Dorothy Mortenson of Alaska's Trails and Tails sat quietly at the kitchen table, perhaps reconsidering the wisdom of turning a legally blind woman loose with a team of their beloved sled dogs. "You have to understand, that these dogs are our family," said her husband Mark Newell.
The idea of teaching a visually-impaired person to mush intrigued the couple as a new and interesting challenge. As we sat at the table tossing around ideas, the fact that we had no instruction manual became increasingly apparent.
The first test came the next day when Mark hooked up a toboggan sled to a snowmobile and towed me through a section of curvy, tree-lined trail. My goal was to keep the sled a consistent distance from the snowmobile without allowing the connecting line (gang line) to become too slack. This is an essential skill for managing a real team as a slack gang line can lead to an injured dog. After receiving a thumbs-up from Mark, it was time to harness my team.
Dorothy acted as my guide by sitting backward on a snow mobile while talking to me over a two-way radio. This meant that Dorothy had to think in reverse, as her right was my left. This also meant that I could not ask questions or clarify instructions verbally since I had only an earphone.
"Gee," came Dorothy's voice in my ear. A few seconds passed before I remembered that "Gee" meant right turn and I was supposed to be telling the dogs. "Gee," I shouted a moment too late, after my team had taken matters into their own paws and made a sweeping right turn.
Dorothy's directions soon changed from, "it's getting a little weird here," to small pieces of clear, concise information. "Left turn...stand on your right runner...your lead dogs are starting up a hill now."
There were big smiles all around as we glided across the snow covered ice of Pirate Lake and came to a stop at Tokosha Mountain Lodge. It seemed that even the dogs were smiling at our success.
I soon fell in love with my little team of six. There was Cat and Bob, my mouthy wheel dogs (dogs closest to the sled), with their short, sharp barks. There was quiet Calvin who never said much of anything but always rose to the occasion with a calm steadiness. There was little Flurry, the only light colored dog on the team, and leaders Dusty and Cub, who actually stopped most of the time I asked them to.
We spent the next two days running the dogs up the frozen Tokositna River to view Denali (Mt. McKinley) and the Ruth Glacier. As I gained confidence and needed less direction, Dorothy added description of the surrounding landscape to her radio communications. Sometimes too, there were periods of silence followed by temporary panic that my radio had broken, until I again heard Dorothy's reassuring voice. I gradually became comfortable with these periods of radio silence with only the sounds of the wind and the sled runners in my ears.
"Are you ready for a rocket ride?" asked Dorothy, as my team was increased from six to eight dogs. Dorothy stood on the claw brake while I stood on the snow hook trying to hold the excited team until it was time to begin the final leg of my adventure. The team took their cue from the whine of the snowmobile and blasted across Pirate Lake without concern for my readiness.
"Slow them down," said Dorothy in a voice slightly less calm than usual. I wanted to scream, "I'm standing on the claw brake!" but knew that she would never hear me. A barrage of rapid-fire directions came over the radio as the team hit a stretch of trail winding through a stand of trees. The sled whipped up the trail to the sounds of "right turn...left turn," punctuated by an occasional "duck" as the sled passed a low branch.
A short time later the team crested the final hill into the sunshine and I brought the sled to a stop at the place where my mushing adventure had begun three days earlier. Dogs and musher all present and accounted for with the only casualty being a broken nail...mine!
"Do you think a visually-impaired person could run the Iditarod?" I asked as we said our good-byes. "You probably could," laughed Mark.
Hmmm...First visually-impaired woman to compete in the Iditarod. Has a nice ring to it don't you think?