Kanabeararchives

Hello everyone! I've been gone from the blogging scene for a while, but I wanted to check back in and let everybody know that I've re-started the writing thing....in a different location!!!

Please follow this link to my new location--Jason Barron's Blog--it's powered by Wordpress, and much much more functional & readable. I still write about all of my usual musher-y stuff, but the topics have been greatly expanded to include essays on my latest writing projects (such as my new novel Ballad of the Northland), helpful tutorials in the field of self-publishing. and much more.

I just started it up about 2 weeks ago, and plan to include 20--28 posts per month--if there is enough demand, I may even expand on that number. Please be advised--I will no longer be posting here on this particular location; all of my future blogging will be done at the new Wordpress site!

Once in the new site, you'll be given options to become a follower of the new blog, which basically means that you'll be given email updates whenever I publish a new post (assuming you fill out all of the fields!)

Hope to see you there!!!

The morning after finishing the race, a race that I thought went almot text-book perfect, I had four dogs severely limping around their kennels; by the next morning, the number of limping dogs was up to eight...with the Beargrease coming up in less then two weeks...

Harm and I went through this group (pretty much my whole core) with a fine toothed comb, examining for injury, no matter how vague; we came up empty handed. No sore muscles, sprained joints...nothing. Nothing, except for the limp.

Four days after the race, while I was giving them  their one-millionth examination, I came across the problem-a fungal infection in the nail bed. Once identified, we found what seemed like dozens of them scattered throughout the kennel, including dogs who hadn't even raced. This problem would prove to be my undoing for the rest of the race season...I had core dogs limping going into the BG & Iditarod, and still weeks after getting home from AK; truly heartbreaking stuff.

it was not the Seeley that caused these wide spread infections; it was purely coincidence that this problem came to a head at that particular time.

Right around Christmas time, we had a really nast thawing period that pretty much rained our trails down to nothing, and caused a LOT of jagged ice build-up on major sections of what was left of the trail. Though I knew it was a bad idea at the time, I ran these trails anyway, putting on some of my longest runs during this period...it was during this time (we think) that I caused such wide spread damage to the kennels nail beds, and it took about two weeks for the damaged tissues to become infected and for the 'limping' to show up.

Mystery solved.

Mushing is a tough business; if it were easy, everybody would be doing it.

Thanks for tuning in, everybody.

I'm working on a story (about Isis)  which will be posted late this afternoon. For now, I'm sharing a link to the Iditarod's "For Teachers" page that hopefully everyone finds interesting!

Literacy Connections: Guest Speaker: Iditarod Musher, Jason Barron

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After finishing my mandatory rest (almost exactly 4 hours) I took off from WTR about 20 minutes behind Ryan, and four minutes ahead of Rick Larson; John Barron and Charlotte were leaving between 30-40 behind Rick.

The team looked really strong when I pulled up to the departure area, but as soon as I took off, I spotted a big problem with my three year old leader Isis who had been up front performing brilliantly for most of the race; she had a severe flat tire on the right front side. I went about an eighth of a mile watching her very closely, then turned the team around right in the middle of the trail and went back to the checkpoint (kicking myself in the ass for not catching her problem while on my rest!). I got back into the checkpoint just as Rick was cueing up to depart, dropped Isis and took off about a minute behind him. At this point of the race, it was clear to me that Ryan had his team dialed in for this mileage much better than I did, and that the only way I was going to catch him was if he got lost...but, I was still very frustrated and extremely worried about Isis. As I left, I really had no idea what was wrong with her; her wrists/shoulders/back/neck all seemed fine, so as I made my way towards the finish line, I spent more time thinking about my little girl then I did the race.

Long story short: I caught Rick going up Huckleberry Pass, a very big mountain just after departing WTR, and swiftly left him behind. I pulled 20-40 minutes on everybody who was in a competitive postion behind me, but came into Lincoln in second place to find that Ryan had beaten me by a total of thirty minutes overall. A few thoughts on Ryan's race, mostly gained from looking at the numbers after the fact; he and his team ran the perfect 200 mile race, a fantastic combination of brilliant managment and raw power; he beat me with four very even runs made a few minutes faster each time than my own; death by paper cuts. After looking at his team and talking to him, I counted myself fortunate to have stayed as close to him as I did.

