377 years, 5,000 miles and thanks

About 5,000 miles and 377 years distant from present-day Alaska was born the American idea of a thanks-giving holiday.

Of course, the holiday, wasnt really American at all when it started. The three-day feast at the Plimouth Plantation, where modern Plymouth, Mass., is located held to give thanks to God for a sustaining bounty in the late autumn of 1621 was an assembly of fledgling colonists who considered themselves and their new homeland very much a part of England. Any thoughts of revolution and independence were still much more than a century in the future.

The Pilgrims, as we call them because of their religious motivation to relocate in the 1620s, were the first of a still-ongoing wave of people coming westward across the Atlantic to establish a life in the New World. Now, of course, the immigration waves coming across our shores and borders emanate from all four directions of the compass. And the motivation, more often than not, is unabashedly financial rather than religious, with political persecution only occasionally a factor.

Interestingly, since Alaskans really do live in the very Last Frontier of our land, many people here have had occasion even in recent years to set aside times to give thanks for survival in a place of great beauty, but also of harsh and unforgiving wilderness. Of course, the migrations to Alaska were, with some notable exceptions, mostly about financial gain from the start initially with commercial trapping for furs, whaling and fishing, followed by the Gold Rush. Then, later, came the rush to grasp wealth by taking part in the mining of black gold oil.

People moving to Alaska since then, though immigration may have slowed, are increasingly motivated by things other than money. And those who remained here after the booms ended are of a different breed, too. The easy pickings are no longer so available in the Far North. That means Alaskas culture is evolving and changing possibly for the better. After all, itll be the reverse of what happened in the decades and centuries that followed the coming of the original Pilgrims as the driving force for migration transmutated from spiritual motivation to greed.

Yes, we may be watching a transformation in the other direction. And if thats the case, there is hope Alaska can be a beacon for other parts of our country and the world. After all, few of us can find room in our hearts when we ponder it honestly, alone in the still and the dark to be thankful for having somehow permitted our society to be refashioned into a faceless community where greed is the prime virtue. The rent will come due for this course. It is already coming due paid, among other currencies, in crime, violence, excessive substance abuse, destruction of the family unit and almost unfathomable personal discontent.

Thankfully, reversal of this terrible direction is always only an instant away both for individuals and for communities of any size. All that is needed is to recognize and acknowledge greed (excessive gain and profit to the detriment of others) for what it is: a terrible, even fatal, vice, and in no way a virtue.

That all this is so is good cause to humbly experience gratitude, no matter what our spiritual leanings, over a group meal on Thursday perhaps re-establishing a real link with the little groups who did so 5,000 miles and 377 years away, at the first Thanksgiving.

- Frontiersman