Gunnar B. Johnson, Iditarod 2021
A little background – when our children were in 7th Grade, they completed an interdisciplinary program in winter/spring whereby they were divided into teams, read The Call of the Wild, researched the Iditarod, built sleds, and with a rag-tag group of students, raced their “sleds” around the school campus. With 4 children through the program, we were somehow “lucky enough” to “win” each sled (which we still have in our shed). As a result, our family feels quite a connection to the Iditarod.
Gunnar B. Johnson is a three-time Iditarod musher. He is also a suicide survivor, having lost his 21-year old cousin to suicide in 2010. In 2017, Gunnar and his dog team found themselves stranded on Norton Island in the Bering Sea when his team quit. As he notes of his 18 ½ hours on the ice, “Lying there was oddly spiritual because I was exhausted, scared, hungry, angry and totally alone. I looked into the darkness and thought about Benjamin. I could feel his presence because he was with me on this journey. His spirit gave me a renewed sense of power and purpose.” That purpose included a desire to promote suicide prevention and honor the lives lost to suicide by soliciting and carrying those names with him on the 2021 Iditarod. I submitted Hunter’s name to Gunnar’s list.
In a competition where every ounce counts over an 1,100 mile trail, Gunnar carried the names, right up until he tested COVID positive at one of the checkpoints, at which time he handed them off to a fellow musher who carried them to the end of the trail. Such community. Following the concluding ceremony, the envelope carrying submitted names was burned to ashes and these were respectfully spread on the frozen Knik Arm of the Cook Inlet, and where they would then flow to the Gulf of Alaska and Pacific Ocean when the snow and ice melts this Spring.
Like most middle schoolers during the Iditarod IDU, Hunter really wanted to be the musher. So, the idea that some 17 years later, a compassionate Iditarod musher would honor those lost to suicide by creating a pyre with the names of those lost so that they might be returned to the sea, well, that’s providing a Boat of Love if ever I saw one.