Mike Williams: Having suffered pain and grief akin to the travails that beset Job, he declared war and took his battle to the Iditarod Trail

Mike Williams with newborn pups, Akiak, Alaska, summer, 2000. Yesterday, Mike finished this year's race at 2:17 PM in the afternoon. The material here is adapted from an article and photo story that I did on Mike in the Spring, 2000 edition of Alaska's Village Voices.

"So they sat down with him upon the ground seven days and seven nights, and none spake a word unto him: for they saw that his grief was very great."

Job, 2:13

Long before there was alcohol in the village, there were dogs.

In Mike Williams' earliest memories, he is a tiny boy and he rides in a sled - a fourteen-foot freighter - along with his mother and brothers. Ahead of them, hard running dogs kick up snow and pull them swiftly over the hard-packed trail. Behind him, his father stands on the runners and shouts commands to the dogs.

"There were six of us then," Mike described his Yupiat family in an interview he gave me in March of 2000, shortly after he drove his team into Nome.  "We were heading towards spring camp, about 10 miles from Akiak."

About that same time, his father began to turn puppies over to Mike and his brothers to train. The boys would take them to get wood and to go hunting. "We would run the dogs everyday. By the time we would get through training them, we would already have a leader for my Dad." Come summer, it would be young Mike’s responsibility to feed and water the dogs. The water came from the Kuskokwim River, food was mostly fish of one kind or another, sometimes with a bit of commercial food, mixed with flour and rice. Sometimes there was beaver or moose.

"I felt like they were our pets as well as our helpers – and they helped us a lot. I felt like they were really part of the family. There was ‘Blackie,’ one of the smartest leaders, and fast. ‘Cheetah’ was very honest, very tough and very fast. We also had one little white fluffy dog, Patsy, an outstanding dog of Dad’s. She never tired, she always went and she was very honest."

At the age of 19, Williams entered his first men’s race, running seven dogs in a local 22 miler. He didn’t win, but "I beat some of the old hands."

He and brother Walter took racing seriously. They got into sprint racing and competed in the Anchorage Fur Rendezvous.  They ran the Kusko 300 and the Iditarod.

"The relationship between us and dogs has survived for thousands of years. It has been our way of life forever. As long as I’m living, that’s what I’m going to do: mush dogs. We’ve never lived without dogs in our family. We’ve always had dogs; we always will have dogs. Nobody is ever going to take the dogs away from me, period." 

Mike brings King Salmon home.

"I wanted my children to grow up in Akiak, living the village way of life. I wanted them to grow up hunting and fishing."

It was the good things of village life he wanted for his children, not the bad. 

What could be better then King Salmon, caught fresh out of the Kuskokwim River? Here, after a successful fishing trip upriver in the summer of 2000, Mike motors downstream towards his home village of Akiak.

Salmon will be roasted that very night; salmon will be cut, dried, and smoked to last throughout the year. It will be supplemented with moose, berries, geese and all the food that comes from the land and water that surrounds him.

After a training run at Big Lake, Mike Williams takes Amber back to the truck.

These are the six brothers Mike lost to alcohol:

Frank: "Frank was a great hunter; he taught me how to hunt."

Ted: "Ted always taught me how to be tougher than the next guy. He taught me how to fight, how to protect myself."

Walter: "Walter was mainly my co-partner. Together, we were going to win the Iditarod. His motto was, ‘I’m going to kick your ass!’ Even if he was facing the world champion, that was his attitude."

Gerald: "Gerald was my good helper, my right hand man. He was my fishing partner."

Tim:  "Tim was so young. He was a good helper, a good dog handler."

Fred:  "Fred was a good helper. He was real professional." 

"Alcohol – it was always there in Akiak, just like in all the villages," Williams recalls. "It’s been there ever since the first missionaries, since the outside influences first came in. There was a liquor store in Bethel. People who used that alcohol would make a run to Bethel. Booze was always available."

The young Mike Williams saw what alcohol did to people and he did not like it. He saw people come together with smiles on their faces and jokes on their lips, then grow disagreeable and angry. He saw hurt, pain, misery and death. He smelled the stench and did not want it as part of his life.

