Last spring, my brother came for a visit and helped me plant some fruit trees. As soon as he planted a persimmon tree, he had a small group of Asian neighbors gathered around him, wondering why a skinny white dude would plant a persimmon tree. As I stood outside a couple of days later, watering the new trees, a shy neighbor of mine, originally from Seoul, Korea, approached me and expressed her fascination with my brother's choice to plant a persimmon tree. She claimed it was “an Asian tree” and she was so confused. I looked at her and said, “Well, you should try his kimchi some time.”This put her in a great state of consternation. “His kimchi? He prepares kimchi?”I explained, “Yes, but not always. But he does cook Korean, almost exclusively.”My neighbor could not understand this. She had never heard of any white man, nor too many Korean men either, who were competing, on any level, with her or her mother in the kitchen.Within two weeks, my brother was the stuff of legend. I came in one day and said to him, as he was washing the dishes, “Apparently you're a war hero, too. There's some rumor now that you fought in a war, and they're now referring to you as 'G.I. Joe.'” We almost died laughing.My brother is a self-taught man who cooks Korean food for one main reason: he loves it. As an organic farmer, he typically lives in rural locales where he can't find any. Plus, he's cheap.So. . . he set out to master it, to master many types of Asian cuisine, in fact, but primarily Chinese and Korean. And he dove in, found the proper cookbooks, Youtube channels, equipment and blogs, and he made a commitment to working at it, for years, to get it right.The thing is, when we set out to master something, take ourselves far out of our comfort zone, strive for something so different than what we were shown or taught, we almost always garner the interest of others.Gary Paulsen learned this, when he found himself in the unlikely territory of training himself and a large team of dogs to run the Iditarod in Alaska. Mr. Paulsen was broke, in his third marriage and living out in the middle of nowhere when the members of his community got wind of his dream to run the Iditarod.Before he knew it, he had their interest, their financial backing and their unwavering support. If Paulsen had been a cocky man, a blowhard novelist who was constantly name-dropping (I can think of a few), he might have had no one's interest.But, he wasn't. He was the type of man who wrote lines like these:I left the yard on my face, my ass, my back, my belly. I dragged for a mile, two miles, three miles. I lost the team eight, ten times; walked twelve, seventeen, once forty-some miles looking for them. The rig broke every time we ran, torn to pieces. . . Every farmer within forty miles of us knew about me, knew me as “that crazy bastard who can't hold his team.” I once left the yard with wooden matches in my pocket and had them ignite as I was being dragged past the door of the house, giving me the semblance of a meteorite, screaming something about my balls being on fire at Ruth, who was laughing so hard she couldn't stand.This is why three women married him, why a community stood behind him, why he's still selling stories like coffee at Starbuck's.Mr. Paulsen wrote more than TWO HUNDRED books in his lifetime. I've only read three of them, but I've given all three of them five stars.This is a story about an underdog and a team of dogs who ran the Iditarod.It is humble, it is riveting, it is mystical. Honestly, I'd recommend it to anyone who knows how to read.