The lodge was dimly lit and warm. It smelled of burgers frying and the owner’s trademark freshly cut French fries. People crowded around the most powerful person in the room, and everyone seemed to want her attention and time.
Her dogs and sled were still outside, not yet brought to her host family’s yard. I stood in front of my dad with my chin down to my chest, a foot shorter than the adults in the room. Breathing shallow. Now and then I’d cast glances at her. She was talking. Answering questions. Laughing. I was nervous and couldn’t comprehend what she was saying. I so badly wanted to meet her. But in that particular moment, I was uncharacteristically shy. As if I was in church and God was actually there.
Those were the days when we asked famous people to sign things. “Do you want to get her autograph?” my dad asked, touching my shoulder, prodding me on. Knowing I had a little book and pen in my parki pocket. I couldn’t answer, my freeze response fully engaged. I wanted to say yes, but I was too wonderfully afraid. I had not yet learned that most everything cool in life comes on the other side of fear.
This was in Unalakleet in the late ’80s. I was 10 years old, and my dad had finally given in and driven me on his blue Indy snowmachine down to the Brown’s Lodge, a log cabin/burger joint/boarding house owned by his cousin, which served as the Iditarod checkpoint in Unalakleet. The sled dog race had hit national news, and sportscaster Pat O’Brien was in town. He signed the gas tank on my aunt’s red Honda three-wheeler.
The woman commanding attention at the checkpoint was musher Susan Butcher, an Iditarod hero. After her stop in Unalakleet that day, she continued on to the end of the race in Nome, where she won her third consecutive Iditarod, the first musher to accomplish the feat. Two years later, she won again; at the time, she was one of only two mushers with four Iditarod career championships. She was the woman everyone was talking about. The woman a lot of men couldn’t stand. The woman who, along with Libby Riddles, another champion racer, inspired the sweatshirt that says: “Alaska… WHERE MEN ARE MEN and Women win the Iditarod.”
Back then during those tender years, I observed and listened more than I talked. I knew that some of the men in our family didn’t like Susan Butcher. “She babies her dogs,” they said. Even today, 20 years after her death, they call her a witch. We heard it on the news, too. As if taking care of dogs, physically and emotionally, was something to look down on. Today, it’s a requirement, or the race itself would be in jeopardy. But few animal lovers have an argument, thanks to the 1980s and a woman who beat the men, year after year, through care.
Care.
Care is soft. In tune. Perceptive and seeking to understand. Responsive. Susan Butcher didn’t win through forcing compliance from her dogs. She won through trust and a bond that every good musher today strives for.
For my little 10-year-old brain, Susan Butcher normalized competition between men and women. For my little 10-year-old body, before I knew what feminism was, Susan Butcher showed me that women can push boundaries, be strong, excel and succeed. For my little 10-year-old heart, Susan Butcher showed me women can be more than equal with men: They can be better. And instead of being put on a pedestal like her male counterparts, she taught me we can be called witches and worse and yet keep on pushing and winning.
As an adult, Susan Butcher teaches me she was the best because she followed her own instincts of care. In a world where society values asserting control, exerting of power over others and using violence, she showed everyone that people can be excellent leaders and champions through nurturing, observation and response. I already know we don’t have to, and shouldn’t, follow patriarchal values of control, entitlement, ownership and violence. But her life, the way she operated and her accomplishments, reaffirm the need to shed what isn’t sustainable. What is harmful.
Susan Butcher teaches me she was the best because she followed her own instincts of care.
AS A KID, I was excited when teams arrived in Unalakleet every year during the Iditarod. Since the race began in 1973, teams have passed through in March on their way to the finish line. Unalakleet is 775 miles into the race and the first checkpoint on the coast. In the early days, mushers stayed with host families along the trail. I’d beg my mom to house a musher stopping for a rest.
“No way,” she’d balk. “They’re dirty and stink.” I couldn’t argue with that. Mom’s pride was her clean home.
Today, the first musher to reach our town is awarded $3,000 in gold nuggets. The nuggets are presented to the musher in an outdoor ceremony, no matter the weather, often in the middle of the night. Camera crews, radio and print reporters, the race marshal, chief veterinarian and people of all ages crowd around the musher as the nuggets clink and clank in a brass bowl.
For a lot of people, the race is a marker of spring. Those March days often host the moments we first welcome the sun’s warmth on our cheeks.
As our part of the planet turns toward the sun this year, I remember the shy Laureli who didn’t get Susan Butcher’s autograph. Who heard people speak poorly of a woman who knew what she was doing and was doing it well. This spring, I think that if Susan Butcher could change the way thousands of dogs are treated leading up to and during a 1,000-mile race across Alaska, maybe we can spur change through our work and actions, too. Through care and our own feminine instincts, even if some people call us witches.
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This article appeared in the March 2026 print edition of the magazine with the headline “Iditarod idol.”
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