Stay tuned after the episode to hear our latest edition of And Then What?

Happy Solstice, everyone.

This is one of my favorite times of the year.

These long days, they are incredible.

And I feel like I get the most out of life during this time of year.

The summer light, summer heat, they're here.

But for today, as part of our Good, Good, Bad series,

we are going to visit a much colder, a much darker time of year.

This last March, friend of the diary's Emily Ford,

who you may remember from the episode Winter Vacation,

where she walked Wisconsin's Ice Age Trail in the Dead of Winter with her dog, Diggins.

It's a great episode, check it out.

Well, this last March, Emily stepped up to one of the greatest challenges on the planet.

The Iditarod.

Legendary for its length, difficult conditions, deep wilderness experience.

The Iditarod was an endurance race conceived as a celebration of Alaskan

history and spirit and homage to the art and the sport of mushing. The Iditarod originally was

a historic mining and trade route where dog sleds carried vital supplies and mails through the

interior all the way to Gnome, which is out on the Bering Sea.

The general path of the Adidurad captured the American attention back in the day of radio,

where that was how we learned about news, when a group of Alaskan mushers teamed up to save the town of Nome, Alaska.

Diphtheria, or the Black Death, had begun to circulate in Nome.

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