8 March 2007 - Thursday - Third Day of Iditarod in McGrath

The highlight of Thursday was meeting Gary Paulsen. The upper elementary teacher at McGrath School had connected with a teacher in Minnesota and they had their classes exchange power point presentations. The teacher from Minnesota was coming with Paulsen to the Iditarod and he agreed to speak to the children who came back to school during their vacation time.

Before most people arrived, I told Gary that I had to tell him about my literary disaster because it involved him. "What," he said, "Were we once married"? I told him how when my daughters were in junior high, I had substituted a lot for the school librarian so she invited me to come hear an author. I asked her who it was and when she said Gary Paulsen, I said, "Na, Never heard of him". Within the year I had read at least eight of his books and was using his books in tutoring.


This picture proves I finally met Gary Paulsen.









Only four children came but the room was full of adults - teachers, public broadcast interviewer, and others. He was very interesting and said that most of his books are based on his own experiences. He referred to himself as extinct because publishers don't always want to publish what he wants to write. One person asked him what one should do to become a published writer and Gary said the only way is to sell your soul. He said that everything else in your life has to be abandoned and even that isn't really enough.

Gary believes that dogs are smarter than people. He related that during the first Iditarod he ran, he had stopped and just sat on a pile of snow and told himself that he couldn't go on, that he just couldn't do it. Finally he realize that he had to go on or freeze so he had a talk with his lead dog to the affect that he would take care of her, feed her, tend to her needs, if she would get him out of here. He then gave her her head and she did just that, while he just rode along with her. He said that dogs instinctively understand calculus and human feelings better than humans do.

I asked about his bad heart and that I had heard he couldn't ever run the Iditarod again. He said that when he was told that, he sold his dogs and bought a boat on which he lived for about three years. But, a friend who has a business giving dogsled rides, offered him a ride in his sled. After first saying no he got in. Within the first half of the lap he had decided to sell the boat and get dogs again.

The teacher from Minnesot shared a couple of her power point presenations and we saw the three producted in McGrath. The children were amazed to hear about a school that has four 4th grade classrooms when there are only three 4th graders in McGrath





I took off the second half of the day and returned to the checkpoint. It was a day when a lot of mushers stopped in McGrath and I was able to talk to many of them.

Teams arrived in McGrath on the Kuskokwim River and about a mile west of town came up onto River Road, then prodeeded into town. When they left, they went back down to the river right by the city building. Here's what it looked like when they left. This, by the way, was Tommy Lesatz leaving McGrath.