"As a young man, I said I would never want to use alcohol. I did not want to be like the way I saw people when they became intoxicated." He kept this philosophy until he joined the military.  "In the military, I saw everybody drinking beer at the age of 19," Williams recalls. "Everybody was going to the PX, to bars. My drinking career started when I was in the service."

Williams convinced himself that drinking was no problem for him, that he could go out just on weekends, quaff some beers with his buddies, have fun and be okay. "I thought, ‘No, no, I don’t have this problem. I’m going to drink in moderation. I’m not going to abuse alcohol.’ I started drinking more and more. I really started looking forward to the weekend, so I could drink."

Mike holds a photograph of his late brother, Teddy.

After serving the US Army in South Korea, Williams returned home as a drinking man. He found he had company. His parents were drinking. His brother, Teddy, came back from the thick of combat in Vietnam and soon began to drink heavy.

Williams saw what alcohol was doing to his family and did not like it. He realized it was doing the same to him.

"I decided to go cold turkey. I quit in 1974," he recalls.

His family kept drinking, then tragedy struck. Teddy died of an alcohol overdose.

"After surviving the bullets and bombs of Vietnam, he didn’t survive alcohol in the village," Williams laments. "After that, Mom and Dad decided to quit drinking. My Dad was able to go cold turkey and remained sober. Mom didn’t get back to drinking. It was a good experience. My Dad became my positive roll model. I saw that a person who anyone would have looked at and said, ‘that man has no hope,’ did have hope. Everybody has hope. He became a productive member of society. He started a prevention program on alcohol in the village. I saw that it could be done." 

Now sober, Mike became an alcohol-abuse counselor. He married Maggie, and they began a family. But the life around him was hard. He saw murders, and suicides. Then, after five years of sobriety, he gave in and took another drink. 

Throughout the drinking years that followed, Williams kept mushing and racing dogs. "My brother and I always made sure we had parties to go to after each race. We really enjoyed the parties. We looked forward to racing, then partying. This went on for 10 years."

Then tragedy struck again. Mike's oldest brother Frank drove drunk on a snowmachine onto dangerously thin ice, broke through and drowned.

Williams again took an honest look at what alcohol really meant to his life. "I had lost two brothers. My wife laid down the line. She said, ‘either you choose to keep drinking or you choose your family.' I chose family. I decided to quit. I decided to get back into the helping profession. I decided to get involved in education and got elected to the school board."

He kept on mushing, and as his dogs ran ahead of him down the trail, he would remember the parties, the hangovers, the trouble and sorrow. "I decided to repay the wrongs that I have done,"  In 1991, racing under the slogan, "Take Pride in Sobriety," Mike Williams entered the Kuskokwim 300. He raced not for the first place money, but for a bigger prize. Despite the fact it slowed him down, he took time along the way to urge villagers to sign a pledge of sobriety. The response was good. 

Many villagers signed a pledge to stay sober for one year. Many lived up to the pledge, and continued on once the year had ended.

He did it again the next year and the response was so good that he decided to do the same on the Iditarod.

He had no chance to place in the race to Nome, but he did gather many pledges. Perhaps someone is alive today who would not have been, had Mike raced to win that year.

Mike in training at Big Lake during the final week before Iditarod 2000.

Yet, even as he campaigned against it, alcohol continued to kill off his family. His youngest brother died drunk in a boating accident. The next youngest brother committed suicide while under the influence. Another brother died in an alcohol related boating accident and the sixth perished in a fire. "He had been drinking, and couldn’t get out of the house," Williams relates.

"I decided to do something about this damn problem. I declared war against alcohol – total war – a lifetime war. Whatever happens around me, I am going to fight this war. I have bitter feelings against alcohol. Totally bitter. It is time to recover from this problem, time to get on our feet and to move on with a good life."

During the Iditarod, even during his mandatory 24-hour layover, when he busies himself taking care of his dogs - Mike Williams never sleeps more than four hours straight. The long hours sometimes cause Williams to hallucinate. Mostly, what he sees is big cities and tall buildings, or he finds himself riding a narrow trail over a steep and deep canyon. Sometimes, his dogs turn into other kinds of creatures. In the early days, these hallucinations scared him. Now, when it happens, he knows he is hallucinating and so just enjoys it. It doesn't happen as much, however. He has learned to keep himself hydrated, and to avoid coffee on the trail. This helps. 

