A former member of the Jamaican dog sled team is making his return to the Yukon Quest trail.

Newton Marshall, who finished the 2009 Yukon Quest, is back on the race trail this year as he handles for a Yukon Quest 300 team from Alaska.

Thursday morning, with a touch of homesickness, he sat eating breakfast while listening to reggae music.

By late morning, he was charming a standing-room only crowd at a Quest Fest presentation. Thumbs tucked firmly into his pant pockets and a tasselled-toque gripped in his right hand, he fielded audience questions about his background – the only boy in a family of five kids who was illiterate until a woman started teaching him to read and write while he worked at a horse camp that would eventually become his introduction to the dog mushing world; how he stayed warm – “ I danced, man,”; how he prepared for his 2009 Yukon Quest run – “I tell myself to expect the unexpected,”; and his relationship with the dogs – “We’re working for each other when we’re out there.”

Since his YQ finish, Marshall has also completed two Iditarods.

This season he started handling for Alaskan Scott Janssen – the mushing mortician.

Jansen will be competing in the YQ 300, which begins Saturday, in preparation for March’s Iditarod.