Iditarod race is steeped in history

March 27, 2005

Out in the field/Joel Davidson

Earlier this month, at age 30, I boarded a fully booked 737 and flew to Nome to cover the Iditarod. It was my first trip to that storied gold boom town, where Wyatt Earp once walked the boardwalks with a pistol strapped to his side.

I'd heard about the place, the legendary serum run that saved countless Nome children from a deadly diphtheria outbreak and I knew the town was crawling with international media teams and Mardi Gras-type celebrations.

After three-and-a-half days of non-stop activity, I flew out of Nome with a different understanding of the Iditarod. It's much more than an internationally acclaimed 1,049-mile dogsled race.

The day after the top 20 mushers crossed the finish line, I sat in a large warehouse building at the end of Front Street in downtown Nome. It was the official media center and central gathering point for mushers, volunteers and journalists.

The building contains one long room, filled with plastic tables and folding chairs. Vendors sold Iditarod memorabilia, hot dogs and snacks and there was usually a steady stream of people moving through, especially in the hours just before and after the first racers pulled into town.

I sat in the back of the building, e-mailing several articles and photos back to Wasilla. After typing the final words and sending my story, I gathered my equipment and turned to leave. As I stepped away from the computer terminals, with a camera bag, lap top and backpack all strapped and hanging from my body, I spotted veteran Iditarod musher, Charlie Boulding. This year's race Iditarod was his 13th and final, but about a week into the race, his dogs got sick and he had to scratch.

Boulding sat at one of the plastic tables, surrounded by four young men who looked like dog-handlers or race volunteers. The young guys must have sat with Boulding for a while. They shared a laugh, stood and shook "Mr. Boulding's" hand, telling him how honored they were. The group then walked away, leaving 62-year-old Boulding with long white beard and shaggy braided locks sitting at the table alone. He is the picture of an Alaskan frontiersman.

My fascination with Boulding goes back about 12 or 13 years, when my youngest brother drew his name from a hat as part of a school project. For 10 days, my brother watched nightly news broadcasts with pen and paper in hand, while his older brothers teased him about being a Charlie Boulding groupie.

Despite our mockery, he faithfully documented Boulding's progress and by the end of the race, the whole family was pulling for the grizzled musher, as my brother studiously updated his school report.

Since then, Boulding has become a family celebrity, on par with other family legends like Larry Bird, Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan.

Seeing Boulding at the table, I immediately thought of those evenings watching the nightly news. I thought of interviewing him or taking photos but decided against it. I wanted to meet him man to man, no strings attached.

I walked up, introduced myself and shook Boulding's hand. For the next 45 minutes, the two of us sat at that table, reclined in our folding chairs and talked about the history of dog mushing, Boulding's subsistence lifestyle and how he wound up becoming a musher.

He talked about using dogs to help haul logs when he first built a cabin along the Tanana River and ventured into stories about why dogs became smaller and faster since the Iditarod's earlier years.

Boulding was an athlete but also an amateur historian of "The Last Great Race" and the dog-mushing culture that surrounds it.

My encounter with Boulding was indicative of my stay in Nome. The streets, museums, bars and restaurants were full of living legends who helped shape and define the Iditarod.

Two days before the first mushers came in, one of the Iditarod founders, Howard Farley, talked to a group of people in the Nome museum.

He said the Iditarod is different from all other sled-dog races because it embodies Alaskan history, not only by commemorating the 1925 serum run but also by all the other stories about dog mushing, the Alaska Gold Rush, the first telegram systems and Alaskan Native cultures that surround the race itself.

The Iditarod is certainly an exciting sporting event but it's also an annual event that, if explored, still reveals countless characters and events from the past that helped define our state.

It's not often that a popular athletic competition transfers history to younger generations but for ages, people have connected to their homeland through the stories and heroes of the past. Teachers and parents would do well to instill an appreciation of the Iditarod into younger Alaskans. In the end they might find a hero, either past or present, who could inspire a sense of history and pride in their storied state.