Wagaliciousness Begins Here!

Have you ever thought about harnessing up 16 sled dogs, putting them in front of a sled loaded with dog food, survival gear, and a few protein bars for you, and heading out for a week or two into arctic weather, 1128 miles of rugged trail conditions, and wildlife that might want to hurt you?

Yeah, me neither! Yet that’s just what thirty-three otherwise rational humans are doing right now.

There were forty mushers – 7 mushers withdrew from the Iditarod before it even started. Came to their senses, you might say? Many others would join that chorus – for the thirty-three mushers, this is what they’ve waited and trained for their entire lives. The challenge of what’s called the Last Great Race on Earth is one they feel they’re up for, and the “prove it” is happening now on the windswept wilderness between Fairbanks and Nome, Alaska. Some teams will be on the trail for eight or 9 days, most far longer, and some teams will scratch along the way, ending their shot at completing the Iditarod...

Tomorrow is May Day. It’s also Beltane, a holiday that you may not be familiar with unless you’re from County Limerick or County Wicklow in Ireland, where the Beltane tradition has been constant from the earliest writings in Irish literature. Beltane/May Day marks the midpoint between the spring and the summer solstice, a time where the earth starts producing food, flocks start producing babies, and the heavy summer work of providing for the community and putting up for the cold months of winter begins in earnest.

Humans have observed and celebrated the changing of the seasons throughout recorded history, and that continues today. The winter holidays are wrapped around the winter solstice. Easter, Passover, and Carnival occur near or on the spring solstice. Summer solstice in June is when school winds down and vacations ramp up, and the fall solstice is when vacation season winds down and school ramps back up. Toss in an election, a spooky holiday and a food-laden one, and the fall so...