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"I Never Should Have Gotten Out of Dogs"

An Interview with Gary Paulsen

by June Price

11/01/2004

Wearing a borrowed parka and driving a borrowed sled, author/musher Gary Paulsen knew within 50 feet of getting on the runners that he'd be getting back into dogs.

"I was hooked," he declares. "I knew then I should have never gotten out of dogs."

The place was Spokane, Washington, and the event was the annual Shriners Hospital's Ikidarod. Paulsen was there at the behest of event organizers but had no plans to mush. Remember, he had gotten out of dogs.

Yet, at the end of the day, as spectators departed and mushers began to put their teams away, Paulsen found it impossible to resist an invitation to take a spin on the runners. One of the event's organizers, Cheri Hollenback, who is Director of Patient Care Services at Spokane's Children's Shriners Hospital and a musher herself, snapped a photo of Paulsen on the runners. Unknowingly, she had captured the moment he describes above.

Then, by sheer coincidence, Paulsen happened to be sitting in his publicist's office when the photos arrived attached to an E-mail. His publicist took one look at the photos and, according to Hollenback, told Paulsen, "Gary! This is the happiest I've ever seen you look!"

For anyone joining this story late, Paulsen is the well known author of a multitude of young adult novels, most particularly Woodsong. It's an account of the adventure of running dogs in Alaska. It's an inspiring story that has been cited by many, including this writer, as their introduction to the Iditarod.

Yet, his adult version of the same tale ends less inspiringly. Winterdance ends with Paulsen sitting in a doctor's office, being told he's going to have to choose between the dogs and life itself. He'd just received news that he suffered from heart problems and that the mushing lifestyle would kill him. At the conclusion of Winterdance, he's picking up a phone to call a friend and fellow musher, Mark Nordman. He asked Nordman to go pick up and remove every dog in his kennel save one, Cookie, immediately if not sooner. Cookie was his main leader, one whose photo Paulsen still carries in his wallet. Even while accepting that running dogs might kill him, Paulsen says he knew if the dogs were still there when he got home, he'd never be able to let them go. Hence, the call to Nordman, now Race Marshall for the Iditarod Trail Committee.

"I'd known Gary for a couple years," remembers Nordman. "I knew him from the '83 race. We're both from Minnesota, too, and that helped bring us together."

Why him and not someone else? "I'd like to think that the reason he called me instead of someone else is that he knew I'd take care of the dogs. It was a big undertaking to place those dogs and Gary wanted to make sure they were taken care of right."

It wasn't just the dogs, either. It was almost everything in the kennel. "We had to use two trucks and I wound up taking not just the dogs but the equipment, stakes, chains, and dog houses." There were about thirty dogs involved. Nordman had about the same number of dogs himself at that point but notes that it wasn't the hardship many might see it as being to take that many dogs without prior notice. "I've had up to sixty dogs, so it wasn't like it was something I hadn't done before or didn't know how to deal with."

Although Nordman no longer remembers where each specific dog eventually went, he says he ran some of them himself for some time and noted that there are probably some descendants of these very dogs racing in Minnesota somewhere. One that he called Spotty popped to mind but he evaluated them overall as a very nice team. He knew how hard it was for Paulsen to make the decision to give them up.

"It was such a heart felt kind of thing," he says again, returning to a phrase he used repeatedly as we talked. "It was hard to see somebody have to bail because of health and I knew how much of himself Gary had put into those dogs."

Now, almost two decades after finishing his first Iditarod, Gary Paulsen is back. With health issues in check, Paulsen has found a home with a dog lot in Alaska. He expects to arrive soon with dogs from the kennels of Rick Swenson, the Osmar family and Lloyd Gilbertson. Oh, yes, Paulsen is ready to tackle the Iditarod again.

He can't wait.

"How cold did you say it's getting down to at night?" he asked excitedly when I told him the temperatures in Wasilla, Alaska, where I was calling from, were beginning to consistently drop into the thirties overnight.

"Oh, man, I've got to get up there!"

Paulsen is speaking to me from Chicago. He's dog sitting his publicist's border collie. In addition to his growing dog team, he owns its brother and six other dogs, three of them Chihuahuas. All come from his local shelter.

He's in Chicago dealing with contract negotiations for his books. Dog fever or not, he's got to attend to business first.

"Most book contracts run for seven years," he explains. "After that, you have to re-negotiate." Given Paulsen's prolific writing, one has to assume he spends a great deal of time in negotiation.

"More than I'd like," he sighs. In addition to the negotiations, he's just spent a full day doing phone interviews . Paulsen has driven to Chicago from what he calls his "shack" in Minnesota where he's living with the dog team he's assembling and is looking forward to getting back to them. He may be in Chicago but his mind is obviously elsewhere.

"I'm 65 years old. I'm not going to be competitive, I know that," he admits, "but I'll do dogs from now until I die. Other than writing, they're the best things that ever happened in my life."

His heart problem controlled by the placement of stints, Paulsen hasn't exactly led a sedentary life since his frantic call to Nordman. He's done pack trips, spent seven or eight years sailing in the South Pacific and even sailed the Inside Passage. He's written a few books in between all this, some 175 total.

