Beargrease #1

At the risk of looking, as Cher would put it, like a sister wife, I bought and intend to wear an insulated black skirt with my parka and mukluks tomorrow. The locals in their Carhartt overalls might snicker but I’m going for it. Tomorrow is the start of the 2018 Beargrease Sled Dog Marathon in Duluth, Minnesota. And we are here because where else would we be?

Tonight at the Mushers’ Banquet, a black hoodie event, I stood in the spaghetti line next to a very tall, young woman with giant rubber-booted feet peeking out from beneath her insulated skirt. I stared at her feet until my husband, Howard, nudged me, “She asked what brought you here.” I laughed and pointed to him. “He did. He brought me here.” She asked if he was a musher. No, he said, unbuttoning his flannel shirt to show a t-shirt that said, Yes, I do having a retirement plan, I plan on dog sledding. She reached over to pull the flannel shirt more open so she could read all the whole t-shirt. It was a curious and sweet thing at the same time. Later, reading her bio in the race program, I realized she was the author of a book sitting on my nightstand at home.

The couple sitting across from us told us they’d been volunteering at the race for twenty-five years. They’d been vet assistants, which was their favorite job, but got let go in favor of veterinary students. That was ten years ago but the words still stung, I could tell. They’d loved that job, now they took the dinner tickets. But still they were there. After a while, the woman bought me a program as a gift. I think it was because I asked her advice about watching the race and listened when she told me.

I love sled dog racing because men and women compete as equals. There’s no men’s category or women’s category. In the Mid-Marathon (120 miles), there are so many women, I entertained the dread that people would stop liking sled dog racing because there were fewer men in it. It was a sick little medieval thought that my feminist self quickly dashed. Of course, sled dog racing would still be popular if it was all women. Like women’s basketball.

The Marathon portion of the race has only eleven racers, only two of them women, including the author with big shoes to fill. They will race 400 miles along the shore of Lake Superior, no walk in the park as the announcer said. One of the Marathon racers is Ryan Redington, grandson of the founder of the Iditarod, “racing royalty,” Howard called him as he leaned over and asked for his autograph, and then he pushed back his chair and took off after two women mushers from Michigan. That Howard, he’s an autograph hound, you see, going after all the best mushers.

My favorite picture of the night, which is blurry because I enlarged it to get all the spectating heads out of the way, is of this musher with his baby. You can’t see it here but the musher’s cheeks were bright red as if he’d come off the trail five minutes before. He had that look of exhilaration and pure joy that you feel skiing through a pine forest and you see tiny rabbit tracks in the snow. I envied him until I remembered I’ve felt that way before.