Ultimately, while I do not present myself as a 200 mile driver, I am pretty darn respectable and this was my home trail; in no way, shape, or form did I 'let' Ryan beat me...in fact, I think I ran the best 200 mile race of my career. The simple fact is that Ryan Anderson raced me fair and square...and gave me a pretty decent beatdown. A+, Ryan. I think you're a class act, and it was a privilege to race with you out here. I wish you all the best in your future races.

That's it for the race, but I do plan one more post on this topic dealing with Isis's mysterious problem...thanks for tuning in, everyone!

Image from 'Ballad of the Northland'-Copyright 2010 Harmony Barron All Rights Reserved

Just a quick update here to catch everyone up: first off, while this page started out life as a daily blog, it is slowly but surely undergoing a metamorphosis and growing into a weekly column; a 'chunkier' article no more then once a week that tells a longer story, or follows a more complex thought then I was doing before. Due to the work on the novel Ballad of the Northland, there is much more work then ever going into writing.

Now, Harm and I spread it out over three (four if you count the book itself; to give you and idea, I finished the manuscript on the last day of June, and now spend over 14 hours seven days a week editing & revising) different areas: this blog, the website Kanabearenterprises.com, and a Facebook page designed to keep friends and fans involved with the book on a day to day basis. On the FB page, we include essays & excerpts, videos & and art all derived from the story, and we encourage everybody who reads this to join us over there (follow the included link and simply hit the "Like" button on the top of the page. Don't have a Facebook account? What are you waiting for???)

Work on the book is going very well. Sherry Sutherby from Mancelona Michigan has been reading over my shoulder and giving me much needed advice on construction and mechanics, as well as content and age

'appropriateness' for young adults (the book is meant to be read by a very wide audience, very much including highschool kids). A good friend of Mrs. Sutherby, Amy Breakey, has been working hard on the first wave of revisions; The Wang family from Minnesota has been reading to give me an outside opinion on overall content and quality; My lovely and talented wife Harmony has been designing the cover and working on 16 pieces of chapter art that will give the book its own unique 'feel'. And finally, we now have a professional editor, Mrs. Shawn Strannigan, going over the material with a fine tooth comb. Very very exciting stuff. This project is simply huge, and Harm and I can't wait to share the finished product with all of you!

We've produced a new video, and we'll put that up tomorrow, as well as the final Seeley Lake 200 story. And one more time on the Facbook topic: look up Harm and myself personally and send us a friend request, and just plug in the name Ballad of the Northland to visit the fanpage.

Thanks for reading, and see you all tomorrow!

Musings on Inspiration & Heroism;

I love my dogs. I love the places they take me. I love their spirit and heart and quiet heroism. Yes, that’s right: Heroism.

  My dogs, indeed, all sled dogs, continually fill me with a sense of amazement and fierce joy. They are the quiet, unsung warriors of our sport, and stand alone as the greatest endurance athletes on the face of the planet. No man, woman, or other animal in existence can match a trained sled dog step for step on even that dog’s worst day. Quite simply, never in history has there been a match for the endurance of a sled dog. And they don’t do it for the money, or the accolades. They don’t do it for the cheering crowds or the adulation of fans, and certainly not for the acquisition of trophies or bragging rights. They do it because they love us, their mushers, and above all else, they love to run. Simple as that.

I was in the ’04 Iditarod, still 300 miles shy of Nome,  preparing to decamp and start a monumental run from my present location of Old Woman, through Unalakleet, and on to the village of Shaktoolik, a distance of ninety miles, and I was fully aware of some serious problems brewing in my team. We were running in a good position that year, but we had sustained quite a few minor nagging injuries over the last eight hundred and fifty miles, and I was down to ten dogs and out of ‘official’ lead dogs. I was not worried about making it to the finish line exactly, but I was worried about making it to the finish competitively. In that situation, your choices are frighteningly simple- you give your dogs a bunch of rest and ‘limp’ along, or you get hard and put the hammer down. Obviously, I had made the choice to get hard, but it remained to be seen if I had the dog power to back up my attitude.

