ALASKA TO ME has always seemed a distant and enchanted place, where time ceases to exist, Mother Nature plays like She did in her childhood, and small quirky towns pepper the landscape here and there with the promise of bundled-up idiosyncratic characters moseying about the square on errands. Perhaps this is romanticizing an all-too-average state. But if I listen to the stories my family's friends have to tell, and to the testimonies of our most beloved and venerated icons, authors and poets, there may in fact be something mesmerizing - mystical, magical - about Alaska.

When in doubt, I turn to Northern Exposure, a television series no longer on the air, second in quality only to Seinfeld (in my humble opinion). Below are some quotes from various episodes that shed light, both humorous and solemn, on our borealis neighbors.

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PSYCHIC KNAPSACK

"Message of the day. Listen up now, because this one's important. Brush those teeth, eat that roughage, pop those vitamins, and wear sensible shoes. Man, we homo sapiens carry around a heavy psychic knapsack: consciousness. We all know we're going to be asked to get off the merry-go-round someday. Best we can do is keep the corpse beautiful, right? And what is the right stuff, anyway, crossing a double yellow on your hog or looking a thirty-year mortgage flat in the face? The long haul. I'm going to need some clean undies; got my toothbrush, got my library card. What did the man say? A journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step, right?"

-Chris

WILD

"Thank you, Mr. Sendak, for reminding us that we should never lose touch with the wild and untamable spirit within us all... Even up here in Alaska, we're turning our back on the beast. We've opted for the zoo, where the lion can't eat you instead of the jungle, where he can. Quelle dommage. What a drag."

-Chris, after reading "Where The Wild Things Are"

MOSQUITOS

"For winter's rains and ruins are over

and all the season of snows and sins;

The days dividing lover and lover,

the light that loses and the night that wins.

Frosts are slain and flowers begotten

and in the green underwood and cover

blossom by blossom spring begins.

To the hearty mosquito, Cicilians!"

-Chris

DAYLIGHT

Maggie: "Are you trying to tell me that in a town of 815 people with 16 hours of daylight, you have a hard time squeezing everybody in?"

Dr. Joel: "It's the principle. Look, hello, 'I was hit by a bus' is a reason to be late for a doctor's appointment. Not, 'I decided to have my nails done at the last minute.'

-Maggie shows up late for an appointment with Joel

BACK TO NATURE

Maggie: "I was thinking we could set up an animal preserve."

Joel: "An animal preserve? So all the Alaskans can have some place to get back to nature?"

TUNDRA

Maggie: "All you care about is you, and New York, and your precious career!"

Joel: "Look, Mother Theresa. I did not get off the plane and say that I am Marcus Wellby, kindly physician, and all-around swell guy! Okay!?! I was fully prepared to do my time in Anchorage, but I am contractually bound to this tundra under false pretenses and against my will. So if I resort to some unscrupulous practices to right a greater wrong, look, where's Amnesty International when it comes to Joel Fleischman?!?"

ANCHORAGE

"You had me do a two hour turn around to Anchorage to pick up *bagels*? They were supposed to be medical supplies!"

-Maggie to Joel

DARKNESS

"Who would've thought such a slight tilt in our earthly axis could make such a big difference in our lives? The big wheel keeps on turning and here we are again, looking in the sweet face of darkness.

'Now the day is over,

night is drawing nigh,

Shadows of the evening

steal across the sky.'

A KBHR caution to all our loyal listeners: you know tonight marks the end of our collective midsummer night's dream, so get those pupils ready to dilate, because for the first time in a long time, our constant companion, old Sol, is about to go on a quickie vacation, a short dip beneath the horizon, a junket to whichever Club Med accommodates medium-sized stars. While he's gone, I want you to be alert, be careful, and please, please, please, three times please, turn on your headlights."

-Chris on the air, about the daylight change

TRAFFIC

"Now for the traffic report. Maggie O'Connell just drove down Main Street...too fast."

-Chris

BARREN POPULATION

Ed: "You are single, you are heterosexual, you are a doctor, you are Jewish. Alaska is wide open for you."

Joel sarcastically: "I'll have to fight the women off."

Ed: "What women?"

BUGS

Joel: "You're walking into those woods?! You don't know what's out there."

Maggie: "I have a gun."

Joel: "They don't know that. They see us walking around out there, they think we're with the Sierra Club and *that's* a stick."

