What Am I Doing Here

I have arrived in Skagway, Alaska. If I'd arrived here in the winter of 1898, when this place was a boomtown and the gateway to the Klondike gold fields, I'd have had to be carrying over a ton of supplies, enough to get me the rest of the way north and last me through a year.

But I brought one box of books, an electric bass, an upright bass, and two computers. Whereas the stampeders would have been carrying pounds of bacon and onions, I had a box of Poptarts.

Times change.

This is a small, small town, in a very beautiful place. The mountains are covered with snow, but the temperature is in the nice, low 30s. The grocery store is roughly the size of my house in Arizona, and prices are about double what you really want to think about paying. It's quite strange to drive around a corner and see train cars for the White Pass and Yukon Route Railway, but it's not only what got the miners up the pass, it's what has revitalized this place.

Right now, there are probably no more than five or six cars moving at any time. In summer, there will be a million tourists, crammed onto nine blocks of one street.

Right now, it's a normal Alaska town--when I stopped at the library last night and the librarian told me the grocery store was closed, she offered me her own dinner, just so I wouldn't have to go to bed hungry.

But I had my box of Pop Tarts, so I was okay.

There's today's lesson from Skagway. No matter what year, bring food.