DECISIONS

Author's Note: This is an essay I wrote about the book I just read, about the good decisions and bad decisions people choose to make.


If you had to travel a 1,000 plus mile sled dog race, through the uninhabited Alaskan wilderness to finish in a place called Nome, you would probably be on edge. How about if people are starting to get murdered on the trail? You must be scared now, I know I would be. That is how the mushers in Sue Henry's book Murder on the Iditarod Trail feel. Scared and unsure of what is going to happen next. Sometimes things happen for a reason, sometimes people make good decisions and sometimes they make some bad ones.
                                                                                                        
In some ways I feel that I can relate to the mushers in Sue Henry’s book, yet I feel like I could never understand what they’re going through, or why some things start to irritate them so badly. People get the feeling in their stomachs that it is just something they have to finish even if someone tells them that it’s a bad choice. They feel it is something that they have to do: for it to feel like an accomplishment to them. If you have ever been determined to finish something that you know you can do well in weather you come in first or dead last you know you’re not a quitter because you went forth and completed the Iditarod. This is how the character Jessie felt, she was a girl musher on the Iditarod trail and none of the guys wanted anything to do with her. It was her fourth year racing and she had her best team since she started and knew she could have a very good chance of winning, but people didn’t think it was safe and wanted her to quit. She came in second after all and was still proud of herself. She reminds me a lot of my cousin, he’s twenty- four and is in training to be a cop. He didn’t quit on his dream in doing this but he’s not done yet and I’m really proud of him.

I never had to experience something scary or unsafe before, but I had good experiences in places that I could have gotten hurt in. This is kind of what the mushers in this book thought they were going to start a fun dog sled race, and ended up in a bad situation. One year my family had our 120 acres harvested and we went up to my grandma’s house to watch the harvest, it was really cool and different because it is not something that you see every day. There were cords and cords of wood everywhere that were being cut down and then hauled away on big trucks. I could have gotten hurt or even killed by any one of those trees or big machines, but thankfully I didn’t. This reminds me of this book because the mushers could have gotten severely injured by the winds and bad weather.    

While this is a scary thing to experience most people need to understand that they Iditarod is not a happy place. It can be but mushers race on a sled behind dogs through the dead of night racing towards checkpoints which are spots to rest. Originally the race was meant to stop in the abandoned town of Iditarod, but soon it went on to Nome. It costs mushers thousands of dollars to race in one year so some will do anything to win the grand prize. Which is sadly what happened in this book a musher really needed the money and killed the three most likely people to win, and didn’t even think about it.

Some need to understand that you need to win the fair way, and not just go hurting people because you can, you’re going to get caught. The good decisions people make, and the bad decisions people make determine the outcome of life. Everything happens for a reason weather it’s the right choice or the wrong.