Maggie: "Who's they?"

Joel: "I don't know. Wild animals, white supremists, attack bugs."

ROUGHING IT

"Lots of things are rare in Cicely. Boxed lunches, public

transportation, victimless crimes. It doesn't mean they don't exist."

-Joel to Ed

MAPS

"Some people look at this box, they see a box. You know what I see? The spice route to India. The gateway to the Nile. I see the dark side of the moon. Terra incognito. I see Alaska, people."

- Chris

CRAZY ENOUGH

Joel: "Don't flatter yourself. Your family is no crazier than any other American nuclear unit. Believe me."

Maggie: "Oh yeah? What would you say to a father who at 58 years old quits his job and buys a Buffalo ranch in South Dakota?"

Joel: "I'd say I would not be surprised if he had a daughter who was a bush pilot in the wilds of Alaska."

ADVENTURE

"I'm going to Seattle. The gateway to Alaska. I want an adventure."

-Marilyn telling Joel she is going on vacation

CARIBOU

"I got to tell you, Shelly, I haven't felt like this since I went bow hunting in the Territories and brought down that barren ground caribou with a single arrow."

-Holling receiving his diploma

LIGHT

"Goethe's final words: 'More light.' Ever since we crawled out of that primordial slime, that's been our unifying cry, 'More light.' Sunlight. Torchlight. Candlelight. Neon, incandescent lights that banish the darkness from our caves to illuminate our roads, the insides of our refrigerators. Big floods for the night games at Soldier's field. Little tiny flashlights for those books we read under the covers when we're supposed to be asleep. Light is more than watts and footcandles. Light is metaphor. Thy word is a lamp unto my feet. Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Lead kindly light amid the encircling gloom, lead thou me on, the night is dark and I am far from home, lead thou me on. Arise, shine, for thy light has come. Light is knowledge, light is life, light is light."

-Chris, unveiling his sculpture, quoting Psalm 119, Dylan Thomas, JH Newman, and Isaiah

MOOSE

"A little reminder to those intent on signing up for the fall session of the Cicely continuing ed program, the deadline is this Friday. Let's see what's new this quarter: Lou Volpee will be teaching a course on practical rural law. Topics include Road Kill: Whose Moose Is It and the always controversial right-of-way, Sno Go Versus Dogsled."

-Chris on the air

ACCLIMATING

"Oh God. Oh my God. I'm sitting here eating seeds and having a serious conversation about winter clothing. First my wallet and now this. What is happening?"

-Joel, fearing he's losing his "New York"-ness

AURORA

"I haven't had any dreams since the aurora went haywire."

"That's impossible, Holling. Everyone dreams."

"The theater's dark."

-Holling and Joel, in counselling

BANFF

"Here you are, guy from New York city. You're tanning hides, you're out spearing fish, drying salmon, and me, the guy who was born here, what do I know? All I know is who took top honors at the Banff Film Festival."

-Ed to Joel

SILENCE

Phil: "It's amazing isn't it? All this life?"

Michelle: "Too much maybe. Not too much, just lots."

Phil: "Give yourself some time. Listen. You hear that? That's a sound we never heard in Los Angeles. Silence. Isn't that something!"

ATTACHMENTS

"For five years I've had to listen to you whine how you can't stand this place, how you can't wait to get back to New York, and now that you can, now that there's nothing holding you back, you're not going?"

-Maggie to Joel

HAPPIER HERE

"I'm grateful to you. If it weren't for you, I wouldn't be in Cicely right now, and I'd still be running that rat race, still locked in that commute. Id be totally stressed, I'd be totally ignorant of what my life could be. I'm happier now than I've ever been."

-Joel to Maggie having returned from NYC

LEAVING THE REMAINS

"Who is Chris Stevens? Who AM I? Who are any of us? Are we one person fixed at birth? Do we grow like a snowball coming down the mountainside of life, or can we change, shed our skin? A caterpillar becomes the butterfly, leaving the remains of his former self behind. I look at my yearbook photo--Wheeling Central Catholic High School, Class of 81--and I wonder who that stranger is. Damned if I know. Maybe that's the point, maybe we're not supposed to know, maybe that's what this earthly joy ride's all about. Like Robert Frost said, 'We dance round in a ring and suppose, But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.'"

-Chris