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The Bouldings live a life that millions dream of but few dare. They carve a hand-to-mouth existence from the vast Minto Flats while training a frighteningly talented dog team that is tested every March in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.

Robin lends skilled support to Charlie, who comes across as an aging Captain Jack Sparrow from "Pirates of the Caribbean," tempered just a bit by time. Irreverent, opinionated and witty, he is the benevolent master and commander of the couple's 30 acres and 70-some sled dogs.

Boulding, a classic American wandering soul and a character right out of a Western novel, shucked off normal life in North Carolina and migrated here in 1983, finally discovering a place he could call home. He tapped into the ancient rhythms of the Tanana. He embraced its subsistence lifestyle. He made friends and learned all he could about the Interior region's superior sled dogs. He has since produced one of the world's toughest and fastest distance-racing teams. Now, at age 62, as retirement looms and he recovers from colon cancer, Boulding finds himself in a surprising position-new father.

Robin, 39, wanted a baby for years. She got her wish, and was due in mid-January. The addition seemed to be one more item on last fall's to-do list as they busily put up fish for the winter. "Here I am talking about a baby and I've got my AARP (magazine) in my hand," Charlie said.

"And he just got his first Social Security check!" Robin chimed in.

Boulding is known as much for his wry humor as his gritty competitiveness and fabulous Iditarod dogs. Thousands of fans flock to the ceremonial start in Anchorage each March to catch a glimpse of Boulding's trademark gray braids and beard, overhung by a hooked nose and naughty, hazel eyes. But when the Bouldings aren't in the spotlight of the world's biggest sled dog race, life turns to more pressing demands. The couple is a team that stays busy fishing, hunting and repairing all the related gear.

They don't shun money. Far from it: They have a bank account, and the sled dogs fill it with prize money. Their income is boosted by a contract to maintain a handsome, bent-wood fish wheel crafted by Boulding from acacia and spruce so that state biologists can calculate the Tanana's silver salmon run. But the bulk of their income isn't in paper currency. It is in the flesh of salmon that swim by their remote property at the edge of the Tanana River, of the moose and birds that feed in the surrounding Minto Flats. It has been described as a no-man's land halfway between Nenana and Tanana. The nearest neighbor is about five miles away. The village of Manley is 30 miles away by river. But for Boulding, it is bountiful.

'More Stressful Than Chemo'

This year, there is an added air of excitement at the Bouldings' riverside cabin. There's nesting at the homestead.

Robin was pregnant as winter began and was due to give birth Jan. 20. For her husband, already the father of three grown children, the baby was a gift he could not deny his wife.

"I'm too old to be starting a family," he said. "But if it was that important to her, I felt I couldn't say no." He went on to joke dryly that this was already becoming "more stressful than chemo."

It has been almost three years since he underwent surgery to remove nearly 12 inches of his colon after doctors detected cancer. He endured a grueling winter two years ago, commuting first over bumpy trails by all-terrain vehicle, then for four to six hours over dirt roads once a week for chemotherapy treatments in Fairbanks. He has since been given a clean bill of health.

A Better Sled

Boulding is responsible for at least one major technical innovation in distance dog racing: The Easy Rider sled.

A chronic tinkerer and natural engineer, about 15 years ago he devised a simple, lightweight but remarkably indestructible rig that has been copied and tested to the point it has become a standard design.

Boulding not only still has one of his original Easy Riders, he still uses the sled on parts of the Iditarod Trail. In a race notorious for shattering aircraft-aluminum runners and mushers' dreams, Boulding's light and flexible sled endures the punishment dished out by the Alaska Range. How? Boulding will cheerfully tell you the key is in allowing everything to flex.

The sled moves like a snake over moguls, directs most of the weight to the middle of the runners, and has long front stanchions that link the handlebar to the front of the sled for better steering. That's the easy way to identify an Easy Rider-those long stanchions that look like the front fork of a 1970s chopper ridden in the film classic "Easy Rider." It's easy to spot them at the restart of the Iditarod. About 90 percent of the sleds starting the race in 2004 were patterned after the Easy Rider.

