I often find myself alone in Alaska, but about the only place I ever feel lonely is in it's largest city, Anchorage.
There is something about Bush Alaska, village Alaska, that is by definition honest. It's challenges are considerable, but it flows with a breezy ease, with courtesy and mutual concern. It is the very definition of how Alaska see's it's self.. it's how about half of the residents of the state live, to include it's two smaller cities, Fairbanks and Juneau, and it runs by a code even it's Criminals and State Troopers seem to live by, which says that you and I must recognize and respect each other, because who knows which one of us may need help tomorrow. In these places, people look one another in the eye, they speak with each other, and not at each other, and they seem both proud and humbled by the small moments of each day.
The one place in the state where it feels like people don't look you in the eye, might take you for granted, and might throw you under the bus, and walk through sliding doors like you aren't there and would be embarrassed if you acknowledged them or called them on it is Los Anchorage, Seattle North, The Rage, Alaska's bus stop, the city on the Inlet, Anchorage AK. Were it judged by the standards of any other city, it would hold up well. It's physical situation is frankly stunning.. were it not for the often sanguine weather, how many places can claim views of essentially 5 mountain ranges, including fairly clear views of the highest mountain in North America and two of it's lower brothers from 150 or so miles away, a stunning saltwater inlet with the world's second largest tidal variations, and Salmon Streams through it all. I have seen Moose less than a half mile south of downtown by Westchester Lagoon , and I just had a friend tell me about a very recent encounter with a mama black bear and 4 cubs just a quarter mile the other direction from 4th Ave over the rail yards on Government Hill. it's small enough to still be convenient, but to offer a little culture, and as the Joke goes, the best thing about it is that Alaska it's self is always just 15 minutes away!
But there it is, the one place where rules top logic, where treating everyone as a stranger is a virtue, and the reflex is fear and superiority.
It's not that Anchorage doesn't have a lot going for it in the natural category, it's just that it feels like it turns it's back on all that.. like it's above it.. Nature is the great equalizer in the bush.. the stalker that unites the herd, but the failings of Anchorage are that it behaves as if it is not under that same threat.. as if it's above the natural laws of The Great Land.. and that is what pisses off everyone else in the state. it's why people from the bush get pissed when they get cut off in traffic.. don't you get it man, why are you making enemies? They are sure they will see you again.. where they live, if someone goes away, it's because they can't hack it, or they died. To him, he's not making enemies.. he's gotto work out at the Alaska Club before going back to his law practice writing contracts for Conoco Phillips.. the fact that you would see it that way never even occurs to him.. In the defense of Anchorage, about half the people in the city do get it, and you notice who they are and try to meet them again.. the guy stacking in the supermarket at 11pm who says hi like it's the bush, like that's what you do when two people are that close to each other in the middle of the night, or the guy at the tire shop who once told you a funny secret about himself and that vulnerability made him human to you for the rest of your life even though you only see him every two years, but you know he remembers. Having half the people get it is a damn high number by American standards, and world standards, it's just low by comparison to, yup, you get it, Bush Alaska, where not getting it usually means you can start a clock on your either screwing up enough to die young or your moving out. I would venture to say that in most american cities, 15% of the people get it.. let's say in Florida.. maybe it's up to 30% by the time you get to Portland or some of the other nice places.. 50% is high!
A lot of the people in Anchorage remember when it was so small it wasn't an exception to Alaska rules, or came there when from the rest of the state where they learned those rules.. the people who freak you our are usually of a different category.. work or the military brought them here, and they think they get Alaska but they have left Anchorage 4 times, and each time thought a bear was going to eat them. Or they grew up in and hated bush Alaska, were told they were too good for it, and come here to show off their acculturation, which to those who get it is just an ego trip deviation from something about themselves they can't handle, not small town AK, which genuinely sees it's self as fairly accepting. There is also the sweet guy contingent who might be Alaskan by the standards of the world, they drive subies, they do cool shit on weekends, and they grew up with the best of both worlds in some of the nice suburbs, so they think they intellectually get the bush because they grew up making fun of it, but it's as distant to them as it is to the folks in Sheboygan because they think they are above it, because they did get the best of the rest of America piped into their home and brain at places like the Bears Tooth and UAA... on NPR and PBS, and think they can be some heroic intermediary between the two.. they come across like Chris McCandless to the folks in Healy.. well intentioned but just smart enough to be really stupid.. They do look tough cross country skiing in Kincaid Park, but something tells you they would be more likely to follow than lead the types from the Valley out if push came to shove in the manner of some survival epic. The common sense seems book learned, and it's all about experience in the Greater Great Land.
If you are going to run into reflexive liberalism, to self entitlement, Anchorage feels like the only place where the conditions for it can healthily grow to a level that could be dangerous, where smug finger wagging could get the upper hand on the alleged laws of nature.. where big city people can project onto small towners what in fact it is they don't really get, and it's what crawls up the spines of every muddy truck visitor that they will be underestimated for the very things they now value as reasons to respect them, for their muddy truck and open attitude that comes from fighting nature and not one another...
Anchorage, maybe we need you, for fresh sushi, live shows, and a place to feel anonymous for a change.. maybe we need your weird distancing from our openness as a way to hone us up for our first encounter with TSA and the indignities to come from any trip down to the lower 48, and maybe a bit of the impersonal, a bit of parking meter corruption is what we need to remind us what we got, but it doesn't mean we will forgive you for it, that we won't give you a hard time for being that one sister that moved away because she thought she was too good for what we had to offer.. we will, but you must serve a purpose to someone.. it's all, I guess, in the Great Land's plan...
