By Linda Kal Sander
Finalist, 2010 Target® Teacher on the Trail
You’ve heard the stories of turning 40. Buy a sport’s car or boat, bungee jump, or get a tattoo. But run the Iditarod? One of the interesting statistics about this event is that more people have scaled Everest than completed the Iditarod. What made Lisa Frederic’s midlife journey even more compelling is that it became the dream of a beautiful 42 year-old woman. To hear her tell it, an awkward woman.
In 1998 Lisa traveled to Nome just because she had a cheap airline ticket. Thought it would be a cool thing to do. That trip changed her life. She became obsessed with the Iditarod. Shortly thereafter, she became a volunteer and soon became embraced in what she affectionately calls the Iditarod family. Now she has completed the Iditarod, written a book, and was at our Winter Iditarod Educator’s Conference speaking about it. Getting to Alaska is just the first part of anyone’s Iditarod dream, and she welcomed us to the start of our dreams.
“Just do it. Whatever it is,” says Lisa.
She read several poignant sections from her book. She has an easy poetic style that draws the reader in and makes us want to root for her. Her descriptions are so vivid; the imagined picture in your head becomes clearly focused. She has a way of transporting you to the noise of a dog yard, the silence of the perfect run, and the wincing pain of a near fatal collision.
Knowing that somehow she had to learn more about sled dogs, she sent out letters to several mushers asking them if she could have a job handling for them. She got a two-month job working with Jeff and Donna King in Denali. Even though she did the most menial tasks, it was her hope that she would one day get to run the dogs. She was only permitted to run the pups at first until she learned how to handle a more mature team. This was the start she needed.
Sitting on the back of a sled, a musher has to learn the body language of the team. There are a million things to learn about the different moods of the dogs in front of you. Oh, and you have to do it without looking at their face. The only view you have from the back of the sled is the back of the dog. So, with little prior experience, Lisa had to learn to read a dog’s tail.
When her two months at the Kings was over, she returned to Uganik on Kodiak Island. She may have quickly settled in to her usual routine, but she was constantly called back to the dogs and reapplied to work with King and his kennel. Although she wondered for a few days upon her return what the heck she was doing there again, when the first snow fell and she felt the excitement of the dogs, she knew she had made the right decision. She was offered the job of taking a young dog team to Nome. This wasn’t about racing. It was about teaching the future champions of the Iditarod what they would experience out on the trail. As scared as she was about the prospect of being out on the Iditarod Trail, she knew she couldn’t back out. All the horror stories of rough weather, trail hazards, and tremendous isolation from all she had come to know and love screamed in her head to back out. The risk assessment seemed too great. Undaunted, she persevered.
Training yielded many bruises and lost teams. These dogs grow up knowing that you will feed them when they are hungry and let them rest when they are tired. They rely on you. They trust you. Her greatest fear was that her dogs would get caught up in a gang line, or wrapped around a tree. The trust of these dogs was a bond she could not afford to sever. The safety of her dogs was paramount. This kept her up at night.
In the end, it was an adventure of a lifetime. At the age of 42 in the 2002 Iditarod, Lisa Frederic ran the Last Great Race on Earth and placed 47th. Reaching Nome was bittersweet. She didn’t want it to end. All she could muster after passing the burled arch was a whisper to Jeff King, “Thank you.”
Not all mid life journeys are created equal. Lisa Frederic’s Iditarod journey is one that you read about and think, “Could I do that? Would I be that be brave?” I can relate to Lisa on a personal level in that I too am having a bit of a mid life crisis. Why on earth would a girl from South Florida want to brave the Arctic elements, fly on a bush plane across the Alaska Range or along the mighty Yukon, and become the 2010 Target Teacher on the Trail? I hope that I really don’t have to explain.
