AN ALASKA STATE OF MIND

Unlike the lower 48 states Alaska is a kind of island like the Hawaiian Islands. The closest major city to Alaska in the lower 48 is Seattle a three hour plane ride from Anchorage the largest city in Alaska. The only alternative is to drive the AlCan Hwy through Canada for 1500+ miles to get to Seattle, not an easy trip particularly in the winter. This is the isolating factor that every resident of Alaska has to put up with.

If you’ve never lived on an island for any length of time it seems hard to understand. When I first moved to Alaska there were four time zones in the state, Monday Night Football was delayed one week, long distance phone calls were like calling from China, there were no live national news broadcasts, they were all tape delayed. This was not 100 years ago, it was in the 1980’s! One TV station owned by a friend of mine had a house in Seattle that they taped all the stations on and each day flew the tapes to Anchorage so that they were only 24 hours behind the rest of the States. Being on “Alaska” time left us two hours earlier than the west coast and the east coast was five hours ahead. It was like living in Europe, only reversed times. Now in 2011 we are only one hour behind the west coast and only have two time zones in the State.

There are many different living conditions, cultures, ideas, people, towns, wilderness and lifestyles. Not all of them are for everyone and some are even dangerous for some. There are the city dwellers, the suburbanites, the villages, the oil company homes, the fringe of civilization folks and the hard core wilderness freaks.

CITY FOLKS

City folks in Alaska are like city folks in most cities in the USA. Nowadays it is no different than living in Grand Rapids Michigan. It took a while for my family and friends from outside (that is anywhere not in Alaska) to realize there are no Igloos, we have indoor plumbing and we are one of the United States of America not a foreign holding like American Samoa. All the comforts of home. Anchorage, the largest city in Alaska was built in 1915 to facilitate the building of the Alaska Railroad.

SUBURBANITES AND VILLAGERS

Suburbanites are the suburbs of the cities but with a few bears and moose thrown in and limited access to anywhere even the city. Most utilities are there and cable TV!

The villages are sometimes suburbs too but they are usually run by the Native corporations and are not inhabited by to many white folks. There are a lot of mixed marriages that bring Native and Whites together along with the children of those couples. Some villages are wealthy due to oil revenues and federal money. There are some doing very well also because they are part of highly successful Native Corporations and share in the corporate wealth, the corporations are owned by the tribes, a whole ‘nother story.

THE OIL PATCH

The oil companies have built entire towns for the people who work for them and many occupy areas’ we call the “Oil Patch”, higher priced homes in pricey neighborhoods aimed at the “oil patch”. Valdez Alaska is a town built up because it is the terminus for the Trans Alaska Pipeline and where all the oil gets transported around the world. At the other end is the Village of Barrow and Prudhoe Bay, Barrow the Native village and Prudhoe the Oil companies fortress.

The oil companies command a very powerful segment in the population of Alaska since 90% of state revenues come from oil. Because of the oil money Alaska has never really suffered the problems of the lower 48 economy, particularly the last 4 years. The oil companies are making more money than they ever have and Alaska gets its share.

THE FOLKS AT THE END OF THE ROAD

There are a lot of these folks that I have known and liked over the years. They live at the end of civilization, where the electric and gas lines end and the roads are dirt. Usually have wood for heat and sometimes for cooking. Their property sometimes look like a junk yard because you never know when you might need that old carburetor or tire. Their politics are minimal but lean to the right. They are minimalists on the fringes of society and usually will lend a helping hand if asked. It is a pretty anonymous life style, many are there because of that. Some of the things they hide from are, child support, warrants, bills, personal history (child molesters), fraud charges or just fed up with our modern pace of life. Eccentric is what they are called and would be homeless if they were in a big city.

WILDERNESS FREAKS

I was one of them. I lived some of my best times in the wilderness. Sometimes alone sometimes with others but always independent and self-sufficient. Also there are some folks wanting to disappear from the scene for one reason or another, and what better place to disappear in. To really know yourself and your capabilities living in the wilderness for a while will do that for you. The Sean Penn movie “Into the Wild” about Chris McCandles touched on that incredible theme, unfortunately Chris died in the Alaskan Wilderness some do and some don’t, there is also a lot of common sense and knowledge needed to survive out there. The folks that live out there have almost a “calling”, not from god but from somewhere deep inside themselves. A path not taken by most. To live there like the peoples of the steppes and tundra of days past is an exhilarating experience, difficult by our standards now. There are some incredible stories and people out there you just have to FIND them.