Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Alaska What does it mean to you to be an Alaskan?

I asked our late friend Dennis Neill that a few years ago, and before he answered that question, he said he wanted to think on it. Unfortunately, he never got around to aswering that question.

I received a nice note from his wife Faith this past week that included Dennis' obit and his highlights. Moving to Alaska was one.

Can you Alaskans tell someone from the SE lower 48, "What does it mean to you to be Alaskan?". Independent? Pioneering spirit?

No takers?

A couple things;

You get out of the truck, you enter the food chain

Snow melts, its time to cut firewood

You can go so far in about any direction, it'll turn into a matter of survival getting back.

There are places so quiet, you can hear your hormones.

All I can say, we are not Alaskan.

My wife has never ever wanted to move anywhere, wanted to stay here on the farm and die here.

Until she fell in love with Alaska.

And on her OWN, set a time line for us to move, hell or high water, and try semi retire early and see if we can make ends meet while we still are young enough to sport around the state.... I"m in full agreement too FWIW.

I"d say that the wife making the decision, says a LOT... IMHO.

I'd have done it in the 80s if I could have talked her into it....

I don't know that I consider myself a "true Alaskan" since I wasn't born or raised here. As far back as my earliest memories I always wanted to live in Alaska. I can still remember my kindergarten teacher asking my class "What do you want to be when you grow up"? While there was the typical answers like fireman, police officer, etc., my answer was "a mountain man and trap for a living in Alaska". Well I'm not a mountain man and I've never made a living off of trapping, but I did make it up to Alaska for the first time when I was 21, worked on a commercial fishing boat in the Bering Sea for a stint, then eventually made it back up when I was 23 and never left. So, while I still don't know if I can call myself an Alaskan, I have always wanted to be an Alaskan, and now at 49 years of age, I've lived in Alaska much longer than any other place I've lived. I don't know if that answers your question, but that's the only answer I have.

It takes thought to put the feeling into words. I'm not sure I can describe it, but it's what keeps me here. Being Alaskan is completely different than being from most other states. I'd say 47 of the states people are all the same. I hesitate to ever move because being Alaskan is part of who I am. Almost like I could take it with me as part of my heritage. Alaskan American?

This might seem like I am crazier than hell but I don't know of any other state where we actually feel that our state is a living creature. If you die in Texas, you don't meet your Texas. But in Alaska we are part of it. When you die here you meet your Alaska. Alaska to long term Alaskans is not just a state that we owe allegiance to but a state that we belong to.

I dunno, some of us are fond of our Texas. But its not what it was 100 years ago. I'll take TX over many other options... but not over one.

Maybe thats what we like about Alaska, a step back in time most places, that is not current and up to date.

Wife always says I was born 50-100 years to late....

I don't have to ask how old a caribou has to get before it becomes a moose?

I don't have to ask when they turn the Northern Lights on?

I don't have to ask how we got Denali so high?

I don't have to ask how cold is 60 below?



It means I'm home, and found it at 20.

Not sure about that part, but it is so quiet in plenty of places that you can hear your heart thumping when you open your mouth sometimes.

Was watching for a small gaggle of moose to make their way up a snow-covered, rocky hillside one winter. I had been snowshoeing after them when I stopped to listen while I caught my breath with an open mouth. I thought for sure I heard their hooves clicking on the rocky hillside until I realized what I was hearing was my heart beat telegraphed up my trachea, echoing inside my open mouth. Kinda freaky!



Well put, Thomas.

Alaska can be a lot harder than most people would imagine. Then again, there are so many folks in urban Alaska who insist on keeping and imposing the amenities and rules they've known in the lower 48 on themselves and those around them. I know it seems snobbish, but I think there are probably a fair number of people who live up here who have never actually spent any significant time 'in Alaska'.

It's not just a state. It's a state of mind.

If you have to ask, you can't afford it

Even if you don't have to ask, you can't afford it.

True! I am in a unique situation myself. Everything is brought here by boat. I order my groceries once a week, and I count on the grocery store to send me what I actually order. I can literally fish off of my back porch though, as I live in a float house. It has been moving around a lot with this north wind.

I wouldn't have it any other way though.

And that kind of sums up a significant part of the 'Alaskan' thing in my view. A great many people come here/live here for the scenery (or something), but they resist the "unique" part (perhaps because there's often some significant challenges involved). So we end up with our fair share of Pittsburgh-lite, Minneapolis-lite, Atlanta-lite, and Portland-lite.

Did I ever mention that I hate plastic-clad homes in areas which have banned good ol' basic T1-11 as a siding? (Yes, they're doing it in Fairbanks, Alaska.)

I remember a pawn shop in fairbanks, back around 1980. It was a cluttered mess of trails throughout the store. The owner had asked me to join the KKK several times as he didn't like what he called "Zionist Jews".

Anyways, I bought lots of guns from him, but never joined his group. I was in there one morning when a couple natives came in wanting to sell gold. They laid a nugget on the counter the size of can of WD40 on the counter. The owner weighed it and paid em, then pulled 2 different metal tool boxes from under the counter. Both were so full of nuggets, nothing else would fit. Finally he pulled a third one and tossed the behemoth nugget in there like it was a rock and kicked the box back under the counter.

A couple minutes later a seemingly pissed off fella in boxer shorts and a t shirt comes in wanting to buy a pair of thumb cuffs and a baseball bat. After purchasing his tools, he went out the door with a look of satisfaction and a purpose.

Fairbanks has surely changed.

Yup! I don't have phone service of any kind here, would drive most people crazy. I have running water and power, I figure I am doin ok.

Do you have internet?

Sometimes

Hughes Net is doing some pretty decent upgrades. Showing speeds that approach GCI. At least in SE.

