By Carolyn Cole
Published on February 7, 2007

Iditarod musher Duane “Dewey” Halverson told Mustang Valley Elementary fourth-graders when he was their age, he dreamed of Alaska.

He read Jack London’s “Call of the Wild” and went straight to the hardware store to buy hinges for his future Alaskan log cabin.

When young Halverson showed his hinges to his mother, he told students she didn’t take his resolve seriously. His Boy Scout leader told him his dream of dog sledding was impossible.

“I built my first log cabin with these hands here and a lot of sweat and $7 in material,” he told students as they reached out to pet Echo, an Alaskan Husky and former lead sled dog. “And the hinges are still holding up the door to this day. You can live by your dreams.”

Now a Homer, Alaska, resident, Halverson spends most of his life preparing for his next Iditarod sled dog race.