B: Why did you move to Alaska?¹
M: I always wanted to live in Alaska. When I was a teenager, I heard about people homesteading, and you could go up there and get this land, and it was beautiful and open and great. I would think about it from time to time. At a meeting about 10 years ago in San Francisco I met a librarian from Alaska and I was still totally enchanted with the idea.
B: Do you just like that it’s far away? Is that part of the appeal?
M: No. As you may or may not recall, I have a friend, Phil², who was willing to move with me somewhere but I had to go somewhere that had mountains and water. And he eliminated Maine because he was from Maine.
B: What is it like compared to what you thought it was going to be like?
M: The actual city of Kenai is nothing like I thought it would be, because it’s pretty much a modern box-store type of place, and the old town isn’t very old. I was sort of expecting a little more Northern Exposure, but a lot of the towns in Alaska are very Northern Exposure. In that sense, Alaska itself meets my expectations.

B: I didn’t know you watched Northern Exposure.³
M: I loved Northern Exposure.
B: Let’s backtrack: how did you get to Alaska when you went there?
M: We got in my little Toyota Rav-4, took the ferry from Martha’s Vineyard, and drove across the country and up the Al-Can in January 2006.
B: Did you stop to see your son in New York City?
M: We didn’t go through New York City. (Snorts laugh)⁴
B: Why did you decide to drive?
M: So we would have a car. And who doesn’t love a road trip?
B: How was it?
M: Canada was bleak, and there was nobody around except buffalo and goats and other things, and lots and lots of oil fields and people working in the oil fields. We eventually got to the Yukon, in Whitehorse, which is a really funky town.
B: Why?

