The Cure

High over the Alaskan wilderness, a storm has already taken its toll. Wooton Bassett, traveling with his old friend Will Baccarin to help Will's ministry, Carry the Cure, bring the hope of Jesus to Native Alaskan young people, has watched a second plane vanish from the radio. That plane carried the pilot Marty and a stowaway: Logan, the son of champion Iditarod musher Lewis Scott, who slipped aboard because he believed his missing mother was in one of the villages on the ministry's route. Wooton's own plane barely escaped the storm, climbing so high that Wooton passed out from the thin air.

Wooton wakes as their pilot, Jeff, finds a gap in the clouds and sets the plane down at Nikolai, the village they were supposed to visit at the end of the trip. There they meet the tribal elder, Chief Tom, who tells them theirs is the only plane he has heard all day. Air Rescue is grounded until the storm clears, and searching blindly would be hopeless. When Will admits they did not expect such bad weather, the chief answers dryly, "Then you do not know Alaska very well."

Soon dog teams pull into the village, and among the mushers is Lewis Scott himself, racing the Iditarod. Will has to deliver the terrible news that Logan snuck onto the missing plane. Lewis wants to charge out into the storm at once, but Jeff can only narrow the crash site to a thirty-mile radius, and Chief Tom warns that a musher who gets lost or hurt will do his son no good. Will promises that when the storm passes, they will all search together, with God's help.

Over a meal of muktuk, seal oil, smelt, and moose meat, Chief Tom begins to warm to Will, who turns out to be Tlingit, from the Eagle Wolf clan, with roots in that very region. "You are one of us," the chief tells him. Lewis, meanwhile, unburdens himself. Logan found a letter from his mother postmarked McGrath, a village not far away, and begged to come along on the race to find her. Lewis refused, and Logan angrily accused him of caring only about racing. Then Lewis reveals a painful secret: people assume his wife left because of his drinking, but the truth is that Logan's mother is a drug addict, and that is why Lewis has kept Logan away from her.

Out at the plane, where Wooton has slipped away to pray, he and Will talk about the despair that shadows so many Native Alaskans - the long dark winters, the remoteness, racism, and poverty - and why they believe Jesus is the only true cure and hope for their land. Suddenly the radio crackles to life. It is Marty. He and Logan survived a hard landing near an abandoned cabin, but Logan hit his head and lies unconscious. He needs a doctor soon.

A plan comes together quickly. A doctor serves a village twenty miles south, so Jeff and Wooton will fly to fetch him while Lewis mushes his dog team thirty miles northwest to the cabin. Will insists on riding along to help clear a landing strip in the snow so Jeff can bring the doctor straight to Logan. Before they leave, Chief Tom quietly asks Will to temper Lewis, who is too emotional to be careful on such a treacherous route.

On the trail, Lewis pours out his guilt. Mushing at thirty below is second nature to him, but fatherhood is not, and he feels he has already lost his son. "I've taken better care of my dogs than I have my son," he confesses. Will urges him to stop beating himself up and instead pour a musher's discipline into loving Logan - and tells him the best way to be a good father is to become a godly one. Lewis brushes off the "Bible lesson" and pushes on.

Jeff and Wooton reach the southern village only to learn from the nurse there that the doctor is away assisting at Iditarod checkpoints for several days. Without hesitation she grabs her bag and comes in his place. As they fly toward the cabin, the Northern Lights blaze across the clearing sky. The nurse admits she has met good Christians but does not believe in God, seeing only an atmospheric phenomenon overhead. Jeff and Wooton gently point higher, quoting that the heavens declare the glory of God and recalling Genesis, when God said, "Let there be light."

Meanwhile, Lewis's shortcut dead-ends at a glacier. Going around would cost hours, so Lewis chooses to cross it, roping himself to Will, probing for hidden crevasses, and having Will lead the dog team at a distance behind. Under the same shimmering aurora, Will shares his favorite verse: "The light shines in the darkness. The darkness has not overcome it." Lewis growls that Will is preaching to a lost cause, but Will insists there is no such thing, and suggests the reason Lewis has always gone to the outdoors to think is that its beauty is drawing him toward the God who made it. Near the far edge of the glacier the ground begins to feel different underfoot - and then, with a cry, Lewis suddenly falls, leaving Will shouting his name as the story ends.