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"It’s Like a Dance..."

Gary Paulsen shares his life and Iditarod adventures with the Iditarod Teacher’s Workshop, 3-4-2005

by June Price

03/10/2005

My first Iditarod was in 2000. I had come up to attend the Iditarod’s Teacher Workshop, then in its infancy. One of my most distinct memories was of Diane Johnson, that year’s Teacher on the Trail speaking about a hatchet she’d been given. She eloquently connected it to "Hatchet," a book on survival despite the odds by Gary Paulsen. Like me, not to mention countless others, Gary Paulsen’s "Woodsong" was our introduction to the race. We credit Gary Paulson with changing our lives forever. At that point, however, I’m inclined to say neither Diane, who’s become a friend, nor I had any genuine dreams of ever meeting Gary Paulsen in person. It just seemed too much to hope for. That changed this year.

My first encounter with Gary was when I interviewed him last fall for the Iditarod’s web site. (story can be found under Archived News) Despite my occasional air of "been there, done that" approach to talking to mushers, I have to admit to a certain amount of giddiness at the opportunity to talk to Gary on the phone. Let’s just say, I was pacing, unable to make myself sit still, waiting for the phone to ring. That’s not normal.

Meeting him in person, of course, was an extra perk. As silly as it sounds, it was a real rush to hear myself being hailed at the restart and turn around and see it was Gary calling my name. He was just about to fly out to Skwentna with musher - pilot Rick Horstmann but took the time to stop, yell at me to stop and chat. I say this not to make myself seem important, simply to indicate how down to earth Gary Paulsen is. I’m proud to say I consider him a friend. He’s someone I’d like to sit around a campfire with someday and just listen to spin stories.

He did just that the day before the race started, albeit in the Millennium Hotel without the campfire. It didn’t matter. The teachers and race fans there were spellbound. Gary Paulsen is a natural storyteller and it showed.

Gary opened his reminiscences by reviewing his life. Although it’s well known that his childhood wasn’t good, reading it and hearing it from his own mouth are two different things.

"That library card with my name was the first time I had an identification of my own," he recalls. He’d slipped into the local library to warm up and been befriended by the town librarian. Unfortunately, he can’t remember he name of the book he walked out of the library with that day but admits that it was probably an easy reading type because he wasn’t a good reader at the time. He says he would read a few pages and have to go back and reread them to take it all in. He noted that even today he doesn’t read authors, he reads stories.

Of course, the simple action of getting a library card didn’t magically transform his life. He was still living the life of a child of alcoholics and enduring all that comes with that. He joined the army "50 years ago this year" and took a job in the fledgling aerospace industry after his discharge. He was involved in the launch of the first spy satellite tracking station.

"Out of the blue one night," he remembers, "I decided I was going to write." He packed his company car and drove it to California where he promptly left it. He began applying for jobs in writing and jokes that his resume of the time was "my first piece of fiction." Those familiar with his tale know he was given a chance to write but perhaps not how much he got caught up in the Hollywood lifestyle.

"I didn’t drink all the way through the army," he notes. "I’d seen what it did to my family." Yet, for reasons perhaps even he can’t understand, Gary Paulsen fell in with the crowd surrounding the likes of actor Dennis Hopper and didn’t write for ages. He did drink, however.

"It was bad. Very bad," he states flatly.

May 5, 1973, was a momentous day for him. It’s the day he quit drinking. He openly admits that he’s a recovering alcoholic and attends Alcoholics Anonymous meetings twice a week. At the time, he was deeply in debt and signed a contract to write two books. Legal problems abounded. In an effort to sort out his affairs, he hired some lawyers who got the money, not him.

He fled to the wilderness. By now, he had a wife and young son. They moved into a lean-to in Minnesota with a barrel stove for heat. He was once again, or perhaps it’d be more accurate to say still in debt. He was forty years old.

In order to survive, he began running a trap-line on foot. Minnesota had passed a law saying it was illegal to use a four wheeler in the situation he found himself in, so he had no other option. That is, until a neighbor, a sprint musher, gave him a broken down old sled and four trap-line dogs. Unfortunately, none were leaders so he found himself still walking, only this time with a rope tied around his waist, acting as lead dog. His life was about to change, however.

"I met a guy who gave me a sick dog," he remembers, a faraway look sneaking into his eyes. "He didn’t think she was going to live but it turned out that she just had worms." This dog was Cookie, the dog whose picture Paulsen still carries in his wallet.

Cookie started out in wheel position and slowly worked her way up to leader. From that point on, Gary Paulsen never looked back. There’s almost a wistful look in his eye as he remembers one vivid moment, one etched in his memory forever. It involved a full moon above the silently running dogs and a steam rising from them and almost crystallizing in the air, blocking his view of the dogs.

