Leaving on a Jet Plane

Peter, Paul and Mary (alternating with John Denver) are singing in my head as we pack for our two weeks in Alaska. We are almost as excited about being in cooler temperatures as we are about the wonderful scenery and wildlife we anticipate seeing.

I’ve been following some of the Alaska news sites in preparation for the trip. It seems like there’s a lot of Palin coverage of all sorts. She’s clearly the focus of their celebrity news. Much like a family, Alaskans seem comfortable criticizing her themselves, but don’t much appreciate outsiders’ opinions of their gal from Wasilla.

What’s truly interesting to me, though, is the flavor of their news. If all politics is local, as Tip O’Neill famously said, then I’d have to say at least most news is local. It’s what affects people’s daily lives, what touches their pocketbooks and speaks to their hopes and their fears. Thus, the stories in Alaska may involve polar bears or whales or other wildlife that we don’t see in the Lower 48, but most of them reflect the same cares and concerns that the rest of us have. Jobs. Homelessness. Jobs. Addiction.  Jobs. Abuse. Jobs. The echo resounds everywhere these days.

In Alaska, the story that leads a news bulletin may very well have to do with whether the salmon are abundant in the Kenai River. That’s important to folks there on many levels. They count on fishing to sustain their lives; the salmon are business (jobs). They count on being able to ship salmon elsewhere (jobs) and on attracting fisherman to their waters as sportsmen and tourists (jobs). The Kenai River has been closed to king salmon fishing because state biologists are concerned with how few salmon they are seeing in the water.

We’re going to Homer after we depart the cruise in Seward. In Homer, the news is that they have a new ferry and they’re pretty excited about it. Homer is a town that relies to some extent on tourism (jobs) and the ferry is a big part of that.

In Sitka, folks are hoping that the clear water in their Blue Lake might be a business (jobs) opportunity. There’s an entrepreneur, according to National Geographic, who thinks he might be able to export that water in bulk to the Middle East. There are folks in Sitka that like the idea for the benefit (jobs) it might bring their town.

What I’m loving about Alaska already is the sense you get from learning about the people there that, while they’re like the rest of us in many ways, they are there because they’re different, too. If their families have been there for generations, their culture has unique elements. They may be Native People or have Russians in their DNA.

If they’re relative newcomers to the state, they came and stayed because there’s more wild there to enjoy—open spaces, fewer people, room to roam where you might see more bears than people. There’s some of that quirky independent spirit that permeated the TV show, Northern Exposure. I just today read a story about a woman from Anaktuvuk Pass who married her sweetheart so hadn’t been posting much in her blog called “Stop and Smell the Lichen.” The groom posted photos of the wedding on his blog, called “Wasilla by 300.” It looks like they were married in a sort of gym, surrounded by family and friends. The photos and story are really beautiful and sweet. And, apparently the ceremony and reception were followed by an “alcohol-free tundra party.” That’s not how wedding stories end in North Carolina, our being short on tundra and longer on alcohol, perhaps.

Anyway, we’re looking forward to the people and places we’ll find in Alaska. We’re excited about wearing warm clothes on cool days, having many more hours of daylight than we’ve ever known and taking lots of pictures.

Among the Tlingit (pronounced clink-it) people of Alaska, there aren’t expressions for hello and goodbye, apparently. There is an expression used often there that I think works well for us. It’s Haa kaa gaa kuwatee translating to It's good weather for us. Whatever weather we find, we think the adventure will be one we’ll remember forever.