But even when one is sober, when one is doing everything in his power to live right and to help and encourage others to get on a good track, he is not immune from the worst kind of tragedy and heartbreak that life has to throw out. In 1996, the Williams family lost their beautiful, loving, nine-year-old daughter, Timotheen. In a freak accident, she fell off a four-wheeler traveling only at walking speed and died at her father’s feet.

How does one keep going?

"At times I think to myself, ‘I am so miserable and grief stricken, it is time to drink.’ But it is not time to drink! Drink only makes it worse. People make a mistake when they drink when they are in trouble."

Williams found courage in the Old Testament story of Job. "Job had everything – family, wealth, he had everything," Williams says. He recalls the story about how the Devil told God that it was easy for Job to be righteous and faithful, for he had everything. The Devil convinced God to let him beset Job with great torments, including the loss of his wealth, family and health, to prove that he could break him down and cause him to curse God. But bitter though his torments were, Job endured.

"He didn’t succumb and he overcame," Williams says. "His family was restored, he got everything back, after going through that test. I take courage from his example." Williams also found courage in the New Testament account of Jesus Christ. "He endured upon the cross. He was whipped, spat on, and after all the suffering he went through his message was, ‘I’m doing this for Mike Williams.'"

Mike also found courage from his surviving family members, especially his wife and five children. He believes that the same kind of help is waiting for anyone weighed down by alcohol, or any kind of substance abuse, if they will take it. "I think each person is precious. If they have a drinking problem, any kind of problem, the strength comes from God Himself. He has proven a person can endure.

"I keep myself very busy at my leadership positions, as a public servant. I visit the schools; I talk to the elders. They are a real big support. Also, I am pretty active in Church. All these are important to my life. A person needs to be spiritually fit, mentally fit, emotionally fit and physically fit. These four things are very important.

"I want to be physically active for as long as I can. My dogs keep me going. My dogs keep me strong. The Iditarod keeps me strong. The Iditarod is a hard race, but it is not near as hard as what I’ve gone through in my personal life. The Iditarod is tough, but not nearly as tough as what I’ve gone through in my personal life. Compared to that, the Iditarod is a piece of cake." 

Just before the ceremonial Iditarod start in Anchorage in March of 2000, Mike gives his daughter, Christine, a good-bye kiss. Shawna, one of Christine's older sisters, looks on.

Wife Maggie joins him on Fourth Avenue along with Christine and Iditarider Susan Lavin. "Iditariders" are fans who pay the Iditarod for the privilege of riding with a team down Fourth Avenue. The proceeds go to help support the race.

Lavin had come all the way from Colorado to see the start of the 2000 Iditarod. 

When they hear Mike shout, "Mush!" lead dogs Polar Bear and Brownie sprint out the gate. The team follows and all dash down Fourth Avenue.

"We love you, Mike!" Someone shouts from the crowd. "Be strong, Mike!"

This is all ceremonial. In 2000, the restart - the real start - was still held in Wasilla, where the race would begin for real the next day.

Mike checks out one of his dogs.

Unfortunately, by the time he reached Skwenta, several dogs had developed diarrhea. It wasn’t serious, but it would slow them down and he would have to work at improving the mix of water and formula. Still battling a virus of his own, Williams wasn’t feeling all that well himself. He would have to work to figure out the right amount of water and food to put into himself, too.

The weather was unusually warm, so, for the sake of the dogs, Williams traveled through the passes of the Alaska Range at night, when the temperature fell to a comfortable five below zero. Falling down the west side of the mountains is the steep Dalzel Gorge, infamous among mushers as a place to break up sleds and faces, and to lose dog teams. Dalzel is a hard to negotiate by day, let alone in the dark.

"I had fun going down," Williams would say later. "I always have fun in the Gorge.  I tipped over a couple of times. There is never a dull moment in the Gorge"

After that came the Farewell Burn, another infamous stretch of trail. Williams enjoyed it. "The burn was in the best shape I have ever seen it." 

