alaska!
You know when you are traveling and you turn on the local news station it’s weird to see the other newscasters, a different set, unfamiliar city names, etc? Well we were in Mexico recently. Imagine turning on Mexican TV and seeing local news from of all places - Alaska! It almost gives you vertigo.
As I was watching this Alaskan news station, two things came to mind. One was whether this was actual news or if it was a going to be one of those bloopers shows featuring a news clip from 1982 because it looked like it was filmed back then. When they started filling me in on the latest gossip about Brad & Angelina, I got my answer. And I was frightened.
The second thing I thought about was whether or not Alaskans have a complex about being so separated from us in the contiguous states. I feel like they are the forgotten cousins we never talk to. (In contrast, Hawaiians would be like the relatives we visit because they have a pool.)
Poor Alaska. I’m sure it’s a lovely state and that Alaskans are just fantastic. I plan to visit there someday, but not because it’s part of our nation - I want to go because I hear the cruise is fabulous! No one wants to visit Alaska for the sake of visiting Alaska. We hear it’s pretty and there’s a cruise that we can take - that’s why we want to go. We don’t want to visit the towns we’ve always heard of because we have never heard of any of their towns. We don’t want to visit the historic spots or “olde towne Alaska” because those places don’t exist and if they do, we have never heard of them. It’s a very mysterious place. I know three things about Alaska: they have no snakes or skunks and their state flower is the forget-me-not (hm…ironic.)
When the average contiguous-state-living American thinks of Alaska, the image that comes to mind is of a big glacier on which 4 Eskimos are sitting around an ice-fishing hole, (an igloo in the background) and across the top left corner of this image is the word “Alaska!”, written diagonally and in a rough font. (Have you noticed that Alaska! is always written with an exclamation point in their tourism advertising? That’s because in Alaska! there are only 1.1 people per square mile and they are used to having to shout.)
We think all of Alaska looks like this:
Alaska is solely responsible for having the reputation of being desolate and cold. Their postcards all show gorgeous nature scenes that are overwhelmingly frightening: big imposing mountains in front of humungous bodies of water and never a person in sight. Sometimes there will be a teensy fishing boat in the picture for scale. These postcards scare us! We don’t want to get lost from our group and find ourselves alone in the Alaskan tundra, face to face with a polar bear! What are the chances of a dogsled team happening by or a St. Bernard coming to our rescue with that little barrel of brandy on his collar? The only thing that will happen is that we will die in “Alaska!” and no one will ever find our bodies because an avalanche will cover us immediately. That is the image they send out in their tourism advertising: Dying alone in the snow. Without a cocktail.
Why is that? Here’s my theory:
Alaska is surrounded by a 200-mile perimeter of snow and mountains and treacherous terrain that no human can penetrate. The only real tourism that takes place is on cruise ships that travel the frosty perimeter and to Anchorage, which is conveniently situated on the coast. No outsiders ever travel to the interior of the state and Alaskans want to keep it that way. They don’t want anyone to know that there is a natural geological phenomenon in Alaska in which the snowy perimeter insulates the inner region of the state, which is already warmed by their plentiful natural hot springs, creating a TROPICAL climate that they alone enjoy.
I’ll bet Alaska really looks like this:
Alaskans are happily sipping their pina coladas by the natural mineral lake, livin’ large off the cruise industry and oil companies, while we feel bad that they have such miserable and difficult lives - ice fishing for their supper! And here’s another little-known fact: Eskimos are paler than the whitest white person. That lovely carmel skin color we see? Suntan.
I’m taking my next vacation to Alaska and I’m bringing a bikini.
