Warm Embrace of ‘Outside’

Six months and a continent away, residents of the 49th state remembered Sept. 11.

Sled dogs in red, white and blue booties pranced down Anchorage’s 4th Avenue at the start of the 1,100-mile Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. New York Port Authority policeman David Lim, who survived the collapse of the World Trade Center towers but lost his K-9 partner, a yellow Lab named Sirius, rode the first sled out. And under the spruce arch that marks the finish line in Nome, Swiss-born musher Martin Buser last week claimed his fourth victory--and took the oath to become a U.S. citizen.

To appreciate the significance of all this, to know the depth and breadth of this nation’s continuing response to the attacks, understand this about Alaskans: There is Alaska, and then there is Outside. Anchorage is as far from Seattle as Los Angeles is from New York, and that is too close for notoriously independent Alaskans. This far-north expanse of ice and snow (28 inches fell on Anchorage Sunday, but who’s counting?) can be a world unto itself. Sourdoughs, as the old-timers are called, still remember receiving the nightly news from Outside on videotape--via the next day’s plane.

If cable, satellite and the Internet have since forged technological links to the last frontier, the terrorist attacks clinched the human one. Buser has lived in Alaska since 1979. The popular musher--known for singing his dogs to victory (they race, he says, to get away from his voice)--already considered himself an Alaskan. On Sept. 12, he applied to become a naturalized American.

Sled dogs first raced to Nome in January 1925, not in sport but carrying serum to treat a deadly diphtheria epidemic. Then as now, tragedy and heroism knit the country together. Transfixed by radio and newspaper reports of the rescue mission, New Yorkers honored Balto, the lead dog on the last leg of the relay, with a statue in Central Park. Today New Yorkers live with Sept. 11 every day, reminded of horror and loss by the gash in the ground and the gap in the skyline. And 4,600 miles away, red, white and blue-bundled Alaskans and a flag-waving musher paid tribute.