Our little planet

After eight hours on the plane with a screaming toddler and no water, my luggage broken, I had received my “intermediate” size rental car, which turned out to be a giant SUV. Not really giant, since there are much bigger ones out there, but HUGE for me. But maybe in Alaska it is OK to drive around in a truck burning the very fossil fuels they extract from up here. Tucked in at the hotel, suffering major jet lag, I could barely sleep from excitement. I was here, in Alaska!

In the morning I explored Anchorage, including a couple hours at the Anchorage Museum of History and Art, to be inspired by photos and paintings of the Alaska I was about to witness. It was a great little museum, but I was itching to get on the road.

In pouring rain and fog, I headed south, on a four hour drive to Homer and the spit. My friend works at the very end of the spit, at the very tip of the western most point in the United States. As I crested the final rise and turned towards Homer, the clouds broke and the sun shined down on the bay and jagged mountains, filled with glaciers. It only lasted a moment before the clouds filled back in and the misty rain began again.

Homer will be my home base for the next five days. It is a cute, eccentric little town. Last night we went to the only movie theater in town, where they show two movies a week. Everynight at 6pm they show one and at 9pm they show the next. We went to the 6pm showing of “An Inconvenient Truth”, the Al Gore documentary about global warming. It seemed surreal to be in such a beautiful part of the world, surrounded by the glaciers that he referenced. I thought I had a pretty good grasp of global warming, but the movie really touched me. We are in for a bad ride and it is going to happen much more quickly than I ever thought.

Armed with beautiful artistic inspiration and reminded of the fleeting moments of a world in flux, I’m ready to take it all in.