Susan Butcher

The Anchorage Daily News reported yesterday that Susan Butcher, four-time Iditarod champion, lost her long battle with cancer in Seattle late Saturday night. She was 51.

I had followed her story in that paper over the past few months. It was just a week ago that her doctors at Fred Hutchison Cancer Center in Seattle helped her to fight a further complication of her body rejecting her tissue transplant. The same day they let her know her cancer returned. If you read between the lines, she wasn't given much more time to live.

The news is sad, and her passing reminded me of a particular Robert Frost poem. I've posted it below.

Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening
by Robert Frost

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.