Beautiful morning early, but then, showers later in the day. On our first walk at seven the world was dazzling with light. Dot ran out into the lawn and did a series of summersaults stretched out on the cut grass trying to rub the smell of her kennel off of her hide. There were some chickadees in the berry bushes. Or at least that’s what I called them. Jan was still asleep and Nels is dead. Of course I should look it up in a book, but my eyesight is so bad I didn’t get a good look, just a bit of a flicker in the green. There is an ap which can identify a bird from its call, but by the time I remember about it the little rascals have long stopped singing. I know I should play back some common songs and try and figure it out later but I’d rather just imagine that I called Nels and he told me it was a chickadee. I’m a fiction writer, see how much easier my life is.

This morning as I was drinking my tea and listening to the news I was thinking about how much I love Alaska. What is it that I like? Of course the country but truthfully it is not the beauty. I find the pallet of the color scheme here in southeastern pretty monotonous. Grey to green, white to grey, grey to black. Here there are just a few dabs of color in the wild. Berry bushes in spring, so too the yellow of the skunk cabbage coming up. Even in the fall there is not much variation. The climate is very monotonous (as you can tell if your read this blog regularly) I do like the animals, deer, bear, goats, voles, squirrels, beavers, mice, otters and a few others on land here in my neighborhood. But jillions of living creatures on the intertidal and in the sea, from Sperm Whales to sea squirts. The ocean here is still amazingly rich, and relatively uncrowded by other humans. But still not the main attraction for me. I still love the dessert country at sunset for color and beauty, and give me the cool morning of a summer day on the eastern slope of the Cascade Range for pure sensual beauty. Or even a walk up Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue on a chilly autumn day headed for Central Park for a straight shot of kinetic energy in both man made and natural form.

So what is it that I love most about Alaska? I quote it in the selection I recorded today. It’s race, and space.

Alaska, is huge. There is an incredible amount of room without humans here. But it’s not quite wilderness because there are Native Alaskan’s here who hang on to their languages and who hang on to their traditional life ways. Space, and Race. White people, and white european culture are only one part of the equation here. This makes a tremendous difference, in many subtle and obvious ways.

In my eyes “Real Alaskan’s” are the people who have been influenced by this wildness, not just the room but by the experience of sharing the space with Native human beings. Being prickly… not caring what other people think or say about you is one way of showing this Alaskan-ness. But proving up on it is important as well, Showing respect to the skills of the Native People is part of it. Showing respect to their politics even while you argue about it. Real Alaskan don’t starve to death in an old bus. Also, they would do anything to help a kid to avoid starving to death if he was smart enough to build a little bit of a community.

This spirit, of having grown up with enough room, to be a bit eccentric, to have a few wild hairs of your own. This requires space but also enough of a community which respects the values of survival. Respect the gratitude in having fatty meat and a decent garden, for those things just don’t happen or just come to an individual all alone. There are cultural norms that acknowledge the great distances and the difficulty of feeding oneself. Just understanding this is something Alaskan. Race and Space: it is what Russell Sanders said were the two great streams of American Literature. These two things are what still keep Alaska vibrant.

Now, I know that there are people who will not agree with me. There are some in the Jack London school who see “the great alone” as bringing out some animal nature that is essential to the make up of the Alaskan. But I’m going to stick with the culture of survival which we inherited from our Paleolithic ancestors and we still see practiced by Native Alaskans in a very sophisticated and delicate political environment. The Native Alaskan’s example on the land gives the European settler, their only authentic model for belonging. Certainly none of the actual treaties matter to the individual actors out on the land.

Why does this matter at all? I’m not sure it does to anyone else, but it matters to me, because I love Alaska. When I travel in the lower 48 I realize that I love it more and more and very very few people feel the same way about their state. My Aunt and Uncle grew up in Iowa, and certainly they LOVED Iowa. (on long drives away from Iowa if they pulled into a diner they would check the parking lot for Iowa plates and then make sure they found the other Iowans inside to talk with them!) But I’m not sure this is the same kind of affinity I’m talking about, but maybe it is, I think I have something of a spiritual allegiance to this State, warts and all, because of it’s Native citizens and because of the amount of room. Room that allows wildness and not just wilderness. Room that allows subsistence hunting and fishing and not just weekend sports fishing. I feel an allegiance and a pride that Native people can practice subsistence hunting and fishing on this land and I think it gives every person in the state who abides by it’s rules and regulations a certain character that lives in right relationship with the great expanse of land.

Of course I could be wrong about policy. But I cannot be wrong about the fact that I love Alaska, and all different types of Alaskans: Hunters, and non, Gay, Straight, Urban and Rural. Black, White, Yellow and Brown .I honestly feel in my bones that we live someplace wild and beautiful where there is room enough and still time enough to learn the important lessons from the ancient cultures of this particular location.

Some will say I’m soft for living in southeastern. Some will say I’m wrong because I’m not much of a hunter anymore, and that’s okay. As long as there is room enough for differences, and as long as there are acknowledged experts hunting and fishing, I will happily cede my opinions to them.

Cutting up smoked fish

I stupidly cut my thumb.

My blood tastes like coins.

Here is a recording I made of an essay I did about Alaskan Lit for an old collection called “Alaska At Fifty.”