The Last Frontier

Alaska, what an odd place.  The best description I heard was that it was a foreign land settled by Americans.  It's a fishing resort for most with some last vestiges of the gold rush days.  And everything is huge.  Mountains litter the highways with giant bears hidden inside.  Bald eagles are like pigeons.  You open up your pockets and fish jump right in.  Big suckers too.  Twenty-five pound hallibuts are used as chum.  It's the land of megafauna.  It's one of the few places you can see a mountaineer wearing a fur coat.  Naturally rich, and not in the euphemistic sense - people are rich off of nature.  Rather than hiding out in tin sheds, they live in lavish hideaways that are only reachable by seaplane which might be inaccessible for 6 months of the year. 

Everywhere is camo and Larry Csonka posing with fish.  Lots of ex-military and other ex-battle-weary men go here to fight simpler battles against less-empathetic creatures.  Underneath there are subspecies of surly Inuits, tough hippies, pseudo Canadians, Minnesotan dental hygenists on vacation, and Russian businessmen that float freely amongst the populace of other permanent visitors.  There is no visible social friction.  For any dispuit they have, everybody knows that they all can go fishing together and then they're back in agreement.

 

—July 20th, 2009

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