M: You’ve gone through these oil fields, past nothing for miles around, and all of a sudden there’s this teeny little metropolis thing. It’s got good restaurants, the people were very friendly, and it had a real western atmosphere. You had a feeling like you were getting close to Alaska. We went to a bar where everybody was very friendly and it turned out the former Member of Parliament was there and he was Leslie Nielsen’s brother, and someone told me that and I looked over at the table and said, “Well of course he is. He looks just like him.”⁵
B: What are Alaskans like?
M: Alaskans are extremely friendly and very, very helpful. A lot of people say why would you go there, go from a blue state to a red state, it’s very Republican; and it is somewhat Republican but they’re very Libertarian, very independent-minded souls so they’re not like the Republicans I was accustomed to.
B: You live in a real-life log cabin. Explain how.
M: Well, we looked and looked for a house to buy, but we couldn’t find one, and every time we went to buy one, it was already sold. Phil wanted to be on a lake, so that limited our options. And then we found this land on a lake with a view of the mountains, and then Phil built this log house, log by log, in minus 30-to-minus 40-degree weather.
B: Were you surprised that he was able to build it?
M: I was pleasantly surprised, although I trusted that he would, otherwise I wouldn’t have invested so much money into it. I had a reasonable expectation that we would be able to do it.
B: What on earth gave you that expectation?
M: I can’t really say. (SL)⁶
B: Have you seen any bears?
M: Many, yes.
B: What do they look like?
M: They look like bears. There are black bears, and there are brown bears, also known as the grizzly. They look really cute, but all of the bears I’ve seen, I‘ve been in a car when I’ve seen them. On one occasion I thought one was so cute I thought I should drive back and take a picture and then I slapped myself in the head and said ‘What are you, out of your mind? Are you going to get out of the car and say hi to the bear and expect him to just be friendly?’ I did not go back. But they run when they see you.
B: So why do people get attacked?
M: The common wisdom is that they either surprise the bear and scare them so that the bear feels threatened, or people are running with their dogs — many people get the dog to protect against the bear, but it seems to me that many bear attacks have been focused around someone with the dog and it would seem to attract the bear rather than be a deterrent. Sometimes people are running and riding a bike and they startle them and the bear runs after them and attacks them. Other times, they attack them because you get between a bear and their cubs or their food and they feel very defensive. I once came upon a moose who had her baby twins with her and I walked right up and got a face full of moose butt, and she turned her head to me and I backed up very cautiously and hopefully unthreateningly as possible so she wouldn’t attack me. Moose attack more people than bears do. I see more moose than I see dogs.
B: Have you seen anything get attacked?
M: Yes. I leave work one day with a lady who loves animals, and we’re driving on the street and the mother duck and the baby ducks are crossing the road. We’re so worried at first, and the cars stop, and the ducks cross the road, and we’re really happy. Along come a gaggle⁷ of ravens, who start picking up the baby ducks and stealing them and killing them. The mother starts fighting with them and she’s taking to the air, but they’re organized, these guys, because there are like 12 of them. One gaggle takes on the mother to keep her away, and the rest go steal the baby ducks and we sit there with our mouths open and go “Hmm. That was nice.”
B: Did any of the baby ducks survive?
M: No.
B: Did the mama duck survive?
M: No. It was terrible. Apparently the ravens had been bird-dogging the progress across the road. And the ravens were too smart to do something in front of the cars, because they knew they would get hit by the cars.
B: Did you intervene?
M: We tried. We didn’t think to get out of the car because it was a scene like out of The Birds.⁸
B: Have you seen Sarah Palin?
M: Yes. On more than one occasion.
B: Tell me your opinion of Sarah Palin.
M: Well. (pause) I’ve met her on three or four separate occasions, and she’s been very nice, very friendly, very nice. She’s very personable, very charismatic. As an Alaskan, I’m not happy that she’s not filling her term as governor. (pause) I think somebody should fill out their term. (longer pause) And that’s all I’m going to say.
B: Do you own a gun?
M: Yes. Well, technically Phil owns it.
B: Do you own more than one gun?
M: Yes, technically Phil owns it. (SL)
B: What type of guns do you own?
M: One is a rifle that my father apparently got at Montgomery Ward many, many years ago—
B: Don’t you mean shotgun?
M: It’s a shotgun, yes. And he brought it down and gave it to Phil when we moved to Alaska, and we had it refurbished so it works because it hadn’t been used in many years.
B: Have you ever shot a gun?
M: Yes. It was deemed I had to practice in the event I had to use said gun on the bear.
B: What did you shoot it at?
M: Cans.
B: Did you hit the cans?
M: (kind of excited to tell me this) The first time I missed the can. The second time I hit the can and I declared my power was good and I have not shot it since.
B: What happens to a can when you shoot it with a shotgun?
M: It falls off wherever it’s sitting and goes away.
B: What is the other gun?
M: The other gun is a .44? .357 magnum? .357 or .44 magnum.
B: Have you had to use either of the guns?
M: No. However, this summer we were sitting out on the deck, having a conversation, drinking a glass of wine, and all of a sudden we heard a clatter behind the house that definitely sounded like it was created by a large dude⁹, and so Phil insisted that we go into the house immediately and then he gathered up the shotgun and walked around the house and found nothing while I stayed inside. I was told to stay in the house, so I did.
B: Are you always good at following directions?
M: No. But as you know there are many windows in the house so I followed his progress and watched.
B: Do you like Alaska?
M: I love Alaska. It’s beautiful. It’s great.
B: Is there anything else you want to say about Alaska?
M: I think people would be really surprised at how green it is in the summer. This has been a beautiful summer. It’s full of all these wildflowers, lupine and fireweed. Lupine is purple and fireweed is magenta and the hillsides have been covered with these beautiful flowers. There have been beautiful purple and reddish flowers there. And there’s a lot of wildlife, which is very nice.
B: Do you like Alaska more than Massachusetts?
M: Yes.
B: Why?
M: It’s very much less pretentious.
B: I have nothing else.
M: You’re welcome to ask follow-up questions should you require.
B: Thanks mom.
M: I love you, boo-boo.¹⁰

Copyright Last Exit 2009

Bryan Joiner likes to write about politics, sports, literature, philosophy, and television, occasionally all at the same time. He is a contributing editor for Last Exit and the founder and editor of The Great Baseball Blog. He has written about garlic, Shea Stadium, Martha’s Vineyard, and A-Rod for Last Exit.