*****Censored in the Interest of National Security*****

Howdy. This morning finds me in Skagway. I have today and tomorrow off so I’m en route to Whitehorse to do some mountain biking and see some more of the beautiful Yukon Territory. It is 8:15 a.m. and I’ve been awake since 10:30 yesterday morning. The fact that I needed to catch a 5:30 a.m. mail flight in order to catch the 8:30 bus to Canada in no way prevented me from faxing resumes until almost two this morning. I sent nine of them last night, all to operators in the glorious state of Alaska. Come to find out, there are companies up here who will pay you decent money to fly and give you more than one day off per week to enjoy all the recreational opportunities Alaska has to offer. I can’t wait to see if I get any responses.

After unleashing the Hezbollah-esque barrage of resumes, I figured I might as well do laundry and watch reruns of “Knight Rider” on the Sci-Fi Channel until my ride showed up at five. I’d forgotten what passed for acting by David Hasselhoff and how sassy that talking wonder car could be. In one episode, DH reunited with his lost-love-turned-pop-diva. You see, her band mate had been offed by some drug smuggling producers who were hiding single frames of encrypted binary code in music videos to communicate pick-up locations. So Hasselhoff filled in for the dead partner in order to get “under cover” and solve the case. How could I change the channel? The musical interludes and pleather unitards in that episode do a lot to explain DH’s popularity among Eastern Europeans.

The nostalgic thrill kept me going as I helped David (the pilot, not the bad actor) load rain-soaked mail into one of our Cherokee Sixes at 5:30 this morning. I often think of my mom’s dad when I’m loading the mail. He worked on B-29’s during World War II after which he was a rural letter carrier for the Post Office. He also raised Charolais Beef, four children, twelve grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.

The man created a loving empire.

Although it sometimes feels almost like a tribute to him when I’m working with the mail, carrying passengers around here can be pretty touching too. I love seeing joyful reunions of long separated family members. Sometimes I wonder if the whole village isn’t at the airport. I wonder if every member of the community didn’t stop mending fishing nets, eating re-heated McDonald’s cheeseburgers, and drinking beer to welcome one of it’s prodigal children back from the outside world; to welcome them back home.

I also witness many tearful goodbyes. One small girl sobbed as she got a goodbye hug from her drug addicted mother and cried all the way to Juneau as her grandfather took her towards a better home.

Fairly regularly, I see families mourn as their young head out to find whatever they’re looking for that they haven’t found in the village.

And then there are the tourists from places like Colorado Springs, Baltimore, and Tokyo. I often find myself smiling broadly after dropping off awestruck Kansans who (like me) had never seen a real waterfall before coming here. They never fail to rekindle my enthusiasm and respect for the beauty of this place.

And this may be horrible, but Japanese people crack me up. One time as I was getting ready to leave Gustavus in the rain, I started drying my sunglasses on my sweater when a member of a Japanese tour group stopped me, took my sunglasses and fastidiously dried them with a towel he happened to have in his lap. Then he bowed his head and offered them back to me, holding them delicately in both hands.

I felt like a giant furry Disney character after that flight when all of my passengers wanted an individual picture of themselves with their “Capeetaan.”

As much fun as I’m having, the fact remains that this isn’t a company I see myself working for in the long term. Last week, froth formed in the 87 year old founder’s mouth as he shouted, “THAT’S THE LAST STRAW!!! WE’RE NEVER GOING TO MAKE IT NOW!!” He was incensed that none of the pilots would go with him to test fly an airplane that had just made a precautionary landing due to engine shenanigans. It turned out that the fuel pump was failing.

I’m really hoping that the next move keeps me in Alaska, though. I’ll never forget sitting with my grandfather as he lay dying from congestive heart failure. In a morphine-induced lucid dream sort of state, he would pull imagined letters out the sheets of his hospital bed and sort them into the ethereal mail slots above his tray table. The life I’ve found could conceivably prevent me from building an empire. I get a feeling sometimes though, as I’m chasing super-luminous rainbows or hovering in the infinite reflection of mossy green mountains and incendiary sky in a calm sea. I find myself hoping that if I’m ever in a state such as he was in, to return to moments such as these.