My wife's adventurous spirit

We may have three feet of snow in our backyard but the start of the Iditarod says spring has arrived.

It happens every year at this time and the abundance of white stuff may give the impression that winter is still with us, but the calendar says the warm season is upon us.

The ceremonial start will be at 10 a.m. on Saturday in Anchorage. The official start and the real race takeoff will be at 2 p.m. Sunday in Willow and eight days or so later the first team should be arriving in Nome. Things could be held up somewhat if the weather is dicey but Alaska’s mushers and their dogs are fairly predictable.

Not much can delay the Sunday start unless the weather is problematic enough that heading off on the thousand-mile trail to Nome would endanger the dogs. The one thing that is generally predictable is that the decisions will be made in the best interest of those noble creatures that pull their sleds on that long long route.

This year’s event will be the 50th running of the Iditarod, a uniquely Alaskan athletic event. And heading off on the long road to Nome is one of our state’s greatest adventures.

I’ve never been tempted to join the mushers largely because the most dogs I’ve ever had was two. And those were not likely to be competitive racers. Right now my wife and I have one dog, a very likable goldendoodle who would almost certainly show me her toenail if I suggested we consider recruiting some of her friends to join us on such a trip.

The Iditarod is one of Alaska’s great traditions and is a tribute to the historic role sled dogs have played in our outdoor-oriented state. Dog teams were once a critical piece of Alaska’s transportation infrastructure many years before the first musher tried to race others on the long route to our northwest coast.

But in the early days there was indeed a strong sense of competition. Men, and most of them were men, were drawn north after gold was discovered on the beaches of Nome in 1899. Though the numbers of people drawn to that part of Alaska before the discovery were minimal, they swelled to more than 20,000 in the summer of 1900.

I would like to say that gold had something to do with my own arrival here in 1967. That is to say a small golden band on the finger of my wife Marnie. We tied the knot the year before and almost settled down in Massachusetts.

We actually put money down on a house in Massachusetts but my wife’s adventurous spirit led us to getting our money back and heading out for the Far North. It occurred to us both that we would be tying ourselves down permanently in the East before we had really seen anything outside New England, a fate that didn’t seem all that attractive.

She asked me where I would like to go before settling down and I, because I love the outdoors, said either Alaska or Australia, both of which offer great wild country. Since you could drive to Alaska — a trip including an arduous thousand-mile stretch of the then-unpaved Alaska Highway — we decided on Alaska.

Bob Atwood, the late publisher of The Anchorage Times, had once worked at the same Massachusetts newspaper where we were then working. I wrote him a letter applying for a job, he made me an offer and we were on the road as fast as we could close things out in New England.

We were on the road for two months and arrived in Anchorage just before Labor Day weekend in 1967. We have been here ever since and never given serious thought to leaving. Alaska is one of America’s great places and those who experience it generally have a difficult time moving away.

We are here because my wife had the spirit of adventure that allowed us to fulfill one of our greatest dreams.

Tom Brennan is an Anchorage columnist and author of six books. He was a reporter/columnist for The Anchorage Times and an editor and columnist at The Voice of The Times.