I’m old enough to remember when Alaska became a state (January, 1959), followed by Hawaii (August, 1959). The American flag in my third-grade class grew two new stars, and we had lessons about its evolution since “Don’t Tread on Me.”
Now I’m in Alaska with my partner Susan, spending more than we can really afford in celebration of our 50th year sharing a bed. Later today we’ll start sharing a bed on a cruise ship, but until then, here are my very first impressions of Alaska.
With only 740,000 people in an area that is a third the size of the lower 48 states, it’s nearly empty of people, like you can’t really imagine if you live on either mainland American coast. Forty percent of those 740,000 live in Anchorage, which is where our plane landed, a sprawling, seedy strip-mall of a city (with a great municipal museum). There are lots of poor people in the downtown, some living in small tent encampments. Many of these folks have the Siberian/Eskimo/Asian physiognomy, while others, black, white, and brown, look like troubled veterans of recent wars or worn-out potheads. Judging from downtown Anchorage, Alaska is a place where many psychically wounded people come to escape, to reinvent, to get off the grid, to grow beards and braids (the population of Alaska is 52% male, which is the highest percentage of any state), to avoid authorities and governments, to be left alone, and to scrape a subsistence living from the land, if they can. The large cemetery in town testifies to the fact that life has been hard for many of them — lots of the plaques and headstones indicate early deaths.
Indigenous people make up 15% of the state’s population. The Anchorage Museum testifies to the longevity and ingenuity of their culture (waterproof clothes made of fish skin! Fantastic masks and carvings! Kayaks constructed from tree bark! Great respect for their elders!), as well as its many rigors (hunting! freezing! wandering to follow the herds! surviving!) — which makes it sad to step out onto these streets and meet indigenous people whom you expect to panhandle you as soon as you draw near. Instead of that, however, Susan and I got smiles and hellos and looks of delight from several indigenous women, just because we’re an old couple holding hands.
The rest of the city’s citizenry looks quite diverse — at least, the spring/summer population is diverse, as it includes a lot of working guests from all around the U.S. and all around the world, as well as many Asian tourists and the Albanian cab driver who brought us to the train at 5:30 in the morning (daylight persists for 20 hours during this season), an hour before the sole daily train from Anchorage south to Seward takes off. There are, he said, about 250 Albanians living in his city.
So now we’re in Seward, a small, pleasant tourist town with about 3,000 residents. On the train ride down (4 hours to go 127 miles), I got the impression that Alaska consists entirely of mountains, lakes, bogs, and frozen tundra, ground that you can hardly stand on and have to jump into a seaplane to reach. This is mostly true, from what I’m reading in John McPhee’s book, COMING INTO THE COUNTRY, but what do I know? We’re exploring only the southernmost slice of Alaska, some 600 miles from the Arctic Circle. (And McPhee’s books is as old as my marriage, and I haven’t yet finished reading it.)
On a cloudy day, the place looks black-and-white.
Before I got here, I didn’t even know that Anchorage is south of Fairbanks (the northernmost outpost of the train, almost 400 miles from the Arctic Circle), or that Juneau, the capital, is even further south, adjacent to Canada’s Yukon Territory.
Now I know.
Everywhere we look in Seward there are snowy mountains, about 4,000 feet tall. If our arms were a little longer, we could touch them. We saw mountain goats from the train, tiny white figures hopping across the cliffs. For them, too, life looks challenging.
Indeed, the first lesson I’ve learned after three days in Alaska is how very, very attached to civilization I am. Standing at the very edge of it makes me very nervous.
Happy Anniversary to you & Susan!
Happy anniversary!!