More Palin talk from Outside

Alaska visit quite an experience

Wednesday, July 25, 2007
TOM KOENNINGER editor emeritus of The Columbian

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - “Take off your shoes and socks,” advised Redoubt Bay Lodge guide Jeremy Bishop. “Then step off the boat. You won’t sink.”"Ohhh, sure.”

My confidence was not great as I took two baby steps, and water rose half-way to my knees. Then I walked a few feet from the boat, and water was ankle deep.

Walking on water was actually walking on a bog that floated on the lake several hundred feet from shore. It was like walking on a gigantic water bed - stepping out, sinking a little, and stepping again.

That newfound self-confidence was shattered a few days later when a Fairbanks woman, Karen Lundquist, told me she fell through a bog while duck hunting. Only her shotgun, held across her body, saved her from going completely under.

Walking on that lake 90 miles southwest of here, near the entrance to Lake Clark National Park, was one of many Alaska experiences during a nine-day July visit.

The enormity of Alaska doesn’t sink in until its size is compared with the lower 48. This 49th state occupies one-fifth the land mass of the United States. Alaska is larger than Texas, California and Montana combined. It measures 2,404 miles east to west and 1,420 miles north to south. But Alaska has comparatively few people, about 700,000.

Anchorage, nearly equidistant from Tokyo, New York and London, has one of the nation’s busiest airports.

Alaska is truly the last frontier, with a wealth of natural resources, from oil at Prudhoe Bay and natural gas deposits, to fish in the Bering Sea. Gold is still mined near Nome, and the forests yield an abundance of lumber.

But there are abuses, too.

At a location not far from the Redoubt Bay Lodge, occupants of 15 small boats crowded into an area not much larger than a football field to snag salmon - legally. And hundreds of the sockeye salmon were pushing to the mouth of a small creek. People with fishing poles cast hooks repeatedly until they snagged fish. Let’s not call it sport. Maybe it falls under subsistence fishing. The “snaggers” weren’t the least bit interested in the occasional black bear grabbing a salmon.

But our interest was spotting bears, not snagging fish. The count in four hours searching was 13 - 12 black bears including a mother (sow) with two cubs, and a brown bear, a grizzly.

Governor occupies spotlight

Our group also heard human growling out of concern for “capital creep” and howls of joy and pain for Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s radical surgery on the state construction budget.

She trimmed $237 million out of the proposed $1.8 billion capital budget, and approved a $6.6 billion operating budget for the state. It’s the highest operating budget in state history.

Palin, a Republican, is Alaska’s first female governor and the youngest governor in state history. She was 42 when sworn into office in January.

Of her whacks at the capital budget, she said she was trying to rein in governmental growth and “live within our means.”

Like Washington’s Democratic Gov. Chris Gregoire, Palin is a strong supporter of education. She advocates “creating a strong economy with good jobs” and “an education system that is world class.”

While some protested the governor’s budget cuts, the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner said she “struck a blow for a more open and accountable system of funding projects.”

Palin, by the way, has an approval-rating percentage in the 90s - the highest in the country. Maybe the fact that she was trained as a journalist gave her an especially good start.

Palin did raise some eyebrows, especially in Juneau, when she recently convened a one-day special session of the state Legislature in Anchorage. The controversial campaign to move the state legislature from Juneau to Anchorage has raged on for years.

Many eyes are turned to the next session - and its location.

That’s the news from the far north, where the “PFD” this year is estimated at $1,575. Permanent Fund Dividend checks represent money the state pays each of its qualified residents based on its oil wealth.

We’re paying a share of it, too.

Tom Koenninger is editor emeritus of The Columbian. His column of personal opinion appears on the Other Opinions page each Wednesday. Reach him at

tom.koenninger@columbian.com

Source: The Columbian