Resolved

Ohboy and goodygumdrops. It's my favorite time of year. You might think people like me don't exist, but I actually like both holiday fruitcake and New Year's Resolutions.

I won't burden you with sharing either of these pleasures, other than to say that 2007 has been almost all fabulous and I'm eager for what 2008 will bring. And I hope in the coming year to say more here about the great Alaskan books I've been reading. One of them is Heather Lende's If You Lived Here, I'd Know Your Name. I wasn't expecting a lot. I figured I knew small-town Alaska as well as anyone. But she's so artful with voice and structure and capturing much of what matters in life. Thanks, Heather.

In one of those weird, can't-explain-it coincidences, I read and cried over the death of Heather's Good Dog Carl just hours before I learned of the death of our own Good Dog Carl. He was a sleepy little black lab pup when my son brought him home. Lynx graciously shared him with me for one whole summer, and after the two of them left for Adventures at College, it took me weeks to recover my composure on my daily walks. Carl would walk with his little wet nose bumping my calf, and I missed it. He grew into a great big smart and compassionate pooch, and I never stopped loving my borrowed grand-doggy.

"I do not approve," Heather writes, quoting Edna St. Vincent Millay. "And I am not resigned." Amen to that.

My other year-end tribute, this one not even a little bit sad, goes to the writing community I've enjoyed this year. You people are amazing. Thanks doesn't begin to say it. I appreciate you guys. Tremendously.

So I forge ahead. Resolved, and not resigned.

Blog who?

Rule number one for aspiring authors: write for your audience. Along comes the blog phenomenon. Who's your audience? Big shrug. Don't know. Don't care. I've got something to say.

Now people are going mobile with blogging. They've got lots to say, and they can't wait till they're home to say it. I have lots to say. But boy oh boy, are my first thoughts not my best thoughts.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not trashing the blog phenomenon. I'm just trying to figure it out.

We market ourselves. Launch from a platform. Rant. Rave. Proclaim our individuality. Assure ourselves that we'll be noticed.

"Now I'll be famous," said the twenty-year-old Nebraska mall shooter.

Already I've forgotten his name.

CETTE BELLE NEIGE

I've mentioned the un-Alaskan before. We have our standards here, and one of them is snow on the ground before Halloween. We had a little, but it melted. Fall extended itself, and it has been lovely. No leaves on the trees, but nice warm 30-ish weather for hiking and biking and such. Did about 7 miles yesterday out in Eagle River yesterday, then dropped one of my hiking buddies at the airport for her first flight back to DC since she set up housekeeping in Alaska. She was prepared to make up stories about snow.

Now we're getting a beautiful little dump. The chickadees finally found there second feeder, outside my writing window.

Nobody says it quite like the French. Regarde comme elle tombe, cette belle neige. Mme. Gorge at Lincoln Junior High dangled a prize for the first 7th grade French student to shout out that phrase at the sign of the first snow falling outside our Madison, Wisconsin, classroom. I've forgotten the prize, but the phrase sticks with me. I say it to myself every year as I watch the first snow fall. "Regarde comme elle tombe...See how she falls, that beautiful snow."

Now if only we didn't have to drive in the stuff.

Seasons

Birds are coming to my feeder by the droves. I may have jumped the gun on putting it up. I'm still getting used to life in Anchorage, and one of the changes is that you're not supposed to feed the birds until after the bears go into hibernation. That's if the bears go into hibernation. Apparently they're still having problems with the big thugs down on the Kenai Peninsula. Seems they don't want to put out the lights when there are still smorgasboards of trash and dog food sitting around on people's front porches. Imagine that.

But I hung my second feeder today, outside my writing window, and hope for fluttering wings, not three-inch claw marks. The seasonal change is always fun, though if someone can explain the point of messing around with the clocks up here, I'd like to hear it. I walked to the post office at 3:30 today amid slanting shadows. Conformity is the only defense that comes to mind for daylight and standard time swaps. If you've visited Indiana as I did a couple of weeks ago, conformity takes on more meaning. I couldn't getting used to adjusting my watch every time we crossed a county line. I'm thinking the real meaning of hoosier is confused.

We're still out hiking, even though the trails are alternately sloppy and slippery. Julie and I tried to beg out last Friday, but delightful Helen Nienheuser, who happens to be a wee bit older than I, insisted we forge ahead despite the blustery winds and stinging rains. Good thing she shamed us into it. We had a great hike and got to check out the new but not overly-informative maps along the Campbell Tract trails.

Speaking of age, I was amused to get a note today from the editor representing Franklin Watts and the America the Beautiful series. It seems they're compiling a book on Alaska covering "the geography, history, government, economy, culture, historic sites, and famous people of the state" and they'd like to include a photo of me. Why? I couldn't say. I did let them know that if it were up to me, I'd rather be featured as a famous person than a historic site.

Home Again

It was a great trip - my "whirlwind tour of the Midwest." There were great stops along the way, and lots of visits with family and friends.

Of blog-worthy note, I saw Into the Wild in Tacoma. It's a beautiful film. I don't know about the rest of the viewers, but the four of us who went there together left with tears in our eyes.

