Summary

Polly Evans had a mission: to learn everything possible about the howling, tail-wagging world of sled dogs. Fool's errand? Or the adventure of a lifetime? The intrepid world traveler was about to find out. In the dead of winter, Polly Evans ventured to Canada's far northwest, where temperatures plunge to minus forty and the sun rises for just a few hours each day. But though she was prepared for the cold, she never anticipated how profoundly she'd be affected by that blissful and austere place. In a pristine landscape patrolled by wolves and caribou, the wannabe musher was soon learning the ropes of arctic dogsledding, careening across the silent tundra with her own team of yapping, leaping canines. Shivering but undaunted, Polly follows the tracks of the legendary Yukon Quest, a dogsledding race more arduous than the Iditarod, witnessing a life-and-death spectacle she'll never forget. Along the way she makes a stop at the Santa Clause house in North Pole, Alaska (where the post office delivers unstamped mail), and witnesses the astonishing northern lights weaving green and red across the sky. And before the snows melt in spring, Polly will have discovered a deep affection for the loving, mischievous huskies whose courage and enthusiasm escort her through the delights and dangers of living life at the extremein one of the most forbidding places on earth. From the Trade Paperback edition.

Author Biography

Polly Evans is very cowardly and not at all fond of danger. She does, however, have an unfortunate tendency to seek out discomfort and sometimes even downright pain, the result of which are the travel adventures It’s Not About the Tapas, a Boston Globe bestseller and People “Great Reads: Travel” pick; Fried Eggs with Chopsticks, about Polly’s journey through China; Kiwis Might Fly; and On a Hoof and a Prayer, all available from Delta. As an award-winning journalist, Polly’s work has been featured in Real Simple, Food & Wine, and on the National Geographic Travel website. When she’s not on the road, Polly lives in London.

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Excerpts

Chapter One

I flew out on Friday, January 13, and returned home on April 1. The dates had almost selected themselves, but they seemed curiously appropriate, for I feared I was embarking on a fool's errand. I was going to spend eleven weeks, in the heart of winter, in one of the most inhospitable climates on earth.

The Yukon is a triangular-shaped territory in the far northwest of Canada. It borders Alaska to the west; at its northern tip lie the icy waters of the Beaufort Sea. Other people travel to the Yukon in the summer, when they can enjoy the long, balmy days that blend one into another with little darkness between. In September, though, the tourists pack their bags and leave. The attractions close. The museums' doors are bolted and the buses are laid up until May. Even most Canadian people, who so proudly extol their pitiless winters when basking comfortably in the sun elsewhere, shiver at the thought of coming this far north during the frozen months. The average temperature in the Yukon in January is minus 15 degrees Fahrenheit, but the mercury can plunge much lower. Temperatures dip regularly into the minus forties; once, they dived to minus 81.

But there's another side to winter in this harsh land. As the nights grow longer, the milky jade and blood red of the northern lights weave across the skies. The snowshoe rabbits' coats turn spotless white, and the Arctic foxes wear plush, dramatic furs. Winter has late blue dawns and the warm buttery light of the low midday sun. It has the jagged gems of hoarfrost and soft, feathery snow. Winter is the season of solitude and pure, glorious silence. And in winter, the sled dogs run.

It was the dogs that drew me. During my time in the north I'd be based at Muktuk Kennels, the operation of one of Canada's most famous mushers, Frank Turner, and his wife, Anne. I'd scoop poop, help with feeding, and learn to drive a sled. From Muktuk, I'd make further trips around the region. I'd follow the Yukon Quest—a thousand-mile dogsled race that runs between Fairbanks, Alaska, and Whitehorse, the capital of the Yukon Territory. I'd visit Dawson City, the town that sprang up in response to the frenzied Klondike gold rush. I'd fly to the very far north, to the Arctic Ocean itself. And through it all, I'd learn all I could about the howling, capering, tail-wagging world of sled dogs.

A short, stocky man with a salt-and-pepper beard and a well-worn red parka pushed through the swing doors of Whitehorse's airport, a tiny one-gate place where arrivals and departures were not just in the same building; they were in the same room. I recognized his face from his website photographs.

"Frank?" I asked.

"You're Polly?"

At this time, in January 2006, Frank Turner was the only person to have competed in each of the twenty-two Yukon Quest dogsledding races since the event's inception in 1984. Frank won the race in 1995 and still held the record for the fastest time. This year, Frank—who, in his late fifties, was wondering if he might be getting a little old for that kind of adventure—would not be entering the race, but his twenty-five-year-old son, Saul, would be running a team.

There was no call for feats of cold-weather endurance on that first night, though: Frank had parked his truck conveniently close to the airport's door, and we ventured just a few steps through the cold night air. In any case, the evening was warm by the Yukon's standards, a mere nine degrees, according to the pilot on the plane. I'd been concerned about what I should wear on the journey: Would I need my long woolen underwear to walk from the airport door to the car? But might I then overheat on the plane? In the end I'd put on ordinary jeans and sneakers, the car was near, and I was fine.

We drove out of town and onto the Alaska Highway toward Muktuk.

"Saul's baby was born on Wednesday," Frank

Excerpted from Mad Dogs and an Englishwoman by Polly Evans
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