Boulding also was influential in the evolution of the fast and efficient cookers used during the race. He was among the first to figure out that a musher could heat water fast by igniting ethyl alcohol in one metal bucket and dropping a smaller, snow-filled bucket inside the first.

He also believes that before he came along, Iditarod mushers were way out of line in their method of feeding tired dogs. Other people would try to coax their teams into eating. Boulding used reverse psychology: If the dogs didn't eat, he took the food away. The next time it was offered, the dogs would attack their food.

While he still fusses over gear-Boulding is toying with a better way to employ energy-efficient LED bulbs in his headlamp-he dismisses that side of dog mushing as secondary. Like the village sprint mushers he talks with, Boulding said the important thing to remember is simple: "It's the dogs."

The Best Bloodlines

Boulding enjoys a good conversation and rarely is at a loss for words, especially when it comes to sled dogs. He describes distance dogs as "the most athletic animals in the world. They have to be to perform. Their stamina is way above anything in nature, as far as mammals." He took the time to talk about sled dogs during a twice-monthly visit to Manley, which has a gas station, store and post office. The Bouldings also have a cabin there, with an answering machine that gets checked every two weeks. He sat at a circular table at the post office while Robin filled a dozen gas cans, did a load of laundry and had a quick exam at the community clinic.

Charlie pointed out that modern sled dogs are a relatively new offshoot. "There's a misconception that sled dogs have always existed, and they only need to be hooked up. That's a total fallacy. They are bred to do a certain task," Boulding declared. For instance, he said, old time trapline dogs needed to be tough, period. Their job was to haul and be steady.

Boulding's dogs, like many of those from top racers, maintain some of the mental toughness of the trapline dogs, but hounds have been blended into the gene pool, adding speed and a willingness to please. Most of that experimentation barkens back to the Nome gold rush, when rich bar owners embraced the gentleman's sport of dog mushing, hiring mushers and importing exotic dogs from all over the world to improve their kennels. When that gold boom died and another erupted in the Interior, those floppy-eared racy canines migrated with the money.

"Those dogs ended up here," Boulding said of Interior villages. "All the best bloodlines have come from here."

Those dogs still must be conditioned and trained to compete in the Iditarod, a 1,100-mile feat in which top teams run more than 100 miles a day for about nine days. Boulding prepares his dogs by going on long trips-up to 130 miles-several times each winter. It teaches the dogs to conserve their energy by running slower than they can, much like a human marathon runner.

A distance musher's regimen is surprisingly hard on the human. Even though it looks like he's only riding the runners, it is exhausting and humbling. The dogs are far more capable than humans at endurance sports. "The limiting factor in any dog team is the musher," Boulding said. "I dare any athletic guy to get on my dog team. They'd drive him into the ground."

So how does Boulding, at age 62, with bad knees and a gut that's still grumbling two years after chemotherapy, manage to coach his wildly talented bunch of dogs?

"I'm tenacious," he said. "Tenacity when it hurts. You do it anyway."

A New Life

Boulding first wandered into this part of the country after a couple of years in Montana, which is where he went after walking away from a family, home, small farm and construction career in North Carolina. He turned off his tractor, left it in the field, packed a small suitcase and hit the road. In the summer of 1983, after helping a friend hang some 3,000 salmon to dry along the Tanana, he had a rare epiphany, a happy feeling he'd never known before. "I never felt more secure," Boulding said.

Boulding has drawn on the knowledge passed down for thousands of years by the people of the nearby village of Minto, adopting Native ways of fishing, hunting and navigating the tricky, changing channels of the Tanana River. The past two decades have been a variation on that theme of summer harvest and winter sled dog racing.

He met Robin, the daughter of a Fairbanks minister, in the late 1980s. She was living in Coldfoot and he was racing the Coldfoot Classic. They were married in a large, three-day ceremony at his place in 1992.

While plucking the willow hens, Robin pointed out that their successful front-yard hunt was an example of Native ways. "If food is not taken when it's presented, it's a sin," she said. "Natives feel that whenever an animal appears in front of you, it is your duty to take it. Not to take it is disrespectful, to say the least. It may not present itself again."

