Leaving Alaska
Jul 01, 2023 by Charles Burrall
May 27, 1992
Twelve years passed. I left teaching in the summer of 1977 to travel west in search of my fame and fortune. What originally was going to be a three-month excursion around the continental United States turned into a twelve-year adventure that took me overseas and eight years in Alaska. I maintain still that Alaska is the most beautiful, unique, and intriguing place I have ever seen. Perhaps because it is there that I became born again. Perhaps because there I was able to fulfill many of the dreams I had as a young man. But whatever the case, Alaska has been and still is a dream to me. It was then and it still is now. It represents all that is young, new, fresh, pristine, daring and dangerous. It's being twenty-two years old and not caring, able to throw firewood or pitch halibut as long as you needed with your body never giving out and hardly needing sleep. It's long summer nights with light in the sky all the time and deep, dark, snowy winters, alone. It is boats. It is studying the Bible and believing it for the first time. It is being lonely. It is being thrilled with the absolute splendor of nature. Drinking coffee, early, by a wood stove. Having a dog. Deep snow. Skiing.
Those days were passionate, with all the thrill and pain that passion brings. And they are over now. Wonderfully, passionately, over. They are only a memory. Something to write about. So here's to Alaska, the days of my youth!
Only a fool would leave Alaska and return to the "Lower Forty-eight." Or someone who had done all that he went there to do. Or someone whom God was calling out.
Twelve years passed. I left teaching in the summer of 1977 to travel west in search of my fame and fortune. What originally was going to be a three-month excursion around the continental United States turned into a twelve-year adventure that took me overseas and eight years in Alaska. I maintain still that Alaska is the most beautiful, unique, and intriguing place I have ever seen. Perhaps because it is there that I became born again. Perhaps because there I was able to fulfill many of the dreams I had as a young man. But whatever the case, Alaska has been and still is a dream to me. It was then and it still is now. It represents all that is young, new, fresh, pristine, daring and dangerous. It's being twenty-two years old and not caring, able to throw firewood or pitch halibut as long as you needed with your body never giving out and hardly needing sleep. It's long summer nights with light in the sky all the time and deep, dark, snowy winters, alone. It is boats. It is studying the Bible and believing it for the first time. It is being lonely. It is being thrilled with the absolute splendor of nature. Drinking coffee, early, by a wood stove. Having a dog. Deep snow. Skiing.
Those days were passionate, with all the thrill and pain that passion brings. And they are over now. Wonderfully, passionately, over. They are only a memory. Something to write about. So here's to Alaska, the days of my youth!
Only a fool would leave Alaska and return to the "Lower Forty-eight." Or someone who had done all that he went there to do. Or someone whom God was calling out.
"The kingdom of heaven is like a
treasure hidden in the field, which
a man found and hid; and from
joy over it he goes and sells all
that he has, and buys that field."
Matthew 13:44
treasure hidden in the field, which
a man found and hid; and from
joy over it he goes and sells all
that he has, and buys that field."
Matthew 13:44
