HUMAN

Name:Heidi Uhl
Age: 52
Residence: Anchorage, Alaska
Occupation: Occupational Therapist.
Years involved with Iditarod: 12 Years
Iditarod Role: Communications in Shaktoolik.
Current Location: Anchorage, Alaska.

Date of Photo: March 7, 2020
Temperature: 15F/Outdoors

What, who or how and when did you first get involved with the Iditarod?

I first got involved with Iditarod watching it with my grandmother on Wide World of Sports in the seventies or eighties. I never dreamed that I would actually live in Alaska. Then I moved to Anchorage and started going to the ceremonial start. And I didn’t know that I could be involved in the race. And I had no idea what really happened between the starting and finish lines. In 2009. Some friends who were volunteers encouraged me to volunteer, and I got to go to Shaktoolik to do communications. I didn’t know very much about sled dogs or the tracker or life in rural Alaska, but a very shy five-year-old named Allie in a red velvet parka with a white ruff, sang Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star to me in Inupiaq and I was hooked.
Every year I can’t wait to go back to that same windy village on the coast and see my old friends and make new ones.

What is your Why?..Why are you here today and involved in Iditarod?

I’m here today and involved with Iditarod because of the people and the teamwork that make this race happen. Every musher, volunteer and villager sees the race from a different perspective, and together we create this web of stories and experiences that make up the living history of the race. The mushers would have a harder time out there on the trail without all the work that we do behind the scenes to make the race happen. As volunteers, we would never have the opportunity to be out there on the trail if it weren’t for the mushers and the people in the communities who welcome us along the way. We come together from all over the State. And really all over the world with a diverse skills and backgrounds and we formed these amazing teams that make the checkpoint happen, and we really need each other to make it work. 

Tell me about just one of your most memorable Iditarod experiences?

One of my most favorite Iditarod experiences was: every year an elder woman named Hannah Takak comes to the checkpoint in Shaktoolik to visit me. She and her husband used to run the checkpoint out of their home back when mushers stayed in people’s homes in the villages. In all the buzz of our busy checkpoint, I hadn’t really thought about why she would want to come and see something middle aged woman from Anchorage. And it finally struck me that I am carrying on the tradition, and taking care of these mushers when they come in frozen and exhausted from the trail, just like she and so many other Alaskans have done for travelers for years. So thanks to Hannah I understand now we’re not just, Iditarod volunteers; like her where each part of the history of the Iditarod, and I think that’s pretty special.

What do you know for sure?:

What I know for sure in life is that the journey is much more important than the destination.