New lives in Alaska

The state’s economic situation had me noodling about the likelihood that natural gas will play an important role in Alaska’s future.

I’m no expert on the subject and gas could be a major player here in the future, if President Joe Biden doesn’t kill its chances, but my thinking suddenly went in another direction.

By chance I turned my head and looked out my window. What I could see was beautiful spruce trees in my yard, a park across the way, Cook Inlet, Mount Susitna and the Alaska Range.

It seems to me that Alaska’s economic future will most likely be based on the one great asset that will always be here and highly valued— its incredible natural beauty. The flow of tourists and the money they spend may vary from year to year, but barring an interplanetary disaster Alaska’s great outdoors will always be here and draw visitors forever.

And that thought brought me back to the events that resulted in my wife and I coming to Alaska from Massachusetts. I was a reporter at The Worcester Telegram and sitting in the newsroom typing furiously when a friend from the women’s department stopped by. “There’s a new gal in my department who has her eye on you,” she said.

I thought about that for a few minutes, got up and wandered into the women’s department. I was strolling around there when my friend pointed to an attractive woman sitting at a desk writing something. I approached and introduced myself.

We started dating and on weekends would often join a group of friends that liked to explore the mountains of Western Massachusetts. They aren’t much by Alaska standards but our group climbed one every weekend. One day we climbed two.

Eventually we got married and were looking at buying a house with a few acres of land. Then it occurred to us that investing in a house with our modest salaries would tie us down for years, but we had never really been anywhere outside Massachusetts.

We worked night shifts and were at dinner with a friend at a restaurant near our newsroom when the subject came up. “Where would you like to go?” our friend asked. I chimed in with: “I’d like to go to Alaska or Australia,” the two most exotic and exciting places I could think of.

“Let’s go to Alaska,” my bride said. Before I could open my mouth our friend, who had been to Alaska, said: “Alaska would be perfect for you two.”

“Oh, let’s do it,” my bride said. “Let’s go to Alaska.” Having never seriously contemplated leaving New England I gulped, looked around and wondered what I had gotten myself into.

Next thing I was in the newspaper library poring through the Editor and Publisher Yearbook, which listed all American newspapers by state. In walked my managing editor who saw me with the E&P Yearbook, knew instantly what I was doing and asked me: “Where are you going ?”

I gulped once again and answered: “Alaska.”

“Write to Chip Atwood,” he said. “He used to work for me.” (Bob Atwood went to college in Massachusetts.)

I wrote a letter to Atwood at The Anchorage Times and a few weeks later received a job offer from Bill Tobin, his managing editor.

I accepted the offer and a month or so later my wife and I were on our way driving up the unpaved 1,400-mile Alaska Highway to our new lives in Alaska.

The land we found was the one I described earlier. We have never looked back.

Tom Brennan is an Anchorage columnist and author of six books. He was a reporter/columnist for The Anchorage Times and an editor and columnist at The Voice of The Times.