 5 o’clock. She was energized and excited, pumped up, saying the Iditarod was so much more than a dog race, and that she was definitely coming back.

For those who wonder why mushers run the race sometimes five, 10, 15 or 20 years in a row, it’s not just because they want to move up in the standings, although that’s a big part of the draw as well. The compulsion runs deeper.

“This is like a bar mitvah. This is like a vision quest,” said Jeff Deeter’s father, Eric, who was on hand at the raw hour of 4:11 a.m. to greet his son to a 59th place finish in his rookie Iditarod. “For Jeff, it’s really a coming of age. He’s earned this. Because of this, he’s no longer a boy. He’s a young man.”

Deeter, 19, raised all the money and bought his own dogs and financed his own race, which is not easy. Adults three times his age often withdraw well before the starting line because they can’t line up the dogs and money and time necessary to run a race that is right by the dogs.

Fans, or mushers, who focus solely on what’s going on as the front of the pack jukes and jockeys for a higher finish miss what’s going on among the last 30 teams on the trail, the younger Deeter said. “They don’t understand what the Iditarod represents to other people.”

Veterans of the race who fight to win feel the same powerful emotions, but they don’t always express them. And the experience is rarely so raw and intense as it is on that unforgettable rookie run.