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I am fascinated by her. Swenson's menagerie at her log home in Two Rivers, Alaska, includes 50 sled dogs, four kids, and a Jack Russell terrier -- the polar opposite of my urban, single, working woman life. Rick Swenson, her ex-husband, five-time Iditarod winner and a legendary figure in Alaska sports, lives next door. Swenson was injured early in the race when she lost control of her sled on an icy corner, flew off the trail and slammed into a tree. Yes, the dogs are true athletes, but mushers are, too: They often get off the sled and run alongside their teams to lighten the load, especially up hills. Swenson's wrenched knee was a huge blow so early in the race. Her dog handler, Chris Knott, tried to remedy the situation by building a bicycle seat onto the back of the sled. Knott fits the statistical profile of a typical Alaskan -- in his 20s, male, been in Alaska just a few years. Maybe it's the effect of his red hair, but to me, he always looks so happy that he's glowing. Knott is the expert on all things canine: training diet (raw chicken, horse meat, beef heart and liver, mixed with dog food, chicken fat and canola oil); breed (part Alaskan malamute, Eskimo husky and wolf); ideal running temperature (minus 25 degrees). He teaches me the dogs' names and their personalities: Psycho, the little female leader with two different colored eyes, painfully shy but tough as nails on the trail; Harley, a big, tan-colored male and reliable veteran of two Iditarods; Socks, named for his black fur and white paws, running his fifth 1,000-mile race. Day Seven: The lead mushers left Dawson just before midnight, well-rested and well-fed. Schandelmeier still has all 14 of his dogs. May, Turner and Mackey have "dropped" dogs who are hurt or ill and left them in care of the handlers and vets. Mushers must finish with at least six. Yukon Quest veterinarians work with mushers at every checkpoint to examine each dog, checking for leg injuries, circulation, pulse rate and overall well-being. In situations where man and dog depend on each other for survival, no one can afford to have injured or ill dogs on the trail. Ralf has not arrived yet, and except for the occasional aerial sighting by bush pilot, he is out of contact, in the great void of the Quest's longest and hilliest run, over the Black Hills and King Solomon's Dome. Not yet halfway through the race, he is over two days behind the leaders. With little information to go on, we decide to move on. The agenda: Drive south to Whitehorse, then across the Alaska Highway to Fairbanks, where we will be based for the second half of the race. It is a long, stressful drive on treacherous roads. We nervously observe two road signs at the junction with Dempster Highway: Inuvik, 350 km. No service, 300 km. Day Eight: I am reading John McPhee's "Coming into the Country." He calls Alaska "a place so vast and unpeopled that if anyone could figure out how to steal Italy, Alaska would be a place to hide it." The scenery is spectacular, but after two days of road food, I wouldn't mind running into a Tuscan village right now. Day Nine: News from the front: Kathy Swenson arrived in Eagle, the first checkpoint after Dawson, with a dead dog in her sled bag. Socks simply tipped over five miles down the trail from Dawson, Swenson said. She attempted mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, but to no avail. Socks was a veteran of the 1992, '93 and '95 Iditarods and the 1994 Quest, and one of her favorites. Aside from the personal loss, Swenson fears there may be a disease spreading among her team and decides to scratch. (Later, vets found the cause was a form of non-infectious hepatitis. After a few days, I will reach her at home. "Some things are just not meant to be," she will say in a cracking voice. "This was just not my year.") Day 11: Fairbanks is populated with Camaros and pickup trucks. The town is situated in a flat and unattractive spot in Alaska's interior. But there's plenty of "civilization" here, and we revel in our upscale hotel room and feast on Alaskan King Crab legs at night. We spend the day watching preparations for the arrival of the winners. A huge arch of ice blocks is assembled over the finish line and barricades are put up. After days of solitude on the trail, dogs can panic when confronted with cheering crowds. We keep checking in with race officials, who have airplanes out surveying the field: It looks like a close finish this year, with four mushers within four hours of each other. Day 12: Rick Mackey wins