desert sands

Wow.

Wow.

This has been a crazy trip. I don't want to upload all of my hundreds - yes, hundreds - of photos because leoreai still lives in the bush where they charge for internet per gigabyte (seriously), but this has been an awesome, crazy trip - where the hell else can you stand at a half-frozen lake with an ice shelf on one end and floating icebergs on the other below the Portage glacier - only an hour away from a 5-star dinner of fresh Alaska salmon (and the most lovely peanut butter pie)?  Seriously, I had the best, freshest, most skillfully-prepared salmon of my life tonight, and desert was amazing... both leoreai and I were staring at the plate going "zomg this is awesome but we can't eat anymore."

Awesome.

I leave state on Monday night :(. But we're already talking about what we could do if I can come back next summer - taking the Alaska Railroad up from Kenai to Talkeetna or Fairbanks, driving up to Fairbanks and maybe even Tok (where I have family, albeit crazy family), going up to North Pole and seeing the far northern end of the United States (Alaska goes much further north but only by aircraft or extremely difficult haul road).  

Some of the awesome things I've seen so far (A small list, and not always the things you think of when you think of Alaska):

Merrill Field: The largest and most crowded tarmac full of general aviation aircraft that I've ever seen, because aviation is the lifeblood of Alaska, given how inadequate the roads are for a state larger then many nations (the 17th largest country in the world, if an independent nation).
Talkeetna: Who in the fuck would have expected a San Francisco-style hippie encampment on the banks of the Susitna River, below Denali?  I mean, really?  A San Francisco-style hippie encampment with an awesome arts community and really good food?
Hatcher Pass: It snowed in June.  It snowed.  In June.
Knik Arm: Where a tsunami swept a tugboat a mile inland - and they left it there.
Portage Glacier: A glacier whose snowmelt feeds innumerable lakes, lakes that are still frozen after the Summer Solstice, still covered in an ice shelf, with icebergs dotting the lakes.
The Midnight Sun: Yes, you can actually read a book by the light of the sun at midnight in Anchorage.  It's kind of intense.

So, yeah.  Fuck Sarah Palin, Alaska rocks.

I know that phrase gets abused, but it's never been more apt than this week. I have a huge post going on my mac right now about the Iranian election and the ongoing protests, but for now, I'll say this - nearly every moment that I haven't spent studying, I've spent in a fervent search for any information whatsoever about the situation in Iran. Some of the stories I've heard there have, on more than one occasion, moved me to tears - people much younger than me showing more bravery than I'll ever muster in a lifetime, millions of people marching down Vali Asr Avenue and overwhelming Hafte-e-Tir Square despite the obvious and immediate risk of being shot, beaten or whipped in the street by Iranian police, various milita or the Revolutionary Guard. What's going on over there is... astounding. Except astounding is really of inadequate scope. I don't think the English language has an appropriate word for it. Majestic might fit. Yeah, majestic is close enough.

I'll be posting a lengthier post tomorrow (if I'm awake tomorrow, after staying up two hours later than I should've), but I urge anyone reading this to try to go over to the New York Times or the BBC, read about what's going on, educate yourself about the election and the aftermath, and do something, anything. It's a little hard to go protest from the West Coast, but do *anything* - change your e-mail signature, change your LJ icon or facebook picture, anything that shows support or solidarity and, more importantly, makes the Western media outlets realize that the risks they are going to in order to report this story are worth it, that we care, that the West isn't going to stop paying attention once the Basij and Ansar Hizb'allah chases enough journalists out of Tehran. (and I will say - Western media that continues to operate in Iran does so knowing that they are risking serious injury, lengthy imprisonment, or death.) If you want to specifically support the protests, laerwen has information about the protests as well as instructions to set your twitter profile location to "Tehran" and timezone to GMT+3:30 in order to frustrate attempts by Iranian authorities to identify and arrest organizers of the protests.