HUMAN

Name: Michelle Leibold

Age: 61

Residence: Anchorage, Alaska

Occupation: Veterinarian

Years involved with Iditarod: 6

Iditarod Roles: Veterinarian

Current Location: McGrath, Alaska

Date of Photo: March 8, 2022

Temperature: 16F Outdoors 

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

I first got involved in the Iditarod in the late 1980s, I had come up here for an interview when I was in vet school and wanted to start working on it. And I did it for three or four years in the eighties and early nineties, and as a veterinarian every time, it was much different back then. And then I took a break to raise my kids and thaw out, instead of working the Iditarod every year, and just came back again last year.

What is your Why? Why are you here TODAY and involved with the Iditarod?

I’m here today and involved with the Iditarod because it’s my second year of returning after my hiatus, and I came back last year and totally enjoyed it. I’m working as a veterinarian again, and it is so fun to meet the people back on the Iditarod, the people you worked with. Miss being able to mix with the people in the village because of the COVID, and hope that someday that returns and we can have a little more intermixing. But I’m in McGrath, and we do get to meet with the other people that we had last year, a lot of them, in our group. 

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

One of my most memorable Iditarod experiences was not only one, but in the very beginning in the late eighties and nineties it was a completely different race. I was able to meet Joe Redington and Herbie Nayokpuk, which was truly memorable for me, they were just wonderful mushers, and talked to the people along the road, or in the villages. It was interacting with the villages, attending the village festivals that went on at that time. Snow machine ride back to Nulato from Kaltag where they didn’t have a veterinarian, and then back down into Kaltag again, being in Nome for the finish line, sledding down the hills around Rainy Pass waiting for mushers to start on our garbage bags, which is all we had. And last year when I came back, it was supposed to be warm, and then true to form (which I was disappointed it was going to be such a warm Iditarod) it got to 30, 40, 50 below, and we were out here under the northern lights when all the mushers came through, and they came through twice because they turned around. And it was very difficult to work while you’re standing under northern lights that are just fantastic, and also the COVID was a little bit depressing because you couldn’t interact with all the villagers and the different groups of people working here, but the northern lights definitely made it worth it.

What in life do you know for sure?

What I know for sure in life is that it is short, and life is not measured by the number of breaths you take, but by the number of moments that take your breath away.