Famed musher inspires students

Vancouver Heights — Famed sled dog musher and children’s book author Pam Flowers visited Marshall Elementary School on Oct. 30 to read from her work and talk about her amazing experiences. In 1993 and 1994, Flowers completed the first solo trek by a woman and by an American across 2,500 miles of the Arctic — from Barrow, Alaska, to the tiny village of Repulse Bay. She and her eight dogs had made it 2,000 miles when they were temporarily halted by the early breakup of ice; she wound up living in an Inuit village for five summer months while waiting to finish. To get ready for her visit, students at Marshall read her sled-dog-related books “Douggie” and “Big Enough Anna.”