English Diary

Ice. Once you see ice on the sea, you’ll never see ice in the same way. I’m reading a book called “the Cruellest Miles” which talks about the dog sled challenge to get some diphtheria medicine to Nome in 1925. The author details the challenges of mushing on ice, whether it is river ice or ocean ice.

Last week, ice started to form in the tundra, the bay, and in the sea. As my boys and I were looking at it, I noticed what the author of the book was talking about. You could see how painful it must have been on the paws of the dogs; how dangerous it was to sled on such an unpredictable surface.

As the author of the book noted, without the dog, Alaska would never have been settled. The dog was invaluable to the Native and surviving this extreme environment.