Winterdance Quotes

“She was beautiful in a way that only wild things can be beautiful.”
― Gary Paulsen, Winterdance: The Fine Madness of Running the Iditarod

“But the beauty of the woods, the incredible joy of it is too alluring to be ignored, and I could not stand to be away from it--indeed, still can't--and so I ran dogs simply to run dogs; to be in and part of the forest, the woods”
― Gary Paulsen, Winterdance: The Fine Madness of Running the Iditarod

“I'm sorry. I was just running them. Running the dogs." I swallowed more soup and looked at the sky. The cold air was so clear the stars seemed to be falling to the ground. Like you could walk right. . . over . . . there and pick them up just lying on the snow. "I couldn't come back.”
― Gary Paulsen, Winterdance: The Fine Madness of Running the Iditarod

“Do you like the race so far?’

I looked at her, trying to find sarcasm, but she was serious; she really wanted to know. And I thought of how to answer her.

I had gotten lost, been run over by a moose, watched a dog get killed, seen a man cry, dragged over a third of the teams off on the wrong trail, and been absolutely hammered by beauty while all this was happening. (It was, I would find later, essentially a normal Iditarod day — perhaps a bit calmer than most.) I opened my mouth.

‘I …’

Nothing came. She patted my arm and nodded. ‘I understand. It’s so early in the race. There’ll be more later to talk about …’

And she left me before I could tell her that I thought my whole life had changed, that my basic understanding of values had changed, that I wasn’t sure if I would ever recover, that I had seen god and he was a dog-man and that nothing, ever, would be the same for me again, and it was only the first true checkpoint of the race.

I had come just one hundred miles.”
― Gary Paulsen, Winterdance: The Fine Madness of Running the Iditarod