TWENTY-FIVE

Young Sarah (the little one) watches her Dad
teach them how to skin a seal.

On p. 25 of Going Rogue Sarah makes a number of observations about the conditions under which Alaskans got news in the 70's. She remarks that her family did not often watch television, and even when they did, "television shows were still tape-delayed in Alaska by as much as a week, and a lot of news was old news by the time it filtered up north."

This was even more the case when an Alaskan went on hunting/hiking treks in the wild country of the Great Land.

In this context, Sarah relates on p. 25 a fascinating and, I think, very instructive tale about her dad in the year 1974. Sarah was ten years old; it was the year of Watergate and of the resignation of President Richard Nixon.

She writes:

"That year [1974], when I was ten, we traveled back down to Skagway for a visit...During our visit, Mom and Dad took some friends mountain-goat hunting and trekking. Sometimes Dad guided in the summers and would take groups of travelers on the Chilkoot Trail, the same route used during the Klondike Gold Rush. One summer it was a Florida businessman named Tad Duke and a group of his friends. (Many of those people started out as tourists and wound up as lifelong Heath family friends; Tad Duke was one who ended up helping me thirty years later on the campaign trail.)

"Our family loved that rugged Chilkoot hike, and Dad was happy to be out on the trail again that summer. I distinctly remember my folks returning after a week away and walking into the Moores' [family friends in Skagway] big kitchen. They hadn't had access to television or newspapers for days.

" 'Well, who's our president?' Dad asked.

"Omigosh, that's right, I thought. He doesn't even know that Richard Nixon resigned. America has a new president!"

I believe that Sarah is subtly imparting to us some profound wisdom in these deceptively simple words!

Chuck Heath would sometimes withdraw from "civilization" and from the "news" for a little while. Omigosh, as she says, he did not even know about the Nixon resignation!!

But what, what is the sort of thing that her dad did accomplish on these treks of his?

Think of Tad Duke, a man from Florida, a place about as far away from Alaska as you can get in the lower forty-eight...and what a difference in climate!! What did Mr. Heath accomplish? He forged such powerful and lasting bonds of friendship with the man that THIRTY YEARS LATER Mr. Duke helped Sarah on the campaign trail. Just think of the power of personality of Sarah's wonderful, remarkable dad that he could form and join golden links of amity and friendship so lasting and enduring that, DECADES later, his daughter was helped in a political campaign!

What might we learn from this?

Yes, there is nothing wrong with our striving to keep abreast of current events. Now, with twenty-four/seven cable news coverage, with the internet, with blogs ;-), there is access to news that is more ready and at hand today than at any time in human history...and, again, it is certainly important for citizen warriors, who are fighting for the survival of their Republic, to be aware of what is going on in the nation and in the world.

And yet...

A week away from the news; sweet, lasting fruits thrice-ten decades later...

Might it not be wise sometimes to withdraw and retreat for a little while from the hustle and huffing and puffing of the news and of daily affairs, and retreat on a "trek"? It does not necessarily have to be a physical trek; it can be an intellectual or a spiritual one (I think Mr. Heath's retreats were a combination of physical, intellectual, and spiritual journeys!)

Who among us can conceive of what the majestic and decades- even centuries-enduring results of a trek and retreat of prayer might be, a trek and retreat of sacrifice, a trek and retreat of contemplation? Tad Duke was "there" for Sarah thirty years, almost a third of a century, after he spent a few days in the company of her dad in the wilds of Alaska.

Can I even begin to conceive of the power of a few days of "retreat" spent in prayer? Maybe I will be helping, for example, a youngster who, say thirty or forty years from now, will in turn be assisting President Piper Palin in consolidating the great gains of the first Palin Revolution, that of her illustrious mom!!

Was it Tennyson (?) who said, "More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of"?

Ah, beautiful and fair and terrible (in the good sense of the term!) Land and Realm of the North Country!!

Ah, beautiful and fair and terrible Land and Realm where the human spirit touches the face of God!!!

Let us hearken to the Alaskan wisdom of Sarah and of her wonderful family!!!

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