Off the Cuff / My Other Journal

Susan Butcher

Today's News: "Four-time Iditarod winner Susan Butcher died Saturday Aug 4"

Susan Butcher was the Iditarod Champ, the one woman who made the 1152 mile grueling trip from Anchorage to Nome several times and won four times, but more than that she was a woman who loved all animals and the wilderness and she fought for animal rights. That she won other sledding races, that she knew more about dogs, especially huskies, than a professor at a veterinary school and that she shook off gender discrimination is not as well known as her four Iditarod championships in 1986, 1987, 1988, and 1990.

It was my husband who told me about Susan Butcher first. At the time, in the eighties I believe, I was too wrapped up in my life. I didn't even know exactly what Iditarod was, although I had been aware of a crazy race up there in Alaska where some bored crazy locals participated in and made a big deal out of it. But then Susan Butcher changed my views and she taught me one valuable lesson, that risk taking is an asset for success.

During a race, she not only fought alone with the Alaskan wilderness, enduring 100 m.p.h. winds, artic blizzards, snow blindness, wild animals, thin ice, sleep deprivation, and avalanches, but also she responsibly kept up with her dogs' needs along the way.

Susan Butcher was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1957. After graduating from high school in 1972, she went to live to Boulder, Colorado where she became a veterinary technician, and then, she moved to Alaska in 1975 to take up residence in a small cabin in the Wrangell Mountains, where she stayed in isolation while training a dog team.

Although Susan Butcher was dyslexic, she didn't dwell on her disability and she created a very special life for herself.

A few quotes from Susan Butcher:

"I think we all experience self-doubt. I am not going to tell you that I don't have insecurities or low self-esteem sometimes. But "self-doubt" -- what that word means to me -- I really don't remember experiencing."

"I lived alone for nine years following my dream. There were some very lonely times; there were some very difficult times. I was often living alone, with my closest neighbor forty miles away. It was tough times for me. But I was never discontented."

"Perhaps we don't have all the right answers because this takes a lot of study, but we can see that a balance (in nature) is necessary. This is what mother nature put on earth, an incredibly beautiful balance. We have im-balanced it. We have to re-balance it."

"Your sense that you have to rely completely on yourself, that there are no people to turn to, is an incredibly satisfying feeling. And once you become content with it, I think that people would find that they have a whole lot more self-esteem and self-confidence that is built by knowing that you can depend on yourself and not on somebody else."

" It never did occur to me that this was something a woman shouldn't do. There were no competitive women racing at that time in long distance racing. We have sixty to seventy mushers every year, and more than half of them go on a camping trip to complete the course. There were three women who had completed it by the time I started, but I had a very different idea, and wanted to go in there competitively because I had a very strong competitive nature. I was astounded and very unhappy my first year, when I found that there was some resistance from my fellow mushers because I was a woman."

"My relationship (to dogs) is extremely close. They are my friends, my family, and my workmates. They get my attention around the clock. They are of total importance to me because--certainly during those years that I lived alone--they were often my only friends."

"I do not know the word "quit." Either I never did, or I have somehow abolished it from my language."

""A less common danger, but nonetheless very serious, is the moose. The wolves are simply curious. They never cause us any problems. The bears, except for the polar bears, are in hibernation, and most of the polar bears are much further north than where we race. So the only danger for us really is the moose and the buffalo. But we only run through one herd of buffalo on the way to Nome. The moose generally run away from a dog team but occasionally they will somehow feel entrapped, and they feel they have to run toward you, and in essence, through the dog team. That has probably happened to me three or four times. No serious injuries to the dogs, none to me. Only minor injuries.
In 1985, I was traveling alone at night in the lead of the race and ran into an obviously crazed moose. She was starving to death. There was something wrong with her. She was just skin and bones. And rather than run away, she turned to charge the team. I thought she would just run through me. I stopped the team, threw the sled over. She had plenty of room to pass us along the trail. She came into the team and stopped. She just started stomping and kicking the dogs. She charged at me. for twenty minutes, I held her off with my ax and with my parka, waving it in her face. And finally, another musher came along and we shot her, but not before she had killed two of my dogs, and she injured thirteen others, leaving me to scratch from the race. She bruised my shoulder. We spent the next two weeks at a veterinary hospital, saving the lives of the injured dogs."

Susan Butcher earned her many awards, including the "National Women's Sports Foundation Amateur Athlete of The Year Award" and the "Tanquerey Athlete of the Year." She also won the "U.S. Victor Award" for Female Athlete of the Year two years in a row.

In 2005, she was diagnosed with acute myelogenous leukemia and died yesterday (August 5, 2006) from complications following a bone marrow transplant. She is survived by her two daughters, Tekla and Chisana, and her husband, David Monson.

I am sad because I feel she was still young at 51 and she could have given us so much more, had she lived.

Susan Butcher, may she rest in peace, was truly a role model.