Running North : A Yukon Adventure Paperback - 1999

Anyone who has ever been to Alaska remembers the light.

Anyone who has ever been to Alaska remembers the light. There is sometimes too much of it, and sometimes not enough. The land seems to be in a perpetual state of sunrise or sunset. There is always a pink-blue glow in the sky. Trees are silhouetted. Clouds and mountaintops are often rimmed with golden sunbeams. Even after dark, there is magic in the sky.

So begins Ann Cook's spirited account of how she, her husband, George, and their young daughter moved to Alaska to run the Yukon Quest, the toughest sled dog race in the world.

This is story of thin ice, wolves, a broken-down truck, gruff neighbors, the kind of cold that turns your cheeks to rocks, laughing men with thick beards, mysterious fishermen who appear without warning and disappear without a sign, hot coffee, and twelve big, courageous Siberian Huskies.

This book for anyone who ever dreamed of doing something really big.

Running North tracks George on his horrific race through the Yukon, recording the frostbite, the hallucinations, the steep cliffs, the circling wolves, and the nights out on the ice at minus sixty degrees Fahrenheit. This is the great story of struggling against nature and surviving.

But Running North is, first, the story of Ann Cook. Ann drove the truck, carried the gear, raised the dogs, egged the racer on, and held the family together - all while paying close attention to the strange, intimidating, humorous, and breathtaking world unfolding around her. She reveals the tragedy, joy, and folly that lie on either side of the curtain separating the adventurer from the rest of the world.

And as Ann trails George through the Yukon in her ornery truck, scattering parts in its wake, it becomes less clear which adventure is the toughest: the one among the racers b raving the Yukon or the other among the people they leave behind.