  I was traveling with my good friend, fellow Iditarod veteran Aaron Burmeister, and we took off together as the sun went down and the wind started to whip in from the not so distant coast. I had Copenhagen and Spud in lead, and they were both starting to get very tired from the last week of running, and while they were capable of moving down the trail, neither wanted to set anything remotely resembling a good pace, nor would they continue to lead me at any pace at all for much longer. As we left the straw, the team felt very sluggish and weak, and as it turned out, neither Copey nor Spud wanted anything to do with the responsibility of a lead position. My heart sank. Aaron passed me and disappeared into the dark. I just stopped and planted the snowhook and went through the team patting heads and doing my best to let them know that I was going to figure out a solution and get us back on the trail. All ten of them were standing there looking pretty sad and demoralized, and I was hardly encouraged. And let me tell you friends, this situation I’m describing, late in the game, tired dogs, parked on the side of the trail with no more leaders,  this is it, this is where the rubber meets the road. This is where you find out what you and a handful of your best animals have down deep inside where science can’t go.

  The sun is not just setting on the land; it’s setting on your dreams.

  Aaron’s headlamp fading up the trail; five new headlamp sparks winking into existence about three miles back, coming up over Unalakleet pass; all ten of my dogs standing with their heads down, ears planed out, lines drooping; desperation rising like bile in the back of my throat, threatening to choke me.

  And then a dog starts to whine. A three year old female named Voodoo, positioned in the wheel. I look at her and see that her eyes are bright and she is wagging her tail. This was her first Iditarod, and she had never before shown any desire to be a leader during training, but now I took her out of wheel and swapped her with Copey. She immediately began to bounce on her front end and bark excitedly. It was like some breaker had just been thrown, allowing a surge of electricity to pump down the gangline. Ears stood up, tugs tightened, heads whipped around. The snowhook let go and the sled jumped forward. Adrenaline blasting through my bloodstream, I jumped on as the sled flew past.

  With Voodoo in lead with Spud, we sped down the trail and quickly overtook Aaron as well as five other top mushers, including Baker and Buser. With this untested three year old showing me and the rest of the team the true meaning of leadership, we rocked the trail the rest of the way into Nome and claimed our kennels very first top fifteen finish in Alaska’s Last Great Race.

  Years later, my skin still crawls with gooseflesh when I recount this tale. Every dog in that team was important, but without Voodoo stepping up to the plate when me and the rest of the gang were floundering, our race would have stalled right there. She never led one step again during the course of her career, but I will never forget her example of unassuming heroism.

Voodoo’s story is never far from my mind or my heart. I share it with you now as an example of the type of heroism and perseverance you can expect to read about in Ballad of the Northland, and one of the many experiences that inspired me to write the novel.

Notes for Ballad of the Northland-All Rights Reserved by Jason Barron

It lightened as we traveled, and it rained continuously, so much so that the few places where the race trail joined up with plowed roadways, the surface turned into slick black ice that made the footing for musher and dog alike extremely dangerous and difficult.

On that note, I do remember being kind of worried on the way back to WTR; about eight miles coming into the checkpoint is all plowed road, so the thought of that much rain slickened ice did little to fill me with good cheer (the lack of cheer was not on my behalf; it was entirely on behalf of all of my dogs. Nobody enjoys seeing their beloved teammates slip and fall for miles on end). I need not have worried; the rain tapered off before we got back to that area, so the trail in ended up being just fine.

