Alaska is bigger than Sarah Palin

A year ago, I was fishing with friends at the glorious Tordrillo Mountain Lodge. The days seemed so simple as we waded into the shallow water of Trinity Creek, casting our fly rods for salmon and bandying about how many first descents were out there in the golden Tordrillo Mountains waiting to be skied - we figured at least 20 years worth - and we talked about how people around the country might never know this real Alaska.

Twelve days later, Sarah Palin's nomination to the Republican presidential ticket toppled the summer, and with the announcement came the uber examination of our lifestyle, our psyche, our moose burgers and white chocolate mochas. At first, the freshness of sharing was fun. Telling our stories about how we followed our arctic dreams from Outside or traced our ancestors back 50 generations was risky, but we did it anyway.

It was inevitable that the depiction of Alaska-the-state would become a subtext to Palin-the-candidate. And it did. Despite our best efforts to share the wonder, there came stiff characterizations of us as share-the-wealth socialists or worse.

But as this past year has shown, Alaska is so much more than one or two individuals can ever represent. We are a composite of sturdy people with the stamina to handle a harsh critique as easily as we are able to thrive in a harsh environment. We are capable, talented and able, whether it's skiing a glacier, inventing new ways to harness wind energy, or writing a sonnet. We move freely through many different experiences and relish absorbing knowledge about the greater world. We also are a collection of extended families that rely on each other for comfort and empowerment, and this is uniquely different from just about any other place in the country where road systems and family ties connect communities and people.

I grew up in suburban Detroit among families very different than my own, but it was the differences that made those families compelling, exotic and imprinted upon me the sweetness of diversity.

Now I'm like many Alaskans who have stitched together extended family relationships drawn from the office, the neighborhood and from those long afternoons at horse riding lessons or evenings at Junior Nordic with the kids.

We're orphaned by our own doing because we choose to live in a place as close to Tokyo as it is to New York. Without our sisters or mothers or fathers to come over for dinner or take care of the kids when a babysitter is needed, friends have become family. The first Christmas dinner I hosted after moving to Alaska was for 10 people I barely knew, but over the years we've grown to be closer than siblings. I lean on them in bad times when I need to cry or when I need advice. Their children are like my own.

This ability to create family networks, and cling together whatever the situation, is why so many Alaskans survive and thrive here. And some are glad that in a post-Palin world, Americans will forget about our quirky, distant state and return to the days when Alaska was shown as a place just off the coast of Baja on most maps.

Even though it seems the ex-governor is still honing her national image, we want to move on from the national election, the political backlash and the Palin spin that's yet to come. We want to be admired for our accomplishments as well as for our diversity.

We have a pipeline to build that will provide arctic gas to North America markets, we have children to educate, films to be made, and salmon to be sent to consumers around the world. We are an economic force, a literary wellspring, and the epicenter for the study of climate change, among so many other things.

On this anniversary of the day that changed Alaska, I know we'll need to be brave in the face of the continued national chatter about our state that's been so pervasive this past year, but I doubt that we will retreat into the darkness of winter.

Rather, we will use this opportunity, when so many are looking back on the previous election year, to move on, to cast off the stereotypes and be thankful for the majesty of the real Alaska.