They say God was angry, or tired when he made Alaska. But I don’t think so. When I can walk out my door and be in amazement every day because I see something new I can’t say this was a mistake. But it might be a test.
You have to be able to put up with the extremes, with the -30 degrees in the winter and the 80 degrees in the summer. Feeling like first you’re going to freeze to death and then you’re going to melt because it’s a 110 degree difference in the course of a few months. But when you can climb a mountain and you look out and you can see for miles, and you see rivers and valleys and trees and snow from the winter before and just majesty. There is such beauty here. During the winter you can step in a snow bank and you sink hip deep and you still don’t touch the bottom; you can climb a great ice flow that is older than any human, and in fact outdates humanity; you look up to the sky at night and its only four in the afternoon and its midnight dark, and you see a ribbon of green and the rare shot of red and you see the aurora borealis for the first time and it leaves you shivering at the mystical beauty of it. It’s summer and you walk outside and look around and the trees are budding and the flowers are finally blooming even though its June and this is the first chance they’ve gotten; the rivers are up because the snow is melting and they are the most beautiful blue, a turquoise that you hear people talk about but can never understand until you see it; and the clouds one day will go dark, and they’ll start to boil and there will be thunder and it’s the first thunder you’ve heard in a year and it’s the most beautiful sound because you know with that sound, that summer is here. And you go for a walk at midnight because its still daylight and on one side of you is day and on the other is night and you watch the sun set behind the same mountains it rose from that morning and it paints the sky the most amazing gold and pink and purple because the air isn’t impure, there is no red, but its still the most amazing sunset you’ve ever seen. The aspen start to get their leaves on their tall trunks and framed against the sunset it looks almost tropical. The mountains are half lit and half dark and you don’t what to think but to know that this is the single most amazing place you have ever been.
So I don’t think God was angry, I think he took the time to paint this place, to put together every color, every little detail, and make it the most magnificent place to be. At the very least he threw it all together, and so we have the extremes, with the extreme comes the most beautiful place I have ever had the chance to be.