Iditarod

After fire, Willow couple puts Iditarod dreams on hold to rebuild

WILLOW -- Willow musher Jaimee High was training for her second Iditarod when the fire hit just days before Christmas, gutting the handcrafted cabin and shop she and her husband Justin built from the ground up.

Within a few weeks, the 32-year-old forced herself back on sled runners for a few hours at a time on the spruce-studded flats near her Willow home.

What for some mushers would be a dream ride was for High more like a nightmare.

The memories rose, unbidden, with nothing but the whoosh of runners and the steady trot-trot-trot of her team for company. She'd see the charred, melted ruins of the hand-built cabin, like a jagged snow-covered scar. More than $15,000 in sewing equipment destroyed, a livelihood gone. Every photograph and wedding keepsake lost along with nearly all her mushing gear.

"I fell into a black hole," High said, gazing out across her dog lot last week. "Out on the runners, there's nothing. You're stuck in your head."

She knew the Iditarod would be like those short training runs -- times 50. Days and nights rolling across wide-open wild places alone, punctuated by intervals of potentially deadly storms, harrowing trails and busy checkpoints with no help from anybody.

More than 1,000 miles spent with her brain on replay.

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So High officially withdrew from the race on Wednesday.

The fire

The Highs lost most of what they owned to the fast-moving fire on Dec. 19. All of their 18 dogs survived, though, including two huskies trapped inside as the fire roared in. Three of six chickens did too.

Nothing else made it, including three high-end sewing machines, an embroidery machine and yards of durable, pricey material for the couple's dog gear business.

Still, they know it could have been much worse.

The morning of the fire, Jaimee High had planned to take the team for a 50-mile training run. Then Justin called from his job as manager at Deshka Landing on the Susitna River, 10 miles west of Willow. He needed Jaimee to come pick up Mr. Collins, their 1-year-old English bulldog.

Jaimee put off her plans to hook up the team, picked up the bulldog, stopped by the post office and returned home to find the shop on fire, with flames spreading to the cabin. Seventeen-year-old Sydney, a retired sled dog, and injured 9-year-old husky Boomer were inside.

High pushed about three feet in before the fire stopped her. So she shouted for the dogs and got them out.

"As soon as I stepped back, it was just engulfed in flames," she said.

An "all call" crackled over emergency scanners around the Matanuska-Susitna Borough, alerting every available responder to head for the Serenity Drive address. The Highs live in a dog mushing neighborhood. They met in 2009 as dog handlers for Iditarod icon DeeDee Jonrowe, who lives just down the road.

Flames shot 20 feet into the air. Jaimee High could only watch, stunned. By the time firefighters arrived, it was too late. The cabin, uninsured and built out of pocket, was gone. So was the shop, where their sewing business, High's Adventure Kennel, was based.

All the Highs' memorabilia, most of Jaimee's mushing equipment -- clothes, boots, gear, sled bags, harnesses -- and everything they built together was lost. Firefighters picking through the wreckage gingerly handed over charred keepsakes as they found them. Justin's grandfather's gun emerged. So did the belt buckle Jaimee earned crossing the finish line in Nome: "Iditarod Trail Official Finisher," read lettering on a background blackened and bronzed by fire.

"No one will ever have a belt buckle that looks like it," High said, running a finger over the metal.

Busy days, close quarters

For now, the Highs are living in a shipping container next to the cabin site.

Along with Mr. Collins, the rambunctious bulldog, the couple's property holds 17 sled dogs of different ages and breeds. Seven are 8-month-old pups; three are Siberians from Jaimee's original team. Most of the rest owe some or all of their genetic makeup to Jonrowe's kennel.

Both say they aren't bothered by close quarters or spending so much time together.

Jaimee grew up in Idaho and got a degree in computer graphics to track with her love of photography, but she got the dog mushing bug as a seventh-grader after hearing about the Iditarod. A 2002 accident in Idaho involving a drunken driver left her with spinal injuries and months of recovery, High said. She moved to Alaska in 2008.

Justin, 31, grew up in Michigan and worked there as a bartender and chef after college. Then he moved to Las Vegas, where he worked as a mechanical engineer before getting a job as an operations manager for a concrete plant in Florida. After being laid off, he moved to Alaska to be a dog handler. They met more than four years ago after their personal trajectories led them to Jonrowe's dog yard and married three years later.

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Justin built the cabin they shared. At first, it was a 12-by-16-foot space with a loft. Then came another 12-by-16-foot addition. Inside, details like glass tile and slate added flair.

"For a 12-by-32 cabin, we finished it really nice," he said.

Jaimee High said she knew in January that she wasn't mentally or physically ready to run the Iditarod but wanted to tell all her supporters personally before making it official.

High finished 46th as a rookie in 2012 with a young team. This year's team of mostly 3-year-olds looked to be more competitive, she said. She had a commercial sponsor for the first time: Shred Alaska. Lots of friends in Alaska and Idaho pitched in to help with race costs, too.

She's disappointed but practical about the decision to withdraw.

It wasn't so much the lack of training time as "my mental state being out on the trail," High said. "I just can't be gone hours at a time."

She had paid a $3,000 Iditarod entry fee. Race rules dictate partial refunds for early withdrawals but normally mushers who withdraw late get nothing back. Race officials waived that policy for High. They'll either refund the entire entry fee or hold it for next year if she wants to do the 2016 race.

Race director Mark Nordman said this is the first time he can remember a musher withdrawing this late. Never before, he added, has somebody left the race due to a house fire.

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There was never any talk that High would lose her entry fee. "It was just a tragic time," Nordman said Friday. "This event can cost so much money. You want people to come into it with the right mindset and enjoy the trip to Nome."

Rising from the ruins

Within days of the fire, the Highs bought an off-white shipping trailer in Peters Creek and turned the metal box into a snug 50-square-foot home.

They put down plywood and tried to keep out the freezing temperatures with insulating spray foam. It didn't always work: Justin found his pillow frozen to the wall one morning when the temperature dipped to minus 25.

Inside the trailer, shelves along the walls hold food, tools and boots. The couple's clothes hang on a three-foot rack on the other side. A mattress at the back of the box sits on a platform with storage beneath.

Not that there was much to store at first.

"I had lost everything," Jaimee said. "I was trying to find snowpants, boots."

Friends and other mushers reached out. Donations of gear, clothes and household items poured in. Home Depot cut the Highs a deal on a new stainless-steel refrigerator. Black Lake Buildings in Wasilla donated a shed. Jonrowe and other friends went in on a new TV. Friends set up a gofundme account (gofundme.com/j40wdc) that had raised nearly $20,000 as of last week.

Justin built a makeshift coal/wood storage shed and outhouse from sheet metal and spruce logs. An outdoor turkey fryer heats water for the dogs.

Jaimee is staying busy, rebuilding the sewing business the couple started two years ago at a temporary base until they can rebuild. They aren't sure about house plans yet. They may build a shop and put an apartment in it.

Whatever rises will go where the cabin's ruins are now.

"We can't have a scar," she said.

Contact Zaz Hollander at zhollander(at)alaskadispatch.com

Zaz Hollander

Zaz Hollander is a veteran journalist based in the Mat-Su and is currently an ADN local news editor and reporter. She covers breaking news, the Mat-Su region, aviation and general assignments. Contact her at zhollander@adn.com.

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