When the weather outside is frightful - snow and cold for months on end - what to do? In Alaska, they harness up the sled dogs and head out into the storm to mush the Iditarod (eye-DIH-tur-ahd) trail. in this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, surviving the bleak season. Videos galore, a writer in frigid Iowa who gardens throughout the year, and a winter nature walk.

SEGMENT 1

Alaska journalist and Iditerod veteran Brian Patrick O'Donoghue tells Judith Strasser how mushers and their dogs survive on the trail, and remembers his own inglorious Iditerod career -- he finished dead last, but he finished! O'Donoghue tells the whole story in his book "My Lead Dog Was A Lesbian."

SEGMENT 2:

Artist and naturalist Clare Walker Leslie takes Jim Fleming on an imaginary winter nature walk through Mount Auburn Cemetary in Cambridge, Massacusetts, pointing out what's going on with the trees, birds, fish, animals and bugs. Also, Carl Klaus teaches writing at the University of Iowa and is an avid flower and vegetable gardener. He talks with Anne Strainchamps about why he likes winter and muses on its intimations of mortality. Klaus is the author of "My Vegetable Love: A Journal of a Growing Season" and "Weathering Winter: A Gardener's Daybook."

SEGMENT 3:

Communications researcher Janet Wasko of the University of Oregon tells Jim Fleming that VCR's were originally intended to time-shift TV programs; that income from video rentals has become key to the movie industry; and that consumers' choices are limited by entertainment conglomerate ownership of major video chains.

Distribution dates:

• week of 03/02/97 - hour 1