Do you mind if I eavesdrop on this conversation?

We are in the process of upgrading to them

Just returned from a week at home, where the running water doesn't, and you had to crap in a bucket in spite of the fact that there was a perfectly good toilet sitting nearby. So staying at camp was perfect and wonderful, where the dastardly phones are useless unless and until you find a place where signal can be found




...on ice piled high out on the ocean, and then you quickly send the previously prepped message before the last bar drops.


At camp, the power is on when the Honda runs, and the ice runs when the ski-doo does.



...and I wouldn't want it any other way!

Life is hard eh?

The 'being Alaskan' thing reminds me of the phrase "Alaska: Where the Odds are Good, but the Goods are Odd". I don't know about the former, but the latter portion seems well-founded. Some of us just fool people part of the time.

Gave this some thought and I guess for me it boils down to gratitude

I'm grateful to have spent the majority of my adult life here

Alaska has given me everything a young man yearns for, a beauty to win ( grateful for my Indian princess) an adventure to live. I've lived so many of them here, mostly involved in some type of hunting

It's given me a comfortable living, even if making it wasn't always comfortable while doing so.

Everything I am & own I owe to this place, I'm only an adopted son, set foot here first at 10 years old, back at 17, 5 days after hs graduation.

I may be adopted, but love this place deeply, she's cared for me well even if I've received some harsh lessons.

Hurry up and wait is a big one in rural Alaska.

You have to rush to get checked in and then wait for even days before you get picked up.

I remember a real bad storm in Kotz during a teacher's inservice where we were stuck there for two weeks. That was during the bad old days of the Pondo club and lots of crazy stuff at the airport hangar bar.

I'll be making Alaska my permanent home next month. It's the culmination of a lifelong dream of mine, one that I've been dreaming of since I was a little boy reading stories of adventures in a lonely land. The draw for me has always been the relative freedom that it offers and the lack of forgiveness inherent to the wild places. The idea that there's still places that nobody has laid bootprints on and are still unspoiled by man has always appealed to this dreamer. Animals that have never seen a human and humans that rarely see other humans is a solitude unlike anywhere else in this country. Alaska is my paradise and I'll soon be living the dream. I may never be her native son but she's always been my mother land and my refuge of peaceful grandeur and unforgiving loneliness. I'll tread lightly and never take for granted the privilege of living deliberately.

The fact that you can set foot on a piece of this earth that has never seen another human footprint, is one thing that has appealed to us also. Even though I can likely do that on my property here at home right now.

The other is solitude and beauty, only sometimes spoiled by 4 wheelers and the like. LOL.

Enjoy my friend, and be grateful for the chance. We are sure hoping to follow your steps sooner rather than later.

Well put!

To me it seems when the land gets into your veins you find three main attributes.

Humility. If the land don't get you, the mechanized kit we've come up with to haul us around the state sure has a way of busting you up or burying you. It puts you in a healthy mindset as to your proper place in the order of things.

Gratitude. You give thanks for living hear and all the opportunities that abound.

Wonderment. No matter how many times you look at a mountain, stretch of water or spot of land you're still filled with wonderment at the beauty.

Aces and Paul, those were nice posts fellas.

One from a guy that aspires to live here and one that does.


nice touch on the keyboard gents.

As a little guy, a dreamed of Alaska ever since my Dad had returned from Alaska after WWII. I've kept many of his photos of their pioneering the Alcan Highway. What an experience they had.

There's a lot of the state I haven't seen and probably won't see.....just too much out there!

I was recently back in my home town in Northern Minnesota where I had intended to have my cremains buried with my parents there but I've advised my niece executor to put me in the Yukon River near the headwaters so I can travel the entire length of the river and look things over.

Would be somewhat of a coincidence perhaps if your dad and my uncle worked side by side on that miserable job (the Alcan). My dad relayed stories about the cold that his brother experienced...trucks whose radiators froze as they sat idling overnight.

And I've always figured/blamed my early years near Minnesota's northern border as the cause for yearning for "more north".

I came to Alaska at age 20. Was homesick as hell for the next 15 months, when I went back Outside to visit friends and family for 6 weeks.

When the airliner dropped below the clouds above Indian, I looked down and saw the sheep trails I'd followed a few weeks before. I don't think that silly chit-eatin' smile left my face for a good six weeks.

Surprised the heck out of me that I'd found my life-time home. I didn't leave even temporarily for a decade afterward.

What does it mean to me? Being able to hunt whatever I want, without having to go ask someone for permission.

Alaska has been my home for over 24 years and I can't imagine living anywhere else. I've made some good friends up here and met and married the woman of my dreams (she loves the outdoors just as much as I do) who loves this place as much as I do. You don't have to go far up here to find solitude and the scenery is second to none. IMO, Alaska is truly the Last Frontier.

Well, In a few months, I qualify for the Pioneer's Home if I need it. I have done a lot of stuff here that folks in the lower 48 would never even imagine doing. My first civilian job was as a "weasel mechanic" (the tracked ones). Did you ever notice that folks outside are different? I mean--they think different. Even your outside relatives are different. Folks who break ties with the Lower 48 are driven with an Alpha personality. Those folks breed with like types and our kids are born with an adventurous gene. I hope that I live long enough to see my great grandson grow up. All of my friends own at least 5 guns; By the time they turned 10 their kids have shot most of them, and they own several of their own. Even if dad has to help them hold on to the three six bits the kid has shot it and the old .44 magnum.. I never lived in Anchorage, but I did work for APD when we had the "Riot Helmets". Do you remember "Sgt. Muldoon" and "Ten Horse Johnson"?
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