Wilderness Blues- Ramblings from the Great Land

 For reasons unknown, it seems that much of the time that the television is on in our house, it's tuned in to the news. I don't know if it's because misery loves company and we like to feel like our lives are certainly no worse and in many cases better than other peoples or if we just like to stay informed . As you know,almost all news is focused on the current tragedy of the day. We can tune in twenty four hours and be unnerved by what is happening in the world. Usually on the major media outlets there is a feel good story at the end of the program to try and soften all the lousy stuff they've thrown at you for the previous twenty five minutes. Personally I'd like to see a national news program that  only delivered the news of all the good things that have happened in the world. I guess that wouldn't really be news though. We all experience good things;breathing, eating, walking, talking. We just don't think about them. They aren't news to us, i...

  Today is an anniversary for me. It's one that I suppose on the one hand I would rather not be acknowledging, but then again, I guess that I'm quite happy that I can. Thirteen years ago, on February 26, 2000, I was on an airplane that crashed into Lynn Canal. Obviously I survived, so I guess for me at least, that's something to celebrate.   Alaska, because of it's vastness and the fact that so much of the area is roadless, relies heavily on air travel to cover the long distances between villages and towns. I think per capita we have more small planes than any of the other states. Much of the commercial air travel is on small planes- Cessna's and Beaver's and whatever other small types there are. Because there is so much air traffic conducted in these small planes, and since the weather here can be so unpredictable, there seems to be a large number of airplane accidents- probably more than you would read about elsewhere. The nice part is that a good bit o...