I Kissed the Fish

There Are No Such Things As Paved Roads Or Nice Clean Sidewalks In Rural Villages In Alaska. Most People Who Visit Alaska See Anchorage Fairbanks Or Maybe Even Isolated Juneau The Capital City. Those Cities Are Neat Concrete Bound Proper Lower-Forty-Eight-Type Cities. But They Arent The Real Alaska. The Villages With Mud And Mosquitoes In The Summer Snow And Ice In The Winter Fishing And Hunting Out The Front Door Practicallythose Villages Make Up The Real Deal The Last Frontier Alaska. . The People Living In The Villagesresourceful Native Americans Proud Eskimos Aleuts And Gussaks (Which Is What People Of The Land Call Anglos And All Others From The Lower Forty-Eight)Meet The Challenges Of The Far North. That Is Alaska! The People Work Together To Deal With The Cold Winter Darkness Summers Long Days And Most Importantly The Intensified Human Emotions Involving Survival. Larry And I Lived And Taught In Aniak Alaska That This Story Is Based On. We Fished Skied Snow-Mobiled Threw A Cup Of Coffee In The Air When It Was Fifty Degrees Below Zero Experienced The Kuskokwim River Going Through The Pangs Of Break-Up And Every Few Years: A Flood In Which We Got Water In Our Basement. Life In Rural Alaska Is At Times Challenging. But The People Make Every Moment Rewarding.