the Quest with a time of 12 days, five hours, 55 minutes, five seconds. With Ralf almost six days behind, this race is far from over for us. Day 13: Hoping to film Ralf on the home stretch, we drive three hours northeast of Fairbanks to Central, population 120, a gold mining and trapping area. We are welcomed with this sign: "NOTICE: We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone -- including special interest groups and governmental agencies with goals threatening to the lifestyle of the Circle mining district and our means of making an honest living. -- Owners Jim & Sandy Crabb." I pity any card-carrying Sierra Club member who stumbles into this town. All of the mushers have passed through here, except Ralf. We stop at a trapper's cabin to ask for news. The place is decorated with Alaskan lawn ornaments: junked vehicles, including a bright yellow truck used to build the pipeline, a 1940s-era pickup, motorcycles, snowmobiles. All are in apparent non-working order and covered by several feet of snow. The trapper wears Army-issue Arctic footgear, called "bunny boots." Two lynx are hanging, frozen, from the porch rafters. Pieces of frozen caribou carcass litter the ground, gnawed on by dogs. I pick my jaw up off the ground and shut my mouth. No sign of Ralf, the trapper reports. Day 14: Chris Knott invites us to Kathy Swenson's house to exercise the dogs. Swenson lives just outside of Fairbanks in Two Rivers, the dog mushing capital of Alaska -- and therefore, of the world. A vast network of trails crisscrosses the countryside. While we're waiting for Ralf, we will mush on Baseline Trail, which goes clear across North America to Newfoundland. I climb into Knott's sled. We've got two 9-month-old pups in our team. They don't know how to pull yet and trot along, trip over their own feet, get tangled. Knott says we'll just keep going; they need to learn. Finally, it is my turn to mush alone. My lesson is: Dogs have a sense of humor. As soon as I hop on the sled runners, the dogs seem to sense, LIGHTWEIGHT! The lead dog, Harley, has just run half of the Quest and is a veteran of two Iditarods. You'd think he'd be resting on his laurels, but instead he's hauling butt up a short but steep hill. The sled reaches the crest and the dogs halt. I'm left teetering on the peak like the Grinch Who Stole Christmas. Harley looks over his shoulder and I swear there's a glint in his eye. A pause, and he takes off like a bat out of hell, the sled careening headlong down the hill. I chant the musher's mantra: "Don't let go of the sled." A corner! I squat low on the sled runners and lean into the curve. Recovering, I stand upright to see Harley slow to a trot. He turns to glance at me with what I imagine is a wicked smile. All right, I admit, it was kind of funny. In today's small taste of mushing, I began to understand the mushers' love of the trail. I keep replaying the day, feeling Harley give one leg, then another, to my hand and the harness. I hear the dogs' breathing, harnesses jingling, the woosh of sled runners. That night, I am reading "The Lost Patrol" by Dick North. In a passage about the Canadian Mounties, North describes life on the trail as "an extreme sense of being -- all of the sense of sight, smell, touch, taste and hearing are acutely brought into play." Day 15: Descriptions coined to describe Ralf's race strategy have become progressively more elaborate: "He's on a camping trip"; "he's homesteading out there"; and finally, "he's a low pressure area moving slowly westward." Ralf, a wiry chain-smoker, is becoming almost legendary along the trail for his impressive consumption of calories, polishing off two meals in one sitting and topping it off with eight chocolate bars and Diet Coke. At this point, one checkpoint official we meet reluctantly admits that he's closing down the place and leaving a note for Ralf with instructions for lighting a fire. Another official tells the Fairbanks newspaper that he's discovered that Ralf was able to improve his pace by 1 mph when he learned to light cigarettes on the fly. "When he ran out of cigarettes for two days, his speed popped up another 1 mph. Then he ran into cigarettes again somewhere and it fell back down," the official laughed. Fairbanks, Alaska, Feb. 26, 1997: Ralf Zielinski finishes the Yukon Quest last, in 18 days, 10 hours and 57 minutes. Everyone says he had the happiest dog team in the race. SALON | Dec. 16, 1997 Laura Johnston is a writer who lives in Chicago. What do you think about such dog sled races? Courage or folly? Share your thoughts in Table Talk.