AGAINST THE WIND

MEADOW LAKES – Just as the original sled dogs of the Iditarod were in a race to save young lives, local musher Jesse Beebe and his wife Jenny are running against time to save their own.

Both battling cancer and neither carrying health insurance, they are doing what they can to make money, stay warm and chase a dream that refuses to die.

“You just can’t shrivel up in a ball and say the heck with it. You’ve got to go after it,” Beebe, 55, said of his determination to run the Iditarod once again. “If your heart is good, the good Karma will touch you. I know I’ll get back in the race one day. It’s only a matter of time.”

The two have been living in a gutted tour bus parked on the northeast corner of Pittman Road and the Parks Highway for the past few months. They use a rented log cabin and the space in front of the bus to sell clothing and other items they’ve acquired from storage locker auctions in Anchorage.

Although many of the clothes have never been worn and some carry high-end labels, they only charge $35 maximum for any item and mostly only $5 or $10.

“There are some really nice clothes here,” said Jenny, who raised nine children during her former 30-year marriage before that husband passed away in 2007 and prompted her to move back to Alaska, where she was born and raised. “We’re practically giving them away. Some of them still have their original tags. It’s just a matter of getting people out here to see what’s here.”

It’s all part of their plan to try to scrape up enough funds to once again enter the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, which costs $4,000 just to sign up.

The former Wisconsin dairy farmer even has 20 sled dogs housed on 160 acres of Point MacKenzie land owned by his mother-in-law that he takes on 100-mile runs five days a week to keep them fit.

It’s been seven years since he attempted the 1,000-mile race, getting as far as Rainy Pass, but he’s placed second and third in shorter races over the years and guided several of his eight children in junior races, he said.

It was the lure of the Iditarod that caused him to abandon his successful dairy business in the first place and head north to try to make it as a general contractor in Alaska, he said.

“I have a dog team that’s phenomenal,” he said. “My failure to complete the race in 2004 was all my fault. It wasn’t the dogs. Now every year I want to sign up for it, but I just haven’t had the funds to get it together. My priorities haven’t been in order.”

He was even married to famous musher Joe Reddington Sr.’s granddaughter several years ago, but the 20-year age difference and internal family feuds eventually took their toll and they divorced in 2007.

“I didn’t get a tattoo until I was 50 and by the time that relationship was done, I had them all over the place,” he said with a laugh. “That and my long hair makes some people think I’m a druggie or something, but I never even smoked pot.”

To make matters even tougher, Beebe was diagnosed with colon and prostate cancer about a year ago. He also suffers from Crohn’s disease, which is an inflammatory disease of the intestines.

He said his scruffy looks and lack of insurance cause most doctors to wave him off.

“Most of them won’t even give me the time of day,” he said. “But what can I do? I can’t just give up.”

To fight off the pain, he tries to keep busy with the dogs, cutting and selling firewood from the Point MacKenzie property, and helping Jenny make a few bucks with their roadside flea market.

But Jenny is fighting her own health battles.

The 50-year-old former Florida resident underwent emergency surgery about 15 years ago to remove her reproductive organs and two-and-a-half feet of her intestines to stave off cancers threatening to shorten her life.

“That freaked me out,” she said. “I thought I was invincible. I had to spend a year in the hospital before I could even go home.”

She’s also dealing with hereditary osteoporosis, which often leaves her body stiff and in pain.

Jenny’s eyes filled with tears as she looked back on her life, wishing she’d spent more time with her father before he passed away from Alzheimer’s disease a few years ago. He used to own a welding shop right across the street from where she’s camped at Mile 48.5 of the Parks Highway, she said.

But she and her husband are thankful for what they do have – a warm place to sleep, most of their grown children nearby, and something to look forward to as they work to fulfill Jesse’s dream of finishing the Iditarod.

“We do all right for ourselves,” she said. “We don’t want anyone feeling sorry for us. I feel lucky that we found each other a couple of years ago and are there for each other, no matter what.”

Jesse said he feels most at peace when he’s riding behind his dogs near the Big Susitna River, hearing nothing but the cold wind swish past the sled as the runners slice through the snowy tracks.

“I still have this hope,” he said as he tossed his long, black hair behind his broad shoulders. “I’ll get there. I know I will. I just have to have faith.”

Contact K.T. McKee at kate.mckee@frontiersman.com or 352-2252.