A Response to ''A writer as Alaskan''

     When i read this i first thought about why he chose to come to Alaska to live and write, and came to the conclusion that most writers when they write something put their heart, soul, and somewhat the environment they are around into it. To do that they must have to come to some sort of point in their life where they can write in an environment that inspires them to do so. For this writer it is Alaska. I feel like i can connect with the writer because he shows much respect for the vast nothing ness that is Alaska as i do, and can find so much life in a place so desolate compared to the hustle a bustle of city life. It seems that he is at ease with it, and can feed off that acceptance of the land to inspire him to write his poetry.
      A different thought came to mind when he said "Place makes people. In the end it makes everything."(p 14) It make me think of how the places we grew up in shape our lives, and how other places that we go to can shape them continuously in completely different ways. So for the people that stay in one place through the coarse of their lives, are they limited to how much their life is shaped? Dose this limit them form understanding the world as a whole? In another line he says "In order for a new form of life to occupy a place , another must die."(p 9) Such is the way of life anywhere in the world i believe. A tree dies in a forest and another takes its place, a person dies and another fills the spot. Its scary to think of ourselves as replaceable. We may not be replaceable to someone close to us but looking  at the big picture we are always replaceable just like an employer firing and hiring new persons to fill the needed spot. This process must be accepted along with many other things.
      I really enjoy the fact that he does his self-discovering in the wilderness of Alaska. I myself have longed to live out in the wilderness and find my place in the world and to discover the hidden teachings of the land, because after all isn't that what we feed off of? Why not try to understand it more, learn to love and appreciate it more than we do now. "Everyman has no longer a culture, but sports and entertainment. Money and power are the chief motives in American life, not decency, and justice, nor humanistic values generally."(p 18) From what i have seen of American views this is very true, an its likely to become worse. Where dose this craze for money and power come from? How did American life  take on these characteristics? Could it be that people haven't really gotten in touch with themselves, and need to do so by going out into the wilderness to live to see the way that Americans live now is a disgrace to our environment. Are we going to eventually suck dry our planet of its beauty and leave behind a cataclysm of buildings and waste masking the wonderful wilderness in which we can truly discover ourselves in?
    The writer realizes many interesting things during his stay in Alaska and its most of all touching to know that a place could have given him so much insight to life, and an idea on how a truly great pice of literature can be created by experiencing The Northern  as he has. There are so many was to elaborate on  his essay that i could go on forever, but i think that what i have written so far will suffice. :)