Ironically, it might have been his forced withdrawal from the mushing community that led to such proliferation. Paulsen has told several sources that when he lost the dogs, he began to put the same energy into his writing that he used to put into the dogs. As a result, his literary work has been extensive, including three Newberry Award winning novels for young adults: Hatchet, Dogsong, and The Winter Room. His books also appear frequently on the "best books" list of the American Library Association

Paulsen would be the first to admit that his success has ensured things will be different for him this Iditarod. "I won't have to be making my own harnesses this time," he joked, noting he'd even learned to make his own mukluks, a favored style of boot worn in frigid temperatures.

He won't be making his own boots this run, though. Although he says he's been contacted by at least one dog food company offering to sponsor him in exchange for the right to film his experiences, he's running without sponsors and isn't looking. For those who might have doubted his sincerity in returning to a race he helped make popular through his words, this is reassuring.

Will there be a book?

Did I even have to ask?

"I'd be lying if I said, ‘No,'" says Paulsen. Right now he envisions something along the lines of a post race book called The Kennel that will focus on learning life from the dogs. For right now, however, the dogs are the focus.

"I even hate to go indoors and leave them," he admits. Since he bought the house/kennel in Alaska sight unseen, he's reassured to hear that this reporter's vague memories of the place she'd visited some time ago indicate he'll only have to open a door to be with the dogs. He's as excited about his handler's dog Dash being "lead singer" as he is about his own, I might add. For anyone who's ever had the opportunity to hear how one dog can start that wonderful group howl, that's easily understandable.

Although his arrival date is vague, depending as much on snow as on such legal formalities as closing on a house, Paulsen says he expects to find about thirty dogs houses set up for the arrival of his dogs when he gets there. "That was part of the deal," he says, noting he has been asking far more questions about the dog lot and area trails then the home itself. "I once lived in a ‘plywood box' in Trapper Creek," he says, a comment making it obvious the house itself is the furthest thing from his mind.

Does he have any expectations? What does he expect to find has changed?

"I've been told the Trail is better," he says, "largely because it's far more groomed then when I ran. All it takes is one good storm and things change, tho'."

Since Happy River figured so largely in musher tales at the finishers' banquets in Nome this year (and most), I asked Paulsen what his memories were of that stretch.

He's succinct. "I was lucky to get out alive." He recalls a Japanese musher he was with, his sled in pieces , asking him how much farther to Nome at the bottom. Needless to say, the Japanese musher was seriously disappointed to hear most of the race still loomed ahead of them.

Much to my surprise, I suddenly find myself sharing some of the Red Lantern Banquet stories from last March with Paulsen, one of the best story-tellers around. As I talked, I could almost see his head nodding in agreement as he chuckled at Aaron Burmeister's story of somehow managing to wrap his sled around the top of a tree, his wheel dogs rear legs hanging in the air as they first looked at each other in amazement then, apparently each deciding the other was the cause of their dilemma, trying to fight. Paulsen, author of a well known young adult novel called Hatchet, however, just roared at the concept of a musher's sled finishing the race last year not held together by not much more then duct tape and the musher's mandatory axe. GB Jones, if you see yourself in one of Paulsen's future novels, now you know who to blame.

Sitting in Chicago, Paulsen's eager to talk dogs but it is also obvious his thoughts don't stray long from his own developing team. He ran all last winter with no health repercussions and is looking forward to his arrival in Alaska. Although he expects to have a solid team, he isn't expecting to be competition for most.

"This is a nostalgia run," he says, "not me trying to win the Iditarod." He once again emphasizes that he's back to stay, something the purchase of a kennel/home in Alaska seems to support.

Two of his current leaders, Myra and Goose, come from Gilbertson. Rusty, who he laughingly described as a "ditzy blonde," comes from Osmar lines as does Solomon. Another leader, two year old Flax, is from Swenson lines. Although he's still in the process of earning his own place as part of the team, the names Myra and Rusty came to his mind first when I asked which dog most reminded him of Cookie, his leader in the books Woodsong and Winterdance. It's still too early to tell, though, he emphasized.

"Dogs are an absolutely humbling experience," he said, a thought that echoed something Dee Dee Jonrowe had said to me in a previous interview. Jonrowe had noted that if you're in dogs long enough, you're going to be humbled, no matter who you are. In that case, we were focused on the actual race and talked about Doug Swingley's eye sight scare during the 2004 race.

For Paulsen, though one gets the impression it goes deeper. While race fans will be clamoring to meet famous author Gary Paulsen, the dogs don't care if you're famous or not. That is important to Paulsen the musher.

"Dogs are almost a religion to me," Paulsen once told Scholastic.com "They are the best thing that ever happened to the human race. Here is an animal that just loves. It doesn't give a darn who you are or what you are. It doesn't care if you're rich, if you're poor, if you're ugly. They just worship you and will do anything for you. They will lay down their lives for you."

For Paulsen, whose eloquence "The Cruelest Miles" co-author Gay Salisbury describes as "poetic," it's all about the dogs.

Mushing, being with the dogs, is "a state of primitive exhilaration," he declares. "I'll never be without them again."