Along the Iditarod trail, mushers spend most of their time alone with their dogs. But there’s one way that they occasionally get to hear words of encouragement: sometimes, from strangers on the other wide of the globe: Mushergrams.
“It’s like an old-fashioned telegram to a musher. Along the trail, they come into the checkpoints, and they’re there for the different mushers as they come in, and they’re messages from all over the world.”
Nann Eliot is a volunteer with the race. Her job in Unalakleet is supposed to be helping with cooking. But the checkpoint has been so flooded with mushergrams that for much of Sunday morning she was helping an eight-year-old boy sort paper messages that completely covered an air hockey table in a community hall. She says they were coming so fast volunteers didn’t even know what they said.
“There were way too many. We didn’t read them, but as time goes on and we’re waiting here, probably we will be reading them, so we can tell people.”
The messages are short, most of them very simple. They say who sent it, where it came from, and small encouragements like, “you got this,” or “you’re doing great.” There were mushergrams for just about every single racer. But two in particular had so many sent their way that the piles had to be held together with close-pins.
“So I can say just by looking at this that Blair Braverman, who is online and has an incredible fan-base — the “ugly dogs” — she has a lot of messages. And the other close pin is for Alison Lifka, and she is an alum of Sweet Briar College, which is one of those lovely little women’s colleges in the south, and boy she drummed up a lot of support among all the alums.”
Braverman, a rookie, is a writer with a very loyal community of fans. On Twitter, they are circulating a document that lists the number to call to leave mushergrams. And not just for her. Next to every name is a short description of who they are, and how many mushergrams have been sent their way.
