Frigid, dark Alaskan winters won't find professional dogsled racer DeeDee Jonrowe sippin' cider by the fire.
Rather than seeking shelter indoors, she spends 10 to 16 hours daily caring for her 100 or so huskies living in her yard, and running her dogsled team on snowmobile-cleared trails. She's training for March's annual Iditarod Trail Dog Sled Race - a grueling 1,150-mile race across Alaska commemorating the 1925 diphtheria serum run from Nenana to Nome.
Competing with 50 to 80 men and women from other countries including Norway, Japan, Switzerland, and Canada, the 49-year-old triathlete and her dog team dodge tree stumps, pound over barren tundra, splash through slushy creekbeds, bounce across bare rocks, and twist along narrow mountain trails.
Jonrowe has participated in the "Last Great Race on Earth" 20 times, more than any other woman in history, placing second on two occasions and finishing among the top 10 in 12 races. Her awards include the Most Inspirational Musher honours in 1993 and the Humanitarian Award in 1991. She has served on the Iditarod board of directors and is a member of the veterinary committee for the Iditarod Trail Committee Inc.
Racing the Iditarod demands stamina and courage. On the trail, Jonrowe controls her 80-foot-long team with voice commands, constantly alert for danger. Startled moose can maim or kill; she carries a revolver to defend her animals. Crossing frozen rivers can prove fatal if the ice cracks and opens under the team's weight.
Along the Bering Sea coast, wind-chill temperatures sometimes plummet to 100 degrees below zero. Because Jonrowe cannot expose her skin even a few seconds to eat or drink, she risks dehydration.
Jonrowe's long-distance debut in 1980 was a musher's nightmare. Hours after lunging across the Kusko 300 starting line with her team of 16 Alaskan Huskies, she was lost in a raging blizzard. Temperatures plunged to 50 degrees below zero. For 36 hours, blinding wind-driven snow concealed her from searching snowmobilers. Icy winds gnawed through her body and crept deep into her bones.
Huddling close to her dogs for warmth, she prayed to be rescued and promised herself she would never race again. Obviously she changed her mind.
What drives Jonrowe to participate in Iditarod's grueling rigors? "Not the prize money!" she says. "You have to be in it for the passion - loving the animals, developing them to do what they were created to do, rewarding them for it."
But her motives reflect a more significant dimension. Day and night she finds herself surrounded by God's creative beauty and majesty.
"I find more peace and quiet, more uninterrupted opportunity to talk with God than at any other time," she says. "My personal relationship with the Creator brings contentment, a sense of completeness, but it hasn't always been so.
"I believed in God's existence even as a little girl," Jonrowe explains. "I was a good kid - I tried hard to please my Bible-believing parents but I never personalized their faith in Jesus Christ. When I attended college, I encountered new philosophies and lifestyles and abandoned my parents' teachings."
Jonrowe worked in Bethel, Alaska, after graduation. She grew lonely, homesick for friends and family. One day, a grandfatherly bush pilot flew her from a remote inlet to another work site.
"I was on the verge of tears. In contrast, he possessed incredible peace," she says. "He spoke of God's love and invited me to attend the local church where he was associate pastor."
She accepted his invitation.
"Walking into that church was like returning home, back where I belonged," she says. "All my life I'd heard that Jesus Christ died to pay the consequences for my sin. I'd taken the message for granted, never responding to it personally. This time was different."
She marks that morning as her spiritual turning point. She began reading the Bible as God's love letter to her, not merely a book of do's and don'ts.
"Rather than regarding the Bible as a set of rules, I began understanding it as God's plan to help me live life without scars and consequences," she says. "That plan is true and right whether I feel like it is or not."
Jonrowe says that her faith in Christ isn't a magic formula to ward off difficult times, but it gives her strength to persevere when tragedy strikes. Recently she faced her greatest challenge yet - a deadly enemy lurking within. On July 15, 2002, medical doctors biopsied a lump in her breast. They delivered grim news: "It's malignant. It's in the lymph nodes. Without treatment, you could die within a year."
Jonrowe underwent major surgery then endured chemotherapy treatments every three weeks from August until mid-December. Her hair fell out. Her strength waned. Toxins blurred her vision.
Displaying characteristic courage, Jonrowe met the challenge head-on. Between treatments, she and her husband, Mike, and dog handler, Kelly, trained the dogs. But one week before Christmas, her oncologist told her that despite treatment, she was still at risk. He recommended six more chemotherapy treatments.
Although shocked and disappointed, within hours she returned to her training schedule. Despite her battle, she'll be in Anchorage's starting line-up on March 1, well aware that her health may impose limitations this year.
Through it all, her faith remains strong. "I'm not mad at God - He didn't give me cancer," she says. "Bad things happen in our imperfect world. No one is ever prepared for the phone call that says, 'You could die within a year.' "
Whether facing bone-chilling blizzards or life-threatening disease, Jonrowe credits her courage to knowing her Creator personally.
"Jesus Christ is my reason for living. I just don't know how people face life without Him."
To follow DeeDee's progress visit www.iditarod.com.
