Growing up in Alaska meant that I had a lot of different hero's than most kids these days. Instead of dreaming to be an actress, or a favorite singer... I dreamed of being a Musher. House hold hero names in my home were Susan Butcher, Dee Dee Jonrowe, and Martin Buser. Their dogs and teams were what built my hopes and dreams. Unfortunately for me my parents bought a West Highland White Terrier instead of a husky. Setting my dream back a few years more than I would currently like.

When the movie Balto came out I was more than just a little ecstatic. After watching the movie my younger sister and I played dog team all over the house, yard and neighborhood. We even gathered up all the neighbor hood kids and any rope and dog harnesses we could find and built our own "teams". There was something about seeing an Alaskan legend brought to the big screen that made us kids proud. Even if we did know the real story instead of the one we saw. It was still magical. That art and posters, and t-shirts dominated my room for quite some time. That combined with a few great Disney movies and you had my dream of becoming an animator in the handbag...

Now lets fast forward a ways. I'm now 24 and in Ellensburg WA probably the most devoid place of anything that I knew as winter, and instead of the Iditarod... we have the Rodeo. The setting is not incredibly ideal, nor are all the characters. Tonight I watched the movie Balto again in hopes of rekindling some of what I used to feel as a proud Alaskan child growing up in the great white north, the last frontier. Instead of hope, I found that many of the memories I had of that childhood movie were tarnished. A certain wolf face kept plaguing me every time I looked at Balto. I Imagined all the Steel's in my life that had gotten in my way and all the serum I had dropped in the snow lost forever. Falling victim time and time again to my own Diphtheria.

What was worse was when I finally grabbed out my sketchbook in order to try to draw along with the movie. I can not tell you how saddened I was to see that my own art skills had surpassed that of the movies. trying to draw the same angles and have the anatomy match up. It was all wrong. Instead of feeling a sense of triumph at besting the animators who created the movie Balto I felt saddened. It was if another dream had slipped into the blizzards of the winter to be lost forever.

I said goodbye to the movie, closing my sketchbook on the original idea of designing my own dog sled team in Balto style of art, and goodbye to a lot of the memories that I had tied with this film.

I don't know if I will ever run in the Iditarod like I used to dream of as a little girl in Alaska. What I do know, is that I am now running a different sort of race. My Hero's are still those men and women that fight snow and ice, blistering colds, and danger at every step. They were able to push on and complete the race, and I know that I will complete my own...