Some would describe the Bouldings' life as hard, and it is. "In 20 years, I've read about two and a half books. That's how much cabin time I get," Charlie said as he walked briskly from a sandbar where he had parked his riverboat about a half-mile from his log cabin. Fresh moose quarters were curing in a pole barn. A summer's haul of Yukon River king salmon was dried and cured. Racks of 2,000 split salmon dried next to the dog yard. Jars of produce lined the cabin shelves. Boxes of fat carrots, potatoes, squash and celery were stashed in a cool outbuilding.

"There is no slack time. I have a lot of regrets, but coming to Alaska and doing what I'm doing now isn't one of them," said the man who described himself as a former "scoundrel" whose drinking days are long behind him.

The couple works long summer days to ensure there's enough food for winter. In the summer, they pack up everything, including their sled dogs, and boat up to the Yukon River where they fish commercially for king salmon. Together, the two are a whirlwind of activity. There are several dozen dogs to be fed, and constant repairs to snowmachines and four-wheelers. In the fall, Charlie tends two fish wheels a few miles upriver from his Tanana River home. Robin's chores keep her closer to the cabin. She cuts fish and puts up food for storage. "This is how I do it," he said after loading a few hundred chum and silver salmon into a pit to freeze for winter dog food. "This way, I don't have to coddle up to sponsors."

Just as the glacially fed Tanana is constantly changing, with silt islands rising and eroding away, Boulding's life follows a powerful current. He's constantly chasing opportunities as they are presented.

"Nothing that I'm doing was planned," he said, musing on a blustery afternoon as he steered his aluminum boat downstream. "I never planned to race dogs, or even have dogs. All of that sort of evolved."

Boulding got into dogs while working as a trapper during his time in Montana. As he trampled through the snow, he thought there must be a better way of getting around in the winter, so he bought a team of 12 huskies. He fell in love with mushing, but it wasn't so easy in Montana. "It was a pain in the ass to run 'em where I was at. A fence every half-mile. So I decided Alaska was the place where you could move around."

It wasn't long before the silver-haired musher with a hard stare and soft drawl was making a name for himself. He won the Yukon Quest, between Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, and Fairbanks, in 1991; squeezed in both the Quest and Iditarod in 1992; and won the Quest again in '93. He has been near the front of the Iditarod pack ever since.

'I Can't Let 'Em Down'

As the swamps freeze up and pans of ice start jamming the Tanana in early October, the Bouldings begin to hook up their handsome, powerful team of sled dogs.

He's one of about a half-dozen mushers with a genuine shot to win the 2005 Iditarod. Last year, he was ahead of the eventual winner, Mitch Seavey, leaving Kaltag. But Boulding and Kjetil Backen were hammered by a relentless snowstorm that obliterated the trail and slowed them to a crawl. The way Boulding describes it, they essentially broke trail for Seavey, who roared up from behind and passed them. Leaving Elim, Boulding was still on pace for a fourth-place finish when his aching knees got the better of him. He slipped into a shelter cabin to sit down for 15 minutes, but exhaustion overtook him and he awoke a couple of hours later, two places lower in the standings.

He was about to hang up his Iditarod career at the end of the 2004 race. But afterward, he said he just couldn't let it end that way. "The team is just such at its prime. I can't let 'em down. It is by far the best bunch I've ever put together," he said.

Asked if he plans to keep racing after the 2005 Iditarod, Boulding brushed the question aside. Planning that far ahead runs contrary to his outlook. Running his boat downriver at full throttle as gray clouds spit early snow, hinting at the winter to come, he waved his hand to the left and right, pointing out stakes in the ground sunk by people with big ideas for cabins and lodges.

"Great plans very seldom work," he said. "People who have them aren't resourceful enough to adapt when it doesn't work out. Not only out here, but I think that applies to pretty much all life."

JON LITTLE is a Kasilof free-lance writer and musher who finished fourth in the 2002 Iditarod. He planned to race in this year's Yukon Quest and then hit the Iditarod Trail as a reporter for .com.