At the turn of the last century, a very forward thinking man made some prophetic comments regarding Alaska’s beauty and economic future in these compelling remarks:
“The Alaska coast is to become the show-place of the earth, and pilgrims, not only from the United States, but from far beyond the seas will throng in endless procession to see it. Its grandeur is more valuable than the gold or the fish or the timber, for it will never be exhausted.”
~ Henry Gannett, The Harriman Alaska Expedition 1899
Since then, the beauty of Alaska’s landscape has provoked an ever increasing source of income as pilgrims from far beyond the seas are indeed coming to visit and take in its sights. Nature is a powerful lure, especially in the raw and rugged form found in the 49th state.
However, Alaska’s nature is not a strong enough lure to compete with Sarah Palin, (one of Alaska’s personality stars and recently self-extracted politicians) at least when it comes time to pasting something on your wall. The shoppers in Fairbanks have chosen a 12 month wall calendar of Sarah Palin over an Interior Alaska Nature calendar by a 50% margin. This is interesting, odd, funny and scary all at the same time. I have never known, nor expected that a calendar of a politician would sell off the store racks. Twelve months of viewing the same person’s head? I would have said – no way. You have really got to like the view. But, these are odd times indeed. I guess as a general rule, my philosophy has been to have lots of windows to minimize your wall space. And for that little wall space available you can choose from a myriad of calendars out there on every possible subject. Winnowed down to the two top sellers at a Fairbanks outlet, you have a choice between hair or nature to look at every single day. And so far hair wins!
By this point, if you are like most of the public, you are probably feeling 50% more curiosity about what’s inside that Palin calendar than you are my boring nature calendar. Unfortunately, I can’t offer you an inside look at her calendar but you can take a peek at some of interior Alaska’s nature scenes here. Not even the prophetic Henry Gannett would have predicted this!
