Adventure of a Lifetime

Once we get the year’s shortest day in the rear view mirror the balance of the winter seems like less of an ominous slog.

It’s an annual thing and I’ve been around for a lot of winters so you would think I might be getting used to it. But every season of the year is a brand new adventure, one I somehow never expected to encounter.

If that betrays a little pessimism on my part, so be it. But somehow I consistently never expect to share another new season with my many friends in the world. I haven’t lived for any length of time outside Alaska so I can only really guess how the rest of the world feels about the approach of the new year.

And so far, so good. None of us can expect to live forever though some folks seem to think they will become the first. At least that is the way they drive their automobiles. And those automobiles generally seem to perform as though their operators are convinced that they can avoid the riskier outcomes from speeding at the margins of control.

Knock on wood but it seems obvious that those who drive cautiously and with concern for their fellow motorists are more likely to see changes of season yet to come.

My wife and I have lived in Alaska for many years and have seen quite a few friends come and go, some from moving away and some — alas — from passing away. We lost a friend of many years recently, one we met and became attached to when we first arrived more than a half-century ago.

A lot of water has spilled over the dam since that day in late August when we drove into town after a thousand-mile drive up the then-unpaved Alaska Highway. It was a very exciting time in our lives, a great adventure launched just a year after we got married.

If we had to live through making the decision to come here again, I have no idea how that might have gone. I do feel we made the right choice though keeping our fingers crossed was an essential part of the whole thing.

We arrived in Alaska at a critical time for ourselves and for the state of Alaska. In our case being young, very much in love and ready to take on something we had never dreamed about played an important role in the adventure and its ongoing outcome.

What became the big North Slope oil discovery was then in the works and Alaska was then about to make worldwide headlines. She and I both worked for The Anchorage Times, me as a reporter and she as an editor, and we were in the middle of it all.

When Managing Editor Bill Tobin and Publisher Bob Atwood met us they offered me a reporting job and asked my wife to be Women’s Editor. Her job was more prestigious than mine, for sure, but being a new reporter in such a wild place was adventure enough for me.

Things went well, we are both still here and still happily married so I guess we can claim that our adventure was well worth what went into it.

No way to know what the alternative might have been but I’m very happy with the way things turned out.