I'd forgotten an important part of the McCandless story as told by Krakauer. McCandless set off to find himself, to differentiate himself from his peers. Along the way, he met other staunch individualists, each struggling with the tension between aloneness and belonging. Before he died, he realized he wanted the companionship he had so staunchly rejected.

Several months ago, I was researching a travel article at a beautiful resort on Prince of Wales Island. The manager, a warm and wise fellow, explained his simple philosophy. "People just want to be treated like they matter." That pretty much sums it all up.

Into the Wild

It would be un-Alaskan not to weigh in on Sean Penn's well-hyped film Into the Wild based on Jon Krakauer's exploration of what went right and wrong with the soul-searching of Christopher McCandless back in 1992. I'll start with a disclaimer - ten years have passed since I read the book, and except for a $25 premier of the film at the Blue Loon in Fairbanks a month ago, the movie hasn't hit Alaskan theaters yet. But Penn has been out doing what successful artists do, promoting his project. People are talking.

Was McCandless a hero or a crackpot? It's curious that the question is posed in such black and white terms. We don't want to admit that crackpots could be heroes or that heroes could be crackpots. Heroes think outside the box and take risks. I'm not sure any of us can tell exactly where to draw the line between admirable risk-taking and outright craziness.

So far, most of what I've heard from Alaskans is that McCandless is no hero. Part of that is plain old Alaskan pride talking. We all came to a place that's more distant, more remote, and more rugged than a lot of places we could have gone. What's McCandless got on us? So he tramped around on his own and couldn't cross a river and camped in a bus and starved to death or at bad potato seeds or whichever version of his demise you want to subscribe to. We've all had our adventures here.

McCandless was foolhardy and unprepared, we say a bit smuggly. Those two traits can be deadly when you're trekking around in the subarctic wilderness. We're smarter than that, or saner that that, or we wouldn't be here, having the discussion. "The Alaskan wilderness is a good place to test yourself," says outdoor writer Craig Medred of the Anchorage Daily News. "The Alaskan wilderness is a bad place to find yourself."

Maybe so, but a lot of us have done our soul searching here and come out better for it. We've enriched our lives with calculated risks. Most of us have calculated wrong once in awhile and luck was on our side. McCandless was not so lucky.

The bus where McCandless has become a shrine. Pilfered bus parts have already been sold on e-bay. Profiteering was inevitable, I guess, but it makes me sad. McCandless isn't the sort of hero one worships. If he's a hero, he's a tragic one. Searching, but confused. Wandering. Lonely.

I liked Krakauer's book. I liked the way he reserved judgment on McCandless, the way he recognized pieces of himself in the rash behavior of a troubled man. I thought of McCandless when I crafted one of the characters in my novel Out of the Wilderness. I didn't romanticize him, and I don't think Krakauer romanticized McCandless, either.

The world would be a dull place if it left no room for romanticizing, but like anything else, it can go too far. People are retracing the Into the Wild journey as if it were some sort of spiritual pilgrimage. They're forging rivers that will sweep them away and keep right on going. Some guy has been spotted along the Parks Highway lugging a bag of rice, a McCandless wannabe.

Don't they get it? Whatever McCandless was, he was his own person. You don't imitate an individualist in order to find yourself. Admire him for trying, but own up to his flaws. If he was at all the man you think he was, that's what he'd want you to do.

Alaska Writes

Amazing writers live in Alaska. That is not hyperbole. Alaska is a long way from the nation's pub hub, but maybe that's a plus. We know what's bigger than us, what's meaner than us, and most of all, what really matters.

We've got our flaws, like everyone else. We're embarrassed that our state's entire congressional delegation made the Citizens for Ethics list of the 22 most corrupt politicians. As a state, we've let ourselves get far too cozy with the oil industry.

Then again, it's PFD time. $1654 is a nice splash in the bank account for the proverbial starving artist.

Politics and economics aside, Alaskans produce some stunningly beautiful poetry and prose. No doubt we are inspired by mountains, sea and sky that beg for description, then cunningly defy it. Nature as a force looms large in our lives. Isolation taunts and beckons. Place is more than backdrop, more than character. It inhabits who we are and who we will become.

Today the wind blows in from the Inlet, jarring leaves from the golden birch. Winter is just around the proverbial corner. The drizzle falling now will soon be snow. I meant to climb up Flattop Mountain before the rocks turned icy. Already it's too late.

I've seen 27 winters here. Some blew across the tundra from the Bering Sea. Some tumbled into the Tanana River valley. Some began with termination dust creeping down the Chugach Mountains. But each has brought its own adventures, and each its humbling reminder that I am small and this place looms large.

Anchorage hosted the 2007 Bouchercon this year. Though I hated staying inside on two of fall's more flamboyant days, I loved the synergy of our Alaskan writers mingling with authors from across the continent. Dana Stabenow, Sue Henry, John Straley, Michael Armstrong, Elyse Guttenberg - all were there. If you haven't read them, you should.

Deb Vanasse
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