"It was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. It was like a dance," his term for the fine bond that forms between man and dogs. In fact, he wanted to relive that moment so much that as he approached home, he simply turned the team and disappeared into the wilderness with them for a week. No one knew where he was and he didn’t care. He’d fallen in love with the dogs.

One day, he told some friends, "I think I’ll run the Iditarod." He shakes his head. "I had no clue."

He also had no money and only the beginnings of a team. Much to his surprise, the community rallied around him and he suddenly found himself a musher with sponsors but no dog team, which he accumulated gradually. A neighbor gave him a ’60 Chevy truck, the same one shown in his book "Winterdance," to use as a dog truck.

"I used cafeteria trays for the floorboard," he recalls, "and one door was tied on with a bungee." The door fell off when they untied it. The trip from Minnesota to Alaska took eight days.

Somehow, against all odds, Gary Paulsen, without having ever run a sled dog race in his life, was about to run the Iditarod. At that time, you didn’t have to qualify to run the race. Instead, you had to find someone who would sign that you were capable. Paulsen obtained his signatures and soon found himself in downtown Anchorage about to run the Iditarod.

"Cookie thought I was insane," remembers Paulsen, recalling the noise and confusion. "So, I had a dog named Wilson that I decided to put into lead." Laughing at his own naivety, Paulsen recalls the teams ahead of him charge down the street and turn right. He even acknowledges telling Wilson to watch. "Wilson watched every one of those teams intently," he laughs, "watching them go down the street and turn right." Paulsen got a big laugh from the teachers as he described his theory that surely Wilson would figure it all out by observing how the others did it.

It didn’t work. "Wilson took off like a rocket and instead of turning right, took us right through the crowd." The team charged on through back streets and yards as Paulsen wildly tried to find something, anything, to set a snow hook in. He quickly discovered that street signs and car bumpers didn’t make good anchors and became totally lost.

"Do you know how embarrassing it is, wearing your Iditarod bib number, to have to ask someone, ‘Which way is the Iditarod?’"

Those who’ve read "Woodsong" or "Winterdance" will recall that this race was not an easy one for Paulsen. At one point, he found himself in the middle of nowhere about to repeat his pattern of walking away from things when they got bad.

"I was frustrated and walked away from the team. I must have gone a hundred yards before I turned around. I knew I couldn’t do it alone. I went back and talked with Cookie. ‘You’ve got to do it,’ I told her. She did."

Now true, being not just a sled dog but a leader, Cookie still had many lessons to teach her human. Paulsen recalls seeing tracks going into water and insisting that Cookie lead the team through it, for instance. After telling him in every way that she could that this was not a good idea, she gave in and lead the team through, emerging in a pout, stomping her wet feet as only a sled dog ticked at the stupidity of its human can, then bit him on the knee. Later, Paulsen discovered only one other team had taken this path. The rest had gone around. Had he listened to Cookie, he would have stayed dry and his knee intact.

Paulsen went on to finish that race but his mushing career was brief. He began suffering chest pains and was told to give up stressful activities.

"There was suddenly as eighteen hour hole in my day." The energy he’d given to running dogs fueled his writing and he’s one of the most prolific authors around. Iditarod fans, of course, know him from "Woodsong" and "Winterdance" but the book he’s most proud of is "Nightjohn," which began life when he started to research a series of slave chronicles in order to write a book on Sally Hemmings’ relationship with Thomas Jefferson.

As for his return to mushing, Paulsen says it began with a simple phone call. He was asked if he’d like to come up and sign some books during an event known as the Ikidarod. As the day wore on and organizers prepared to go home, he was asked another question, the one that ultimately brought him back to Alaska: "You wanna take a spin?" asked an organizer, waving at their own sled.

"I knew I was had," he laughs. Although his plans to run Iditarod 2005 didn’t pan out because of problems getting quality miles on the dogs - not to mention some interesting confrontations with moose that must have been auditioning for roles in his next book - Paulsen says he’s here to stay, reaffirming his determination to run the Iditarod again and perhaps even the Yukon Quest.

As I stood at the front of the room taking notes, I watched Diane watching Gary. She clutched the hatchet in her hand. She would have him autograph it after he spoke, bringing her full cycle. Just as it had happened with me, the words of Gary Paulsen had brought her to Alaska. Like Gary, Diane now runs dogs. Like Gary, I now write.

"Oh, great, another life I’ve ruined," joked Gary as I tried to verbalize it later. It’s a sentiment he’s obviously heard often. So, thanks for ruining my life, Gary. I wouldn’t have it any other way.