It was at this point, getting into WTR, that I had my first real clue as to where I stood in the competition. My run in had been very good, about ten minutes faster then then the trip upbound to Seeley the night before, but I found out shortly after bedding my dogs down (mostly to just let them cool off: it was still in the mid fifties or so) that I was in not in first place as I had been hoping. Technically, I did come into WTR downbound in first position, but not in terms of 'overall time'. Ryan Anderson had been steadily pulling small chunks of time on me from the beginning, and when we had both used up the last of our mandatory rest, he would be first onto the home stretch by aprox twenty minutes. I was not happy to find this out, but I was certainly not surprised. As I said before, my pre-race strategy concerning Ryan had ammounted to 'hoping he wasn't going to have a good run!'. I've raced Ryan before, both in races of this length, and somewhat longer races, and he tends to be much stronger and faster then me at this mileage. Still, I had been putting in a pretty good showing, and this was my home trail, so there was always the chance that he might run out of steam before making it back to the finish in Lincoln.

This faint hope slowly faded away when he saddled his team a few hours later and got them pointed at the trail: they stood there barking, eager to go.

I was to leave in second position, with Rick Larson following a few minutes behind.

More on the finale later. Thanks for tuning in, and be sure to check back for more stories.

Just a quick update, gang.

I promised a new video feature on Jason's Journal, and there has been a slight delay. Because of a malfunctioning camera, it's looking as if we won't have the feature up until tomorrow evening (fingers crossed). When it is up, though, it's going to be a pretty cool. Once a week, I am going to do a 3-4 minute reading from my upcoming novel 'Ballad of the Northland', so hopefully everyone enjoys that.

A quick reminder to all of you who do not already know this: Im on Facebook quite a lot, talking about pretty much everything Harm and I are doing here in the kennel, so if you are not already a friend of mine, then look me up and send me a friend request!!!

Also tomorrow, I'll be posting another story about the 2010 Seeley 200, so be sure and stay tuned!

Further thoughts on the origins 'Ballad of the Northland’.

The bulk of the story itself is presented in three distinct parts, the first of which is 'River Rat'. River Rat introduces you to the 'hero' of the story, The Boy; Eight  years have passed since the tragic accident that took place on Norton Sound just outside of Koyuk, Alaska, the one which took his immediate family away from him and forever changed the course of his life (this part is contained in the prologue, and can be found in Jason's Journal on our website).

River Rat not only introduces you to the hero of the narrative, but it also introduces you to the Alaskan bush, where this 12 year old boy learns to hunt and trap, and live in a modern day Great Depression primarily caused by his adoptive families own ignorance and poverty. It draws heavily upon the experiences of my two brothers and me, when we, too, grew up as dirt poor river rats on the Yentna River, about thirty-five miles south of Skwentna.

My brothers and I grew up without any formal education whatsoever-we lived many miles from any civilized habitation, so school was out of the question, and our parents literally expected us to learn through osmosis; we grew up skinny, and dirty, and hard; we grew up knowing how to hunt and trap, and by a very early age, had a near military proficiency with any number of guns, rifles, and assorted shotguns, and an utter lack of compunction about using them. To us, the sight of blood simply meant that we were going to get to eat today; we grew up understanding that no one would ever, ever, ever help us, and that if we were going to survive and make a place in the world for ourselves, then it would totally be on our heads to see this through; we grew up in awe of the sleddogs who were intrinsic to our survival, as well as the majestic grandeur of the Northland.

While Ballad is not meant to be a ‘biography’ by any means, there is not one part of the story of which I am not intimately familiar; not one ounce of the blood, nor any of the tears; not one step of The Boy’s trapline team, nor his eventual ascent to compete in the Last Great Race; not the madness, obsession, or the pathological drive to break any and all barriers placed in his way by lack of education, social status, or economic opportunity.

The Boy’s story is a painful one, full of hard lessonsand much harder truths. It is a story about standing tall, no matter the odds, no matter the outcome, about following one’s dreams, and even, at times, one’s nightmares. Over and above it all, looms the shadow of the Northand.

I chose to tell The Boy’s story, because I could not bear to tell my own.

Notes for Ballad of the Northland-All Rights Reserved