Williams blew through Nicolai and McGrath, and finally reached Takotna, a beautiful little place in the Mountains. Having spent three days and nights on the trail, Williams decided to take his mandatory 24-hour break. Upon pulling in, as always, he immediately fed and watered his dogs, and laid out beds of straw. He consulted with a vet who, despite a couple of lingering cases of diarrhea, was very impressed with the condition of the dogs.

After the vet left, a dog that had been sick squated, then dropped a solid, dark turd. "Look at that turd," Williams grinned. "That is a good-looking turd. I like that turd. That is what good dog care is all about." 

Halfway to Nome, Mike Williams leaves the Athabascan village of Ruby.

After leaving Takotna for Ruby, Williams ran into rough trail pocked by deep moose tracks, which caused two of his dogs to develop sore ankles. Williams dropped them at Cripple, then continued on. Another dog, a red dog, grew tired and thought about quitting. Williams stopped the sled, stroked its fur and talked gently to it. "I think you’ve got it in you," he told the dog. "You can do it." The dog thought it over, decided Mike was right and pushed on to Ruby, where the temperatures were far below zero. A hard wind blew.

Williams arrived in the middle of the night with fourteen dogs. All teams are required to take an eight-hour rest on the Yukon. Most do it here. Williams fed and cared for his dogs, bedded them down, took a three hour cat nap himself, then moved out onto the windy Yukon. He would rest further down the river. 

Mike Williams and his dogs on the Yukon River, headed toward the next checkpoint in the village of Galena.

In a speech he gave upon being elected to his first term as Chairman of the Alaska Inter-Tribal Council, Mike Williams described the beauty of the country along the Iditarod Trail. "It’s a big Indian Country out there," he said.

"Indian Country" is the legal term describing land over which Native American people exercise sovereign domain, protected in trust by the United States. The long, hard fight to have Alaska Native lands recognized as Indian Country suffered a painful blow in Venetie vs. Alaska when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that ANCSA land are not Indian Country. Mike Williams sees the Alaska countryside much differently than does the Supreme Court.

"The whole state of Alaska is Indian Country," he says. "The way we were dealt with in history was not a fair deal to Alaska Natives. When Russia sold Alaska to the U.S., what were they selling? Who really owned Alaska? We have hunted and fish here since time immemorial. God gave this land to us. When I’m on the trail, I keep thinking of this land and the resources that we have, all of which belonged to the Alaska Natives. In the Lower 48, we see the history of the U.S., where it was getting into treaties with our brothers and sisters, and then it has broken every treaty. It boggles the mind to think that in this day and age, it can still happen.

"I keep thinking, ‘How can we retake lands lost after ANCSA? We were left with only 44 million and a lousy $1 billion. That is not even a drop in the bucket compared to the value of the land that was taken from us. People need to be educated. They like to say ANCSA ‘gave’ us 44 million acres. They never gave us any land. They stole our land."

Lead dogs Polar Bear and Brownie guide the team in the race down the Yukon River toward Galena.

"My philosophy is you’ve got to have a positive attitude 100 percent of the time. When you get depressed, concerned, you can not let it set in, because the dogs feel it. It affects them. You’ve got to show full confidence. My dogs know I’m going to be taking care of them. They know they are going to be well fed, well cared for. I don’t really have to push my dogs, because they want to work for me. I would rather drive a dog team that wants to work for me instead of dogs that are forced to work.

"My dogs are drug free, that’s for damn sure. They don’t use any steroids, any enhancers, to speed them up chemically. My dogs are drug free and spiritually fit. They are just full of spirit. I give them the best of food, the best of care. You take care of your dogs; they will take care of you. You can’t fool your dogs."

Seventy-five miles downriver from Galena sits the Athascan village of Kaltag, where the Iditarod Trail breaks away from the Yukon and cuts throw a low range of mountains to reach Norton Sound. Mike rides off the river and into the village.

In Kaltag, a young boy in a beaver hat, who would like one day to be an Iditarod racer, watches Mike as he chops frozen dogfood into serving size pieces. The boy also plies him with questions. He observes that Mikefeeds the dogs fish, ground meat and commercial food, but also sees a canine delicacy that he does not recognize.

"What is it?" he asks Mike.

"Tripe," Mike answers. "Guts."

"Is it good?" the boy asks.

