Mankind has historically gone to extremes to satisfy the gods. Some have sacrificed fellow humans or animals to win favor with their deities, while others have drank blood, performed ceremonial dances and offered up food, money and other wares to please the gods of the sun, wind, moon and stars.
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Susan Cantor peers over the shoulder of her son, Brian, as they drive their sled dog team to the finish of the Sled Dog Trivia Fun Run held by the Chugiak Dog Mushers Association Saturday at Beach Lake.
STAR PHOTO BY DARRELL L. BREESE
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Saturday, in the spirit of the Native American rain dance, the members of the Chugiak Dog Mushers Association hosted a ritual snow dance to the god of winter, known as Uller in Norse Mythology, hoping he will open the skies and let it snow.
“We're thankful that everyone's wish for a white Christmas was answered, with a fresh blanket of powder,” said Val Jokela, snow dance organizer. “But it wasn't enough to make the trails safe for the dogs or to pull a sled. We need more snow to build a solid base for the trails.”
According to the club's president, Lexi Hill, an additional eight to 12 inches of snow is needed to make the trails safe to run a dog team, so the idea of hosting a snow dance combined with a sled dog trivia fun run was born out of necessity.
“Well, we need the snow, and we also needed a way to get dog teams out on the trail,” Hill said. “The trivia run seemed like a perfect way to get both junior and adult mushers out on the trail.”
Unlike traditional sled dog races, the winner of the trivia run was determined by the number of correct answers to the five sled dog-related questions posted around the trail.
The father-daughter team of Jim and Tilly Cantor posted the best score, knowing who had won the Fur Rendezvous World Championship sled dog races the second most number of times, the first year the Junior Iditarod was run and who the highest placing American was in the sled dog race held at the 1932 Lake Placid Winter Olympic Games.
For those playing along at home, Dr. Roland Lombard won Fur Rondy eight times, second only to George, Atla who won 10 world championship races, the first Junior Iditarod was held in 1978 and Leonard Seppala won the silver medal in the Olympic race, finishing behind Emile St. Goddard of Canada.
After the race was over, attention was turned to the real reason the mushers had gathered, the snow dance.
Three teams were confident in their ability to please the gods and make it snow. One incorporated American Sign Language, another imported dancers from Buffalo, N.Y., hoping to benefit from the lake affect snow common to the upstate New York community, and the final team was a dog and an owner performing an inspired version of the winter two-step.
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Tilly Cantor takes her dad, Jim, for a ride Saturday at the Beach Lake sled dog trails. The Cantors won the Sled Dog Trivia Fun Run by answering four of five trivia questions correctly while covering the two-mile loop.
Star Photo By DARRELL L. BREESE
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“Taz is full of energy, and she likes to dance,” said Denise Saigh after dancing with her 2-year old Samoyed Tazlina. “Hopefully our dance was good enough to make it snow.”
The snow dance was not the only method being used to conjure up a snowstorm, as 8-year-old Taylor Zelman, who is visiting from Virginia and was on hand with her parents to watch the dog sledding, said she wears her pajamas inside out and backward when she wants it to snow.
“My teacher also told me that if I throw an ice cube at a tree it will snow, but I haven't tried it yet,” Zelman said. “But I've been wearing my pajamas backwards so I can see it snow before we leave Alaska.”
After the dancing wrapped up, the judges gathered in the clubhouse to deliberate and select a winner.
“One criteria for judging was if it started to snow during the dance. If that happened, the team would have won by default,” Hill said. “Since it didn't start snowing, we had to pick a winner based on which dance showed the most enthusiasm to make it snow.”
According to Hill, the winner of the dance was Team Radin, featuring sisters Michelle and Rosie Radin, who was visiting from Buffalo. As part of their dance, they taught the spectators the sign language signs for “snow” and “please”.
More amazing than the ability to get a group of adults to dance about in hopes of making it snow was the fact that just after announcing the winners, a light snow began to fall.
The flurries lasted for much of the night and into Sunday morning, but with a total accumulation of not quite two-inches, according to the National Weather Service, the members of the dog mushers club will have to continue performing the “Snow Please” dance they learned from the Radins.
Reach the reporter at darrell.breese@alaskastar.com.
