HUMAN
Name: MILLE PORSILD
Age: 50
Residence: WILLOW, ALASKA
Occupation: DOG MUSHER
Years involved with Iditarod: 12 YEARS
Iditarod Role: DOG MUSHER NOW & I USED TO SUPPORT, MANAGE, & FACILITATE A TEAM CALLED TEAM RACING BERINGIA, WHICH INVOLVED OTHER MUSHERS
Current Location: IDITAROD HEADQUARTERS
Date of Photo: SATURDAY JUNE 29, 2024 DURING IDITAROD PICNIC
Temperature: 72F
What, who or how and when did you first get involved with the Iditarod?:
I got involved with Iditarod in 2012, and I was working with two mushers, actually with three mushers, but the two mushers in particular, that was Mikhail Telpin from Chukotka, Russia and Joar Leifseth Ulsom from Norway. And they were part of Team Raising Beringia that we had established to facilitate an education program for learners around the world to learn about this area called Beringia, which is an ancient Arctic area covering Chukotka and Russia across the Bering Strait, Alaska and the Yukon in Canada. And our mission was to interest people in this space that’s still interconnected. It used to be during the last ice age, it was a big steppe, and how people walked over to the Americas. And to kind of engage students and learners in general in this.
We were following races all over this area from Chukotka to the Yukon. And in 2012 we did our first Iditarod. I had the pleasure of flying up the trail and learning as I went.
What is your Why? Why are you here TODAY and involved with the Iditarod?
So I’m still involved with Iditarod because now I have the incredible pleasure of being a musher myself, going down the trail with my dog team and actually experiencing this unbelievable journey that it is to go across Alaska, and living the lifestyle of being with my dogs year round, and having this goal that is incredibly most emotional and powerful in the ability that you can reach out and touch other people.
Tell me about your most memorable Iditarod experiences?:
One of my most memorable Iditarod experiences was… I almost want to say it was my first time down the Iditarod trail. So the races actually originates in commemorating this Iditarod trail. And I have had the incredible fortune in my life to travel all over the Arctic, around the Arctic Ocean on two to six months expeditions and camping out on the land. And when you do that, you have no trail. You forge a trail across the land. And so I really had no idea what it was to travel across the land on a trail like this.
And it’s not something that’s describable to anybody until they’re on that trail. That trail crosses every kind of landscape in the Arctic that you can think of. And it is nuts. It’s just nuts that there’s this maintained trail, beautiful trail that is made for us every year by this hardcore group of volunteers. And we just come flying down that trail at 9, 10, 8, sometimes slower than that, miles per hour.
I remember the first time I went through the gorge, I started out from rainy pass at night. It was moonlight and it was windy, but the wind was coming from behind. And so as we approached the gorge, I looked over my shoulder. I mean, the dogs were walking, running straight into the wind, and I looked behind me and it was just this incredible landscape of glistening white and the dark blue sky and the moon and the wind. I happen to love wind because it makes you feel alive. And that whole run was just, I mean, it was terrifying, but it was also beyond magical.
And it was terrifying because it was nighttime and I’d never been there before. And I’d heard all these stories. And so any little curve as you go up over the pass, I was sure it was hundreds of feet down and we were going to fall off the cliff because Alaskan huskies are nuts and they just forge ahead and run full speed. And the more you seem like you think this is scary, the more they’re just like, “Yeah, let’s go.” Which is very different from expedition dogs. So yeah, I love this trail.
What do you know for sure?:
What I know for sure in life is that to my knowledge, I only live once and it is on me to live with kindness and live every moment to the fullest. And through the dogs and with the dogs, I get that.