THE RENAISSANCE MUSHER LOVES DOGS, ART, WINE, LIFE

When Chugiak musher, author and artist Jim Welch came to Alaska to
work, he thought he'd stay for a couple years. That was 1978.

"When it snowed, that's when I knew I was there," he said of his first
Alaska year.

Welch grew up in California, and in 1972 earned his master's degree in
studio art from Stanford University. He later worked a season as a
fire lookout in northern California, during which time he described
himself as a starving artist. He said the isolation as a fire lookout
caused him to have to learn the art of conversation all over again.

Welch moved to Alaska to work with the blind, helping them to travel
independently. He directed a training center at the Alaska Center for
the Blind, and later was a commercial fisherman in Bristol Bay. When
he bought five racing huskies from famed musher George Attla, he
turned his sled dog hobby into a serious mushing career. He went on to
win many sprint-mushing events, and wrote a book on the sport. He is
one of only two mushers from the Anchorage area (the other is Janet
Clark) to finish in the top 10 in the Fur Rendezvous World
Championship sled dog race. Not bad for a guy who started out running
dogs on a bicycle through California vineyards.

Welch helped build the trails through Beach Lake Park as president of
the Chugiak Dog Mushers Association. He was recently named a lifetime
member of the organization.

In 1986 Welch was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, and he retired
from mushing. When it was made legal in 1995, Welch began using
medical marijuana for the pain. While this controversial practice has
earned him publicity in the past, it in no way defines him.

"For me, the medical marijuana is a minor thing," he said. "I use it
less and less. The real crime is what society is doing to people for
such an innocuous thing. It is criminal to jail people for it. Nobody
has ever died from using marijuana."

Fellow musher Dixie Waddell has called Welch a friend since the late
'70s.

"He's just a fantastic person," she said. "He's knowledgeable about so
many things. And even though he has his problems now, he continues to
support dog mushing and contribute to the sport."

These days, Welch spends time with books and with friends. He creates
and collects art, and is passionate about mushing as well as about
life and art and knowledge. To talk with him at his home on Husky
Street is to talk to a da Vinci spin-off. His views of humanity are
gentle, and his interest in, well, everything, is robust. He lives a
content and contemplative life.

"I saw a show on PBS about the super string theory," he said. "It
talked about the nature of the size of our universe."

>From there, he suggested a book.

"Have you read "Life of PI?" he asked. "That book is incredible. The
ending changed the way I see the world."

Japanese art decorates his walls, and he is a featured character in a
popular Japanese graphic novel.

"I'm not really sure what the book is about," he said, showing the
page that bears his likeness as a famous musher, holding a husky.
"This is what they read on the subways over there. I think the book is
called "Animal Doctor."

Welch said his Japanese connection came about when he visited the
island of Hokaido to teach dog mushing, and later accompanied some
Japanese businessmen on a tour of the sled dog scene in Alaska.

In his back room, Welch has dozens of original watercolors he's
created, each one with a simple poetic saying to accompany them. One
demonstrates Welch's gentle nature. It is a painting of a pair of
tennis shoes, and it bears the words, "If you love me more than I love
you, I will love you more than you love me."

Others are a little more spry. A painting of a wine bottle reads, "I
have learned something. If the music is too loud, you can't taste the
wine."

His love of the arts is clear even in his book, "The Speed Mushing Manual:
How to Train Racing Sled Dogs," where he quotes Robert Frost at the
beginning: "The surest thing there is is we are riders, and though none too
successful at it, guiders."

Welch's art will be featured for the month of April at the
International Gallery of Contemporary Art in Anchorage.