Mush to a Different Drummer

For years, "Keep Portland Weird!" bumper stickers have adorned no small percentage of cars and bicycles here (usually applied upside down). "Keeping Portland weird is about being true to yourself and supporting your community," states the Keep Portland Weird website. In this climate, it comes as no surprise that we are also proud hosts to one of the many Urban Iditarod races held yearly on the day the official Iditarod kicks off in Alaska.

Portland is all over this concept: "mushers" commandeer shopping-cart "sleds" and rope a few buddies to it as "sled dogs" (barking is mandatory). The race route takes teams through some of the busiest streets in the city, none of which are blocked off for the event. Along the way, a few "pit stop" vendors sell ten-dollar pitchers of beer to keep dogs and musher properly hydrated. There is no sign-up fee, and there are no prizes.

This year, around 50 teams - about 250 people overall - were expected on an inclement 45-degree day. On the way to the race, my friend and I gazed with new eyes at the people we passed: was that knot of people all wearing green a team, or just some strangely-dressed folks heading to brunch? On a rainy Saturday morning in Portland, either is equally possible.

Unable to find anything but the sketchiest of information about the race's actual route, we ducked into a cafe near what we thought was the race path. As we waited, I watched two men in ski masks exit a convenience store across the street at a flat-out run - but carrying shopping bags, clearly having purchased items. A man in a football jersey soon emerged from the same store, carrying a case of beer like a football, also at a dead run in the same direction. Finally, a man dressed as a tie-dyed unicorn sprinted into the convenience store, and we decided to head outside to find the larger congregation of racers that surely was nearby.

The streets were quiet, leading us to assume that perhaps we were seeing only the first few racers, until we turned the corner and were confronted with an empty pay-to-park lot converted into a race checkpoint and filled to the brim: a Pac-Man musher with ghost "dogs," a "birds and bees"-themed team with costumes to match, a madcap team set on launching Ping-Pong balls at their fellow racers, and of course the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. A cart with a massive pirate ship mast was helmed by a black-clad fleet of pirates, their apparent captain dressed in Doc Martens, a kilt, and a top hat. It's a strange beauty of Portland that such large-scale acts of subversion occur in such a quiet, localized fashion that even a block away there was barely a hint of its existence.

Then, real-world panic: I realized I had left my backpack at the cafe. My friend suggested cutting around the crowd of racers - easy enough as long as the racers remained loitering at the checkpoint. Naturally, I took off, and so did the racers.

Immediately, I was swallowed up in the crush of carts and costumed Portlanders. There was screaming and beer-guzzling and people shooting water cannons. Men dressed as stewardesses pulled a cart with a spangly airplane inside. Cavemen pulled a cart filled with fire, somehow not extinguished by the morning's occasional showers. It was sheer mayhem, and then I came toward a cross street.

"Red light!" shouted the first to arrive on the corner. Word came back through the teams: "Red light! Red light!"

Everyone stopped, some in the front skidding to a comical stop only to have their cart ram into their legs from behind. All eyes were on the pedestrian signal. Passing cars honked crazily in what seemed to be enthusiastic encouragement.

"Green!" someone shouted the moment the light turned, and everyone was off all over again.

Even in the midst of the chaos, I was struck by the beauty of this simple nod to coexistence: these racers, completely off the chart as far as conventional society is concerned, preoccupied with their own goals and desires, nonetheless took pains to coexist peacefully with the established norm. While some of that was surely self-preservation - no one wanted to hear "five injured in car vs. cart accident" on the five o'clock news - there was more than that going on. Local bars and cafes took the opportunity to indulge in some capitalism by selling booze to the thirsty dogs. The drivers beeping out happy Morse code with their horns may as well have been saying, "My brand of wild recognizes your brand of wild and approves," as the carts halted to allow normal traffic to carry on. This was not a case of "normal" society and fringe folk tolerating each other. This was a partnership, in most cases largely impromptu, working together to offer everyone something positive.

There are times in my own enlightenment journey that I have felt too detached from the "norm," too distant to be of use. As we apply ourselves to learn more, sometimes by falling ever deeper into the rabbit hole, it might behoove us to spare a thought toward how we might narrow the gap between "us" and "them." Ask ten people what enlightenment (or whatever term they care to use) looks like, and you'll get ten different explanations - but that's as it should be. While there is a necessary comfort in cleaving to those similar to us, it's equally necessary to strive for recognition of enlightenment no matter how different it looks from one's own specific version. When drivers cheer on something they don't understand past the joyous looks on the participant's faces, and "mushers" serve local capitalism by tipping handsomely when they buy a pitcher of beer for their "dogs," a huge but unspoken message is delivered: Our journey is awesome, and so is yours.

Photo of Urban Iditarod by Kal Cobalt.