Why

I lived in Alaska when I was a little kid; my family moved away (due to my Navy father's transfer to another duty station) right around my 5th birthday. But from the time I was 3 until I turned 5, we lived on Adak Island (which at that time was Adak Naval Air Station).

My very first memory happened in Alaska. It was my 4th birthday, and I was reading on the couch. (Yes, I was really reading, not just pretending to -- my mother's ambition and a steady diet of Sesame Street had seen to that. Plus I had already learned that children who are seen to be concentrating on a book are very inconspicuous, and can learn a lot from overhearing indiscreet conversations.) My father walked into the living room and held out his arms; I went to him, and he swung me up to sit on his shoulders. He made his way out the front door, sauntering around to the back of the house, and went in the back door to the utility room, with me ducking at each doorway. When we arrived back into the living room, I saw a doll sitting on the couch, exactly where I'd been just moments before. She was nearly as big as I was, and was blond and blue-eyed like me. I named her Kimi, and I kept her until I was 14 (when I very ritually, and dramatically, sacrificed all my childhood toys to the garbage can).

My other memories of Alaska are blurred so badly that I can't tell if most of them are actual memories, or impressions from looking at photos of my childhood. We had a dog, but I don't remember him except in photos. There must have been other children there besides me and my younger sister, but I don't remember any of them, either. (Hell, I don't even have memories of my sister until we moved, and by then she was 3!) The only memories I'm certain didn't come from looking at photos are of being too short to climb into the swings in the play area, and a vague memory of smelling smoked salmon while standing inside the "cabin" that my mother told me we occasionally stayed in -- which was nothing more than a ramshackle quonset hut shared by the military families for brief vacations (the only alternative, on the whole island, to being on base). The island's name, I'm told, came from an Aleut word meaning "father," and I suppose it says something about me that my father is the only person of whom I have any concrete memory prior to age 5.

But all that was 35 years ago, and this is really about now.

Up until a few years ago, I was happy living in Portland. A city with tons of bookstores, lots of coffee places, more than a few fabric & craft outlets, and (I thought) a decent standard of living. I moved here at the end of 1998, after 20 years of living in various places throughout the counties around Portland (except for a 16-month diversion to the Southwest when my eldest was a toddler, and most of a year up in rural Washington state shortly after my youngest was born). When we moved to Oregon in 1978 when my parents divorced, the plane landed at night. Driving away from the airport, I had been entranced by the beauty of Portland's night vista...only to find that our destination was many miles out in the backwoods. I was horribly disappointed by the rural town I was plunked into for the next 7 years, and looked forward to the day I could live in lovely Portland instead of the horrid small town where I was so miserable.

Portland isn't the same anymore. And neither am I. It used to be home...but then again, I'm not very certain that any place you can find on a map has ever been home to me. For crying out loud, I'm not quite 40 years old, and I've moved more than 30 times in my life (and only 3 times, all within city limits, in the last 10 years). Home is where the heart is, they say...and despite the fact that almost all my dearest loved ones live here, my heart isn't much into Portland anymore. Possibly because most of my loved ones aren't likely to still be in Portland in a few years.

My youngest, Alice, will be graduating high school in just over 2 years, and I'm certain her plans will take her elsewhere -- whether she joins the Navy as she currently plans to, or goes to college, or winds up surprising us all with some other decision. My eldest, Einna, is 20 and unemployed, and has fewer clues than the rest of the family about where she'll be a year or two from now.

The ironic thing is that I spent so many years living in rural Oregon and hating it; now I can't wait to get back into more rustic surroundings and throw myself into farming. My best friend, Lyse -- soul sister, godmother to my children, and (she's joked) "platonic lesbian wife" -- and I started talking a few years ago about getting back to the land. My boyfriend/fiance, Fenris, has been less than thrilled about living in Portland the whole time he's been here...and (I suspect) largely has put up with it only because of my wanting to be here.

The ideas that he and I and Lyse have cooked up over the last few years started as nothing more than pipe dreams. In the early years of our relationship, when Fenris would talk about living out in the boonies, I would shudder, and bemoan the lack of civilized amenities out in the country that I was certain were necessary for my sanity. But living in a city that used to seem cozy and friendly and cheerfully odd, eventually turned into living in a city that seems militant and shrill and where being weird is no longer fun because it's mandatory. (Yes, I admit I have a "Keep Portland Weird" bumper sticker on my car. I have a lot of other stickers on that bumper that no longer suit me, either.) Our dreams of Something Better Than This slowly condensed into goals as we talked about, and suggested, and explored the ideas that we believe will make us happier, healthier, better people.

So why Alaska? Because it's big, and wild, and far removed from the rest of the world in many ways...and anymore these days, the rest of the world is going batshit crazy.

And because I can see a future there that I could never have here, with Oregon's insane taxes and ever-worsening crowding and ridiculous politics and asinine philosophies and militant liberals imposing their beliefs on everyone, no matter how stupid those beliefs are. With the anti-gun, anti-common sense, anti-self-sufficiency attitudes. With the rampant hypocrisy that still manages to astonish even the most jaded. With the gods-forsaken mandatory "weirdness" that has produced such gems as Rashneeshpuram and Elizabeth Diane Downs and Tonya Harding and the pregnant "man" (about to pop out kid #2) and Tre Arrow and Senator Bob Packwood (oh, the appropriateness of the name!).

I could go on and on, but why bother? I don't think that Alaska will be some kind of bright and shiny utopia. I just think that, in a state that's nearly 7 times larger in land area yet has only 18% the population of Oregon, it'll be a whole lot easier to avoid the kinds of people I don't want to deal with...and cherish the people I choose to surround myself with.