Drive home resets ideas of distance, scale

North America is enormous.

I suppose I have always known this to a certain degree, but one’s understanding of this simple fact deepens dramatically when you live in a country that is very, very small. For the last four years I have lived in Luxembourg, a diminutive country sandwiched between Belgium, France and Germany.

Luxembourg City, the quietly elegant capital city, is a mere eight miles to its closest foreign border (we used to slip across this border undetected to enjoy a noisy bastion of U.S. culture — who would have thought the good people of France would understand the genius of The Colonel and build an abundance of KFCs?). One can traverse Luxembourg east to west in the time it takes to navigate through the RVs in a Wal-Mart parking lot in the summer. In fact, more than 25 Luxembourgs could fit within the Mat-Su Borough — although all those Luxembourgs together would be quite crowded and I worry that their penchant for socialized health care might not sit well with some of the locals.

Prior to exiting Europe this summer, my wife and I embarked on a road trip that took us through 16 countries, in which we tactlessly navigated 14 languages and two unique alphabets. That drive was about the length of the one we are currently attempting from Minnesota to Alaska. At one point on our stumble through Europe, I remember genuinely forgetting which country we were in, a fact that is impossible in Canada due to the overwhelming abundance of Tim Hortons.

While I am on the topic, I find it astonishing that Tim Hortons, which was started by a Canadian professional hockey player, accounts for 76 percent of Canada’s baked goods market. Additionally, there are twice as many Tim Hortons in Canada as there are McDonald’s. I don’t know that this is pertinent to anything, but it may be one of the most striking differences between the Last Frontier and America’s Hat.

In the distance ahead, I can see a lone Canadian farmhouse in the middle of the prairie. In the growing dusk, its lights make it seem deceptively close and by the time it starts to settle in my rearview mirror we have clicked off another five miles. I have grown to love the treadmill that is the Canadian prairie as it has reset my understanding of distance and time to a pre-lived-in-Europe state.

When I lived in Alaska previously, the drive from the Valley to Anchorage was a mere trifle, to be done with little to no provocation. In fact, I recall a trip to Anchorage in my youth that consisted of nothing more than a run to Little Caesars, as there were no pizza joints in the Valley of an appropriate grease-to-cost ratio. In Luxembourg, it got to the point where the wilds in the north of the country were an impenetrable distance of 30 miles. When it came to driving two hours to Cologne in Germany we shuddered, and should we be so bold as to drive the three and a half hours to Paris, we were astounded at our vehicular fortitude.

Fortunately, this spatial realignment has been made more understandable with a website designed to solve one’s area-related quandaries in a palatable way. Mapfight.appspot.com pits countries, states and continents against one another in contests of geographical acreage. This service has clued me in to the fact that Europe is about the same size as the United States (with Alaska included of course) and that the Sahara Desert is 5.5 times as large as the state of Alaska. Rhode Island (which is larger than Luxembourg) is 547 times smaller than Alaska, and Minnesota is five and a half times larger than Switzerland. How I lived life without access to this knowledge I will never know.

So as I make my way closer to Alaska, I am pleased that I am also rewiring my brain to accommodate the enormity of distance in North America. I hope to rid myself of the type of thinking that might make impromptu drives to Fairbanks seem foolish, or periodic trips out of state unobtainable.

I take note of all of this as I roll through the Canadian plains, wondering what will be around the next bend some 500 miles away.

Pete LaFrance grew up in Palmer and moved back to the area after 18 years living abroad.