Winterdance: The Fine Madness of Running the Iditarod

The gangline is “the cable that connects the sled to the team of dogs” (“Mushing Terminology.” Iditarod.com.). Paulsen often refers to the gangline when some calamity occurs that involves the whole team. For example, in the chapter “Dogs From Hell,” Paulsen connects the gangline to a bicycle for summer training. He has attached too many dogs, and when they break the line holding the gangline to a tree, “the bike shot out of the yard, heading for the road at what seemed terminal velocity” (65).

Gee is the driver’s “command for a right turn” (“Mushing Terminology.” Iditarod.com.). Directional commands such as “gee” and “haw” (turn left) often appear in the book when the team encounters some problem and Paulsen must steer them out of it. For instance, when the team is crossing Norton Sound and Paulsen realizes they are on dangerously thin ice, he yells, “Gee around!” His faithful lead dog responds: “Cookie knew it meant to swing out to the right and bring the team back around to get out of a tight spot” (244).

A musher is “the person who drives a dog-sled team” (“Mushing Terminology.” Iditarod.com.). The term is used throughout the book to describe Paulsen and his fellow Iditarod competitors. However, mushers do not have to be driving sleds in a race. For example, Paulsen drives the sled to gather firewood before he decides to enter the race. Paulsen also points out that mushers drove sleds for Arctic and Antarctic expeditions and to pull freight during the Klondike Gold Rush days.

Paulsen uses “rigs,” which are “homemade wheeled outfits the dogs could pull” (63), for training in the summer and fall when there is no snow to support a sled. He uses a bicycle and an old car as rigs.

A rookie is “a musher who is running the race for the first time or who has never completed the race” (“Mushing Terminology.” Iditarod.com.). Winterdance is about Paulsen’s first Iditarod. He is aware that his rookie status means that his chance of winning the race or even finishing in the money is extremely slim. In fact, he learns that some people at the pre-race banquet voted him “the least likely to get out of Anchorage” (145). In Nikolai, he is encouraged when he discovers he is “not running last” (196). However, he still expresses “very serious doubts” that he will even finish the race (196).

The runners are “the two bottom pieces of the sled which come in contact with the snow” (“Mushing Terminology.” Iditarod.com.). At one point in the story, Paulsen has to clean dog feces off the runners because it is slowing down the sled.

Paulsen defines his own trapline team as “a work team of seven dogs with one excellent leader and dear friend named Cookie” (60). Paulsen notes that the lead dog’s sense of direction is crucial because the sled driver often cannot see the trail because the dogs block his vision. The other dogs respond to Cookie’s lead and turn when she turns—usually. Occasionally, an animal on the trail distracts them, and some of the dogs veer off in a different direction.