By Joe Runyan
Koyuk is a village with a view. Frame houses dot the hillside overlooking the bay. Villagers can venture back up into the hills for caribou and moose, and black and grizzly bear, but still have the ocean for more hunting and fishing. Mushers feel that they are back on solid ground when they arrive in Koyuk. Of course it’s an illusion, because the wind still blows with the same tenacity, but the feeling is one of less vulnerability. Hills, the occasional black spruce, and the trail on land relax the musher.
The trail leaves Koyuk and goes back on the ice, but it follows the shore. The exact location of the most-followed trail depends on how the ice freezes that particular winter. At night, the prudent musher keeps the headlamp on all the time to avoid the ignominy of following a false snowmachine trail to a crab pot site. After eight days of exhausting travel, the dogs have physiologically hardened to the trail. The adaptation is incredible to witness, if you can imagine riding the runners behind a competitive team. Musher and team have become regimented to each others’ needs and idiosyncrasies.
In Koyuk, the dogs are quickly put on a bed of straw, which the musher provides without even thinking, and the dogs automatically lie down to rest. Gone are the idle gestures which waste energy, like barking at spectators or growling at teammates. Body and mind are geared to traveling 130 miles per day. The musher provides a high-fat meal and the dogs’ furnaces are ready to burn it.
Departure is ritualized. Here is what some mushers do: After a four-hour rest, the musher starts at the head of the team and pets every dog, explaining telepathically that this a big test, and in less than two days, “We’ll have all summer to rest. We can’t give up now, the end is too close.” Then the musher takes the leaders and walks them off their beds and a short distance from the checkpoint. The team stretches, urinates, and slowly, stiffly, walks from the checkpoint when the musher says, “Okay.” Dropping down onto the ice, the team is much different from the one that screamed and hollered and pounded the harness in Rohn River. Gone is the overt enthusiasm and wild exuberance of the first days of the race. The musher remains completely quiet and calm. The team is walking and pulling weakly as the sled comes off the beach and hits the ice. Most observers are puzzled to watch this departure, expecting to see the explosive exit they saw a week earlier. But the musher is patiently anticipating one of the more bizarre experiences of the Iditarod. The mushers mind is filled with the imagery that comes with exhaustion, but the sensation is so unusual that no musher wants to miss it.
“Ladies and gentleman, the Express is now leaving the outskirts of the city. Once our engines have warmed to operating temperatures, we will accelerate to near Mach l. Please attach seat belts.” The musher stands motionless on the runners. Occasionally, very carefully and quietly, so as not to destroy the magic that is brewing, the musher may jog behind the sled and then kick several times, maybe a few pushes with the right leg, then a couple with the left leg. A heavy, three, or 4000-kcal meal sits in each dog’s stomach.
After two miles, the walk is quicker and brisker and the team is somehow negotiating an agreed-upon speed. After five miles, the team is trotting and powerful. At six or seven miles, the train is to starting to move. Here, the musher speaks for the first time: “All right, welcome back. Let’s truck.” Here begins a phenomenal ride to Elim that takes the team off the ice, over a steep portage, and back down onto the beach all the way to Elim. Now the musher runs the hills, and shouts, “All right, hup!” The magic has happened. Sometimes the team is trotting so fast in unison it seems like it would be easier to drill right through a mountain than go over it. The engine is at full efficiency. Mushers who have known a trail-hardened team may count it as the ultimate in mushing. To travel with a team of animals that has become so resilient and tempered by the challenges of the trail, not to mention the months of training before the race, is worth the trip - regardless of the finish.