Way back in the day, my family took a road trip up there; we took the ’88 Ford Club Wagon all the way, Coleman camping trailer in tow. Ah, good times.

Sadly, there’s not much I clearly remember from the trip: one or two particular vistas, a very cold night, a campground-meandering moose, so on and so forth. I only remember a few things well–most of all, the beauty.

I’m sure that if I were a better writer, I could put it into vivid prose, but all I can really say is that the beauty of Alaska is different (on the safe assumption it hasn’t changed too much since then).

There was a peculiar quality the beauty had–a sort of stillness.

It was more than audible noise though–I’ve been to beautiful places,  far enough from civilization to be just as quiet as the places we visited in Alaska. It may well be my long term memory embellishing things, but I swear there was some quality of the beauty itself, this tranquility of sorts.

Now, zip forward a few years (ten, twelve, maybe more?).

By it’s nature, rural education is a risky proposition; there are so many barriers to overcome. I guess I was always aware of that to some level or another, but I never really thought about it. Than again, I never really thought about education too much till a few years ago.

Since I’ve started thinking about education (I don’t know if that happened before or after I decided to go into education–chicken or egg, if you will), I’ve been thinking about rural education. Questions began to drift into a perspective of sorts. Why, why educate kids in the middle of nowhere–will it really mean anything for them, in the long run? Should they be pushed to “escape”, get away from the sticks and “make something” of themselves? What does it really mean for a teenager in an isolated, rural area, to make something of their life?

Whenever I think of rural, I think of a few places: Alaska and Montana come to mind first. “Alaska is what America was.” It’s so pristine and beautiful–so isolated. It also consistently makes the first spot in teenage suicide rates.

So much beauty and peace, and so much emptiness and need.

Disclaimer

If I were to be moving there, I definitely would say so. I’m not moving there..yet. One never knows where all the road ahead leads.