Cecil Younger says of his town:
| "I love Sitka. There are eight thousand people, twelve miles of road, and two main streets. It had once been the capital of Russian America. To me it's a town full of mystery and wildness. It's so crowded by the wildernesses of steep mountains, thick woods, and ocean that a person can have the sensation, on the same afternoon, of either floating away or taking root. Great upwellings of ancient basalt and three-legged dogs are on the streets. There are gulls and murrelets. Cormorants lift their wings to dry their inky black feathers in the sunlight. Puffins with colored tufts like Gypsy scarves. Humpback whales feed on the herring that are feeding on the effluent from the pulp mill. Pickup trucks and Subarus. Everyone on their way to a meeting or softball practice. Four kids with canvas jackets and earrings, with their hats on backwards, standing in the doorways near the Russian cathedral looking bored. An old man walking outside the Pioneer Home in the middle of town, wearing pistols holstered on the outside of his pants. Occasionally a brown bear in the cemetery or a deer swimming in the harbor. The cathedral and the jagged, ancient mountain like a background for all our arguments. Priests, tourists, loggers, bureaucrats, fishermen, even an amateur whore or two, and one full time private investigator." |
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