August 8, Adventures in Fairbanks

Note: For readers here who may not have heard about all of my plans for the Alaska trip, let me explain that Mary Shields is truly a legend in her own time. She was the first woman to complete the Iditarod, doing this the second year of the race, 1974. Then, when the Yukon Quest was started about a decade later, she also completed it several times, the first woman to do that as well. Of course I had to see her!

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I called Mary Shields while I was eating breakfast and she could get me into a tour today so I decided to strike while the proverbial iron was hot. I already knew the way for the most part but asked directions again. Turned out I had passed her sign and gone too far up the last road yesterday but today I found it easily.

  

Mary herself is precious, a kind of hippie grandmother, but this  lady has done some fantastic things. Back in 1974 she decided it would be fun to run the brand new Iditarod mostly because it was a chance to cover a whole lot of new territory with her sled and dogs! At the start in Anchorage some spectator shouted to her to turn around now and stop while she could. She got her dander up and thought no darn way! So she ran the whole thing, finished in the middle of the pack just ahead of her frenemy, Lolly Medley, (the two were the first women to attempt and complete the race)  Mary then turned around and mushed back over half way home until the thawing Yukon stopped her and she had to be flown the rest of the way. She has also done the Yukon Quest and a special international trek across the Bering Straits to kind of commemorate the migration of the early people from Asia to the western hemisphere.

She came out from Wisconsin to work for the Campfire Girls one summer in the early sixties before she finished college; the next year she stayed. She decided she wanted to build a cabin and live in the woods but ended up rehabbing an old existing cabin and staying there for a while about half way down the train track to the Denali Park but then ended up in the Fairbanks area.She now has a gorgeous log cabin that is more of a neat, modern house inside but made of huge birch logs a foot or so in diameter. It also has a sod roof with wild berries growing on it! I took one shot outside but felt it would be too intrusive to take pix inside. She also has a beautiful flower garden with some veggies mixed in that is her pride and joy. I am just blown away by the flowers up here. They are astounding—everywhere you go.

She still keeps four dogs and may try for a litter in the spring with one female and keep a pup or two since one of the four is getting old and she has lost three the last two years, She still takes them out camping in the winter and drives them several times a week in the winter as well. She has a heavy old style sled she uses most, not a racing sled. She is also boarding three pups, litter mates, for a friend and they are terrors but adorable.

She has twenty acres up in the hills above town, about eight miles out by my rough figures, but most of it is in woods. It is peaceful and serene. There are neighbors but not wall to wall. I’m not sure I could do the winters—she says there is about four hours of sun in the midwinter time. That would bother me more than the cold, I think in truth.

But she is an amazing lady and full of incredible stories, very warm and caring and a confirmed ecologist or preservationist. I’m not sure what her major was in college but likely something related to that as it began to become popular when she and I were at that age—we are a bit over a year apart. Now she is not anti-racing per se but does feel too many resources are spent on it and it is far too commercial and such. In a way I have to  agree even if it has totally captured my fancy for some time now.

We discussed time. She took twenty eight days to go the route in 1974. She attributes most of the speed now to the breeding programs with more speed and less lugging "tractor power" in the dogs and some of the technology applied. That makes sense to me.

When I got back to the hostel in the afternoon and checked my email, I had a confirmation from Aliy ZIrkle to visit Skunk's Place, her kennel, on Sunday. It has been in the mid 70s today and a bit breezy. Fantastic weather although not so good for sled dogs. They tend to be pretty lethargic and no one runs them when it is warm.

Here is a shot of Mary, one of her cabin, one in the dog yard and one of her flowers!