Michelle Shocked
Alaska First -- Alaska Always.motto of the Alaskan Independence Party
From what I’ve seen, Alaska’s incomprehensibly beautiful, as well as the coldest, most merciless part of America.
It was the masterful and incommunicable wisdom of eternity laughing at the futility of life and the effort of life. It was the Wild, the savage, frozen-hearted Northland Wild.
Jack London
I’ve never actually been there, but I’ve seen lots of episodes of Northern Exposure. I liked how that show portrayed a wide variety of weird people...as people rather than punchlines, or subjects of pity or derision...even if it had to stick them all so far away. More recently, there’ve been some good movies about people going to Alaska to die. One of them’s Into the Wild, based on the book by Jon Krakauer—to which I feel kind of a personal connection. In the early ‘90’s Chris McCandless and I were both not long out of college, and led by overwhelming alienation into the woods. In the summer of 1992, while he ventured into the Alaskan wild, I hiked the Appalachian Trail—idly wondering if it might cure what ailed me, or provide skills necessary to one day escape permanently. I came back. He died. I wondered aloud to a friend if the difference was that he had the courage to go further and deeper. My friend laughed, said maybe I was less afraid of other people—didn’t need to go to Alaska.