Williams extends a frozen piece out to the boy.

"Try it," he invites. The boy declines. 

Whenever he stops, Williams first task is to feed, hydrate and bed down his dogs. Although he was never in position to challenge the top leaders, little competitions develop all along the race and Williams found himself running such a mini-race with Mike Nosko, who was usually one or two places just behind or just ahead of him. While Williams takes care of his dogs in Kaltag, he watches Nosko leave ahead of him for Old Woman. Nosko would reach White Mountain ahead of Williams and try to leave several hours before him, but his weary dogs would protest, sit down on the trail and refuse to budge. Mike would beat Nosko to Nome.

Down the trail in Koyuk, a woman came running out into the icy snow with only house slippers on her feet. She was so eager to greet Williams she did not even take time to put on her shoes. She told him of her own battles with alcohol, and how much strength and inspiration she had taken from his work. Wherever he goes, Williams hears such testimonials from Native and non-Native alike.  He arrived in Elim during the wee hours, yet the entire tribal council came out to greet him.

In White Mountain, where Williams gave his dogs the mandatory, final eight-hour break, several villagers gathered at the checkpoint to see him. A woman named Sugar brought a large bowl of salmon berries. Mike downed a bowl. She gave him another. He finished it off. she placeed another in front of him. He quickly devoured it. She gave him still another. 

Williams does not believe in pushing his dogs beyond reasonable limits. After taking care of them, Williams lies down in the snow to get a bit of rest himself.

During a mandatory 12 hour lay over in White Mountain, Mike finds time to take a very rare four-hour nap himself. 

At 5:30 AM, well after the first place team came into Nome to be greeted by a cheering, enthusiastic, crowd and the cameras of the world-wide media, Mike crosses a nearly empty, quiet, finishing line.

A bit after sundown, Williams left White Mountain to begin the final push for Nome.  He encountered "blowholes" where snow driven by 50 knot winds block out all vision beyond his wheel dogs. The dogs carried him through. He left the blowholes behind, reached Safety and pushed on. Finally, in the distance, he spotted the lights of Nome. The dogs grew happy and sped up. As he approached the outskirts of Nome, vivid images of his dead brothers, of his departed daughter, appeared before him, along with the  precious memories that he held of them. Tears formed in his eyes and flowed down his cheeks. The dogs raced down Front Street, pulling his sled behind them.

It was 5:30 AM. During Iditarod, Nome bars close at 5:00 AM. Except for a handful of race officials, media and those few people who await specific mushers, the only people out to watch Williams cross the finish line were those who were last to stagger out of the bars.

And so, as 12 dogs carried Mike Williams, the Sobriety Musher, toward the burled arch that marked the finish line, most of those who witnessed the event were wobbly-legged and red-eyed. "We love you, Mike!" one of them shouted, drunkenly. "We are proud of you, Mike!"

A sober person standing nearby shook his head. "What a sad irony," he muttered. But that man was wrong. These are the very people Mike Williams mushes for. Just as each of his six of his dead, drinking brothers was precious, so too are these drunken ones who greet him now. Just as there was hope for his hopeless father – and for Mike Williams - there is hope for them.

Wife Maggie is there to greet him, however, and she gives him a warm hug.

As Williams stepped off his sled, Maggie, wearing a beautiful squirrel skin parka, came to him, embraced him. The pain he felt coming down Front Street evaporated to be replaced by something that felt good. He had endured - just like Job.

Mike Williams had been on the trail for 10 days, 19 hours and 29 minutes. He finished in 28th place, and that put him in the money. 

Mike speaks in the Nome Catholic Church as bells ring all across Alaska.

At noon on the Saturday after his finish, the bell began to ring in the Catholic Church in Nome as Mike stepped up to the pulpit. At that moment, bells began to ring in churches all across Alaska, in memory of all those who have died from alcohol and drug abuse. "Alaska can be such a good place sober. It can be the goodest place on earth," Mike told those who had gathered. 

Afterwards, he is embraced by one who heard his message.

Mike Williams at this year's Iditarod restart in Willow.

Comments

[Patty]

God bless you Mike. I pray that you are still on the journey to spread the good news of sobriety and a life with Christ in control.