mushing uphill

“I think I’m hallucinating. I swear I can see butterflies everywhere,” my younger sister Annie told me over the phone. “But I know that’s not possible.”

Annie, 29 at the time, was calling from the back of a sled hitched to a team of nine dogs as they raced along a trail. Finally in cell service range, she called for company during her final 50-mile stretch of the 2021 Iditarod, the premiere race for dogsledders which traverses over 1,000 miles of the Alaskan wilderness. After nine days of sleeping outside in temperatures dipping below -60 Fahrenheit, she’d never sounded happier (or more in need of medical attention). While sleep deprivation-induced hallucinations were temporary, her left thumb was very much frostbitten and to this day, numbness lingers in the tips of her fingers.

How did my baby sister – just as much a product of a nondescript Massachusetts suburb as I am – end up driving dogsleds for a living? I moved less than 50 miles away from our hometown and have spent the past 11 years working at the same university. In the same span, Annie’s managed a volunteer program in Denver, cut trails in Montana, taken Boy Scouts on dogsled tours in Minnesota, and studied marine life in the Galapagos. Annie (whose full name is Susannah) graduated from Saint Michael’s College in Vermont in 2015, and just kept moving west.

During a visit to Alaska in early 2024, I ask her how this all happened. As we drive a breathtaking snow-covered route with Denali looming against a brilliant blue sky, she gives me a few rehearsed sentences about moving to work for a company on the Mendenhall Glacier in Juneau. I probe further, and she thinks for a second. There was a fellow musher, she says, that ran dogs with her back when she was working in Minnesota. He bragged about his time on the Mendenhall. “He was like ‘Oh, it's so hard, like you could never do it.’...and I was just like, ‘Well, then I will.’ And so, I did.” Annie landed in Juneau in 2018 and has moved seasonally between towns in Alaska, working as a dog musher ever since.

Many mushers, my sister included, work as handlers for others’ kennels given the extreme costs of maintaining dogs (one kennel estimates a $21,000+ price tag for a single Iditarod entrant). For most, working in dogsled tourism is the only real pathway to the trails. It’s not a job people take on for money, and Annie’s devotion is clear. “I would literally die for my dogs, and I think any good musher would say the same.”

Alaskan huskies are built to run, and it is commonly believed in Alaska that it would be cruel to deny them their genetics. DNA and archaeological evidence published in the journals Science and Journal of Archaeological Science suggest that the relationship between sled dogs and humans may date back more than 9,000 years. Dogsledding remains a tradition rooted in indigenous communities’ migration and survival. Out on the trail with her team, though, Annie recognizes that in the moment, “I am the reason they’re there.” She feels a great responsibility to protect her pups.

According to Annie, dogs are vulnerable by default. There is an inherent human-canine power dynamic, and it’s important to be conscious as a musher. To keep pups safe, she notes the importance of things as basic as kennel size. “It costs time and money...resources [can] get taken away from the whole group if you have too many [dogs].” Taking individual characteristics into account is critical, too. In the relatively rare cases that a dog from a sled dog bloodline doesn’t love to race – or when they are ready to retire – they are typically adopted out as pets. Annie has two of her own retired sled dogs now, Ruby (3) and Orion (15). Orion has run the Iditarod multiple times and Annie adopted him from a fellow musher. “She wanted to keep him forever because she really loved him, but that was a great example, I think, of responsible rehoming.”

“I would literally die for my dogs, and I think any good musher would say the same.”

Power imbalances show up on the trail in other ways, too. Mushing is a male-dominated sport; the year my sister raced in the Iditarod, only 27% of competitors were women. “I have so many thoughts...and I don’t really know how to articulate it,” she says. “Because it also [relates to] the overarching problem of domestic violence and mistreatment of women – and honestly, murder of women – in Alaska, especially in rural villages.” 2017 data analyzed by the Violence Policy Center show Alaska having the highest homicide rate for female victims killed by a male perpetrator in the nation. The problem is magnified further for indigenous women; a 2016 National Institute of Justice-funded study found that four in five Alaska Native women have experienced violence in their lifetime.

Sexism and misogyny exist everywhere, but, Annie says, “It just feels more real at times because you are looking at legit survival situations out here.” Isolated living conditions – many Alaskans live completely off the road system – can exacerbate existing risk factors. For victims of abusive relationships, “you're alone in the woods, you rely on each other for basic survival. Heat, food, hauling water, all those things like that make life possible off-grid. You might not have cell service if you need to call for help. If you do, it's going to take hours for someone to get to you.” Beyond concern for physical safety, a huge threat is “getting help before [the abuser] has managed to talk you out of it...convincing you that you were wrong and everything's fine and it's actually your fault.”

Annie and her female friends have talked about looking outside of the mushing community for answers. “It's not that unique, unfortunately...we're just kind of getting the ‘Me Too’ movement a little bit later than the rest of society.” Asked what she’d advise other young women – or even her younger self – she says, “There’s a lot [to be said] for being able to fall back on yourself and yourself alone...I think that there's a lot of power to that. Some of the most badass women I know out here are tough as hell.”

“I kind of did it as a ‘screw you, yes I can.’”

I count her as one of those tough-as-hell women. We remain incredibly close despite the distance, but it can be hard to keep in touch. On harder days, I miss her so much and wonder what drove her away. Was she tired of us? Did she need to wedge thousands of miles between her and her hometown?

Only recently has it occurred to me that maybe she was pulled, rather than pushed. I understand the feeling of being compelled to pursue something you love. Like a sled dog, maybe she was born to chase, to pull forward, to wield her own strength in seemingly impassible conditions. “It makes me feel good to turn around and feel like I can take that power back from somebody saying, ‘you can’t do that.’ Doing things to prove people wrong isn't necessarily the best reason to do stuff...but it feels really good.”