As our truck made its descent into the Wasilla and Palmer area from the treacherous, hairpin, snowy curves of the Matanuska Glacier region, "Clocks" by Coldplay began to play on the only radio station we'd been able to find so far. That would be the first of many songs by Coldplay, Avril Lavigne, and Nickelback (among others) that would remind me of that drive towards Anchorage.

"Home....home...where I wanted to roam," the song said. I had been looking for "home" for 43 years. Ten days after leaving Tulsa, we were so close I could almost see it. We never dreamed what the next few years would hold.

The amount of majestic beauty we had seen all along the 1,100 miles of the Alaska Highway through British Columbia and the Yukon Territory of Canada seemed enough to fill us up for a lifetime. How do you describe something that moves you so much? You just cannot do it. It is like trying to describe the day of your wedding or the birth of your children or the day you walked out of your parents' house to be on your own. Those are private moments for all of us that only we can store away for later viewing.

Even shortly after that, when I saw Wasilla and Palmer for the first time, with their eye-popping Pioneer Peak, I still couldn't believe what was stretched out before me - how huge they were and how small I felt. The Talkeetna mountains and the Chugach range's mighty stretch around the Glenn Highway through Eagle River and on to Anchorage was just nothing but jaw-dropping.

If I had only been allowed to live for 4 weeks of my life, I would've spent one getting married to Dan, one giving birth to my beautiful daughter Heather, and the other two driving the Alaska Highway.

And so I seem to be telling you the end of our journey instead of starting at the beginning. I couldn't help myself. I was so moved by it all, I just had to tell you that part first. I'm only telling you a small part of the story's end. There's lots more.

It was never really the end of anything except the end to letting other people decide our destiny. We turned deaf ears on any of the garbage we heard about Alaska. And rightly so. The mighty final frontier made liars out of all of them!!!

It all began when the end of my life came. It was like jumping off a very fast train while it's still moving. All those sad, pale faces looking at you from the windows as it screeches past you. All those faces in cubicles. The end of corporate complicity.

The end of letting other people decide how much time I got to spend with my loved ones.

The back injury I had sustained while in the Air Force began to bring many things to an end. I walked away from a corporate job that kept me in constant pain from sitting in stiff chairs for hours (they did their best to accomodate me with all kinds of chairs. I still can't sit in any chair for more than a few minutes). Then there was standing on computer room data floors for days on end with no sleep or a decent meal. I was 43. It was too much. I gave notice and walked away. That was the last time I ever sat in a cubicle like a trapped rat..

I had been dreaming about Alaska for months before. I saw a movie with Dan (my husband) set there. Glaciers, snow, wilderness. The room to find yourself. No skyscrapers, no road rage, no smog. Peace inside and out. Northern lights, twilight, 24 hour daylight.

It began with a simple movie.

The midnight sun. The breath-stealing moments of glimpsing Denali on a clear day.

It continues each season of visits to the indescribable Matanuska Glacier. To stand on the viewing platform, pinching myself mentally.

"Am I really looking at this?"

"Wow."

My eyes get misty without warning at unexpected moments. They can start with a gaze on a mountain stream. On a glimpse of the mighty Chugach, Alaska, or Kenai ranges. The smell of the air as Termination Dust proudly tops the mountains and signals the end of fall. The beginning of a season of powdery majesty.

Watching my dogs smile and gulp a large mouthful of the cleanest snow I have ever seen. They celebrate its purity with me.

The grin I feel across my face when almost every Alaskan I talk to says they'll never go back "outside" (anywhere outside of Alaska but mostly the lower 48 states). They tried to go "outside" in a fit of insanity once. Most of them never lasted away from Alaska more than a few months. They just needed to be sure this was their destiny. They're as sure as I am of my own "meant to be."

Some don't belong here. They want convenience stores and drive-by shootings and asphalt under their feet.

But then there are those who refuse to leave. They'd rather die than go back to concrete, smog, stress, and the lack of eye candy everywhere you look.

Dan got a phone call. He walked into the room and said,

"I just got a call from a company in Alaska. They want to interview me."

His face was a little white, but his eyes were smiling at me. My heart skipped about 10 beats. I had gone to sleep every night, imagining I was asleep under an Alaskan sky. With every part of myself I could muster, I could see and feel all of it. I had yet to find out that the real thing was a thousand times better than the imagery I had created from what I knew.

I've learned, several times, that if you want something bad enough you can achieve it. The first part is imagery. You see yourself there, doing what it is you wish to do. Then you keep playing it over and over in your head at night just when you're between sleep and awake. You see and feel yourself doing whatever it is.

Soon it becomes real. Sometimes it takes only a few hours for a dream to become real, but other times it can be months or years. No matter how long, it is always worth waiting for. Only reality is so much better even than what you imagined.

It took months of wanting to go to Alaska more than I could think of anything I had ever wanted so badly. Thoughts became reality.

His phone interview went well. They hired him. We started to sell and throw away literally all the junk and worthless clutter we'd collected over the years. I gave as much of memory type stuff as I could to my daughter Heather. (She lives near Tulsa)

They sent moving trucks within 2 weeks. We took 2 of our dogs (the outdoor ones) to our veterinarian and had him board them for a short while. We would send for them once we got moved into our rental house. (a realtor in Alaska had found us one in a place called Chugiak, Alaska)

The First Leg of the Trip
(The part where we thought we both might be insane)

January 8, 2003

We got so excited to leave, we left one day earlier than we planned. This did not make for a very organized trip. We stayed up almost all night that last night in our house in Tulsa, trying to get the truck stuffed with whatever we could and mopping floors and making things look "sellable."