I sat at my computer wondering what I could say that would be fresh or different about the sad news wracking our state in waves. One investigation, indictment or conviction barely makes if off the front page before another takes its place. And whether it is a sitting United States senator or an ex-state representative, it generates great sadness at the way power can corrupt even those who might have started out honorably.
After Senator Stevens’ indictments, I considered simply writing, “We’re Number One!” because I’m pretty sure we have now passed New Jersey for most corrupt politics in the union. It’s a small comfort to know we can be number one at something.
Then my summer visitor arrived. I took her to Talkeetna. We got on a plane with Chuck from K2 Aviation to see Denali. Of course, this being Alaska, we couldn’t land on the glacier or fly on certain routes because of weather and turbulence. And, as always, Denali was coy, keeping her head hidden in the clouds so that I heard our pilot telling my summer visitor from the air the same thing I would have been saying to her from the ground. “If the clouds weren’t there, that’s where Denali would be.” But Alaska is so magnificent that for every wonder we couldn’t experience, it had one we could. Chuck had no trouble keeping our attention as he flew over areas so beautiful that even God must have wept when she finished creating them.
I went up in the air thinking the trip was going to be a disappointment because we’d neither see the mountain nor feel a glacier. Then the plane gained altitude and I looked out the window and once again Alaska took my breath away. As we climbed up, the panorama just got better and better. The vastness, the greenness, the glaciers and those mountains that choose to be seen – suddenly all the scandals, all the corruption, alleged or otherwise, slipped into perspective. They are not Alaska. This land I was gazing down at, that is Alaska. Beautiful, vast, scary, rugged, welcoming and forbidding all at once, this was my state. And to badly misquote Bogart in Casablanca, it doesn’t take much to see that the problems of some ethically challenged politicians don’t amount to a hill of beans in this amazing place.
When you’re in country, rocking on a boat on the Little Su while your friends fish and the birds swoop overhead looking for a free meal, with no sounds but the water lapping the boat, the birds calling their friends and the splash of the line on the water, you realize that this state not only will survive, but the sleazy parade that has passed for public life these past few years will fade quickly into total insignificance next to the reality of Alaska.
I’m not forgiving these politicians. I think Alaska deserves better than what many of them have given it. A state this amazing deserves to be represented by people equally as amazing. But meanwhile, as we wait for those messiahs to appear, the land and rivers, fish and game, glaciers and mountains continue on as they have for millennia, barely acknowledging our presence, engaged in a journey that has been going on for so long that we can barely grasp its enormity in our minds.
I’ll be taking my summer visitor to a lot of other places that are Alaska, from Hatcher’s Pass to Alyeska to Hope and Seward. I’ll show her my little corner of the state while reminding her of just how big it is and how many years it would take to explore all its faces. And then when she leaves, I’ll go back to my normal routine and the headlines that scream at me from the front page of the paper will reassert their importance in my life. I’ll forget for a while what surrounds me in Anchorage while I focus on getting to Sugar Spoon before all the sugar-free desserts are gone.
But for now, I’m very grateful to my summer visitor for wrenching my mind away from the sleaze and sadness that is engulfing us and reminding me what a privilege it is to call Alaska my home.