‘Purely Alaska' is purely an enjoyable read

When you say you live in a rural area, most people -- most non-Alaskans -- think farms, small towns, maybe a bit off the beaten path, but not too far. Not these days.

However, when Alaskans say they live rural, they usually mean "out in the Bush." Far from civilization and all its

comforts -- electricity, running water, grocery stores, corner 7-11s, even gas stations. Rural Alaska is another country entirely.

For many years, Susan Andrews and John Creed have lived in this other country, teaching journalism and humanities at the University of Alaska Fairbanks' Chukchi College in Kotzebue. Many of their students they never really meet, as they explain in their Introduction, because thanks to today's marvels of technology, their classroom spans from Kotzebue to Southeast to Bethel to the Aleutian Chain. Those students who aren't served by technology rely on good, old-fashioned U.S. Postal Service mail.

Purely Alaska: Authentic Voices from the Far North is a follow-up to Andrews and Creed's earlier anthology, Authentic Alaska: Voices of its Native Writers. That book, published in 1998, was a phenomenal success. So they decided to try it again, this time concentrating not just on Native writers, but opening it up to anyone who has lived in the Bush, which attracts many non-Natives looking for a different lifestyle.

"These stories come from those who know rural Alaska best: the people who live there," the editors write in the Introduction. They are "... regular people meeting life's everyday challenges while experiencing the same struggles, joys, and idiosyncrasies that humans face everywhere. ... All are set in this vast chunk of remote North America called rural Alaska, where caribou, moose and bears far outnumber the people."

What makes their stories important, the Introduction continues, is that the way of life they are putting to paper is one that has already changed rapidly in just a few decades. Alaska's first State Writer Laureate, Richard K. Nelson, says, "These writers are putting down in writing a way of life that will not exist 50 years from now. Alaska is changing rapidly, and this literature ... is going to be a treasure for future generations of Alaskans."

The book is broken into several sections: Survival, Growing Up in Rural Alaska, Generations, Recreation and Culture. Each offers several glimpses of life in this different country from varied perspectives: old and young, Native and non-, willing and unwilling. There are so many gems in this field it's hard to pick out only a few to illustrate. All the stories are filled with passion, awe, fear, grace, whimsy, fascination, contemplation, satisfaction, longing and wonder.

The most powerful story by far is the last offering in the Survival section. "The Long Road to Recovery," by Burton W. Havilland Jr., is a raw, gripping account of his descent into alcoholism and drug abuse, and the even longer road back from it. It is an honest, troubling read. Burton is an Inupiaq from Kotzebue who grew up on the cusp of the changes in rural Alaska.

He starts the story in a way that automatically grips you and leaves you wanting to know more: "I first drank alcohol when I was five."

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Accidentally, to be sure. But it is from small such accidents as these that real trouble can grow. And grow trouble did. "Alcohol seemed a normal part of growing up," he writes. He speaks of the usual delights of a small boy: sparkling Christmas trees, birthdays, other holidays that excited and delighted him. And yet, the trouble is there, as he writes: "A common thread wove itself through all our years growing up, though, and that thread was alcohol."