Born and raised here in Anchorage, and with the exception of a year outside as a kid, Ive been here all my life watching the city grow up around me. So when I read Mike Dingmans column yesterday about Muldooners I kind of smiled, and it got me to thinking back. I remember being maybe 10 or 11 when the Times headline came out stating that our population was 50,000, and being pretty excited about it, feeling almost as if it legitimized us as a city, little did I know what was to come. Progress, for what its worth, and in all its different definitions, may seem unstoppable, and as I watch the big industrial mowers taking down acres of trees that have been here so much longer than me, (think Tikahtnu Commons and the Wal-Mart on Debarr) it hurts a little, but at the same time I accept it, grudgingly perhaps, as part of the city still growing. I keep in mind that we do have our sacred cows, woods that will always be, like Russian Jack and the greenbelts. I remember when Muldoon was a two lane, unpaved beyond Northern Lights all the way around Tudor to Boniface. I recall when the Totem Theater opened, state of the art, showing Star Wars, and with a game room, now its the budget matinee, and the new super theater is at the other end of the road. My brother and I used to ride our ten speeds all over this town, when there were no shoulders, and the bike trail system was just starting, and we knew (KNEW!) we didnt belong in the roadway, and it wasnt just about our safety, but courtesy and the safety of traffic as a whole. We could walk around downtown safely, we knew our neighbors and looked out for each other. Hell, I kept the front door unlocked well into the 90s, in case friends or family needed a safe place to go. As part of the We dont give a damn how they do it outside generation, I wonder a little sometimes just how outside we are becoming, and worry about our loss of frontier spirit. And yet I still see glimpses of it, there is still some small town sensibility here, people do still stop to help, the community does come together in the face of crises, and while not everyone who wants to jump up and proclaim themself Alaskan meet my criteria for it, who am I to say? I had to think long and hard about what I wanted to write, for fear of running kind of negative, and like Mike said, Im not really bitter about the changes, but I do find myself a little resentful sometimes. Yet I understand that with progress come growing pains, that there is a give and take, and its not all bad, Anchorage is still one of the most beautiful cities in the world, and the one thing that will never change, that reminded me most clearly of that, occurred to me as I was driving down C street yesterday, looking beyond the sitework for all the new development between Dimond and OMalley, and the sun, hanging January low in the southern sky played its light in shadows and brilliant color across the mountains I have spent my whole life surrounded by that my home is right here, nestled in closely beneath the Chugach Range, not my mountains, but ours, to share and to love together as a city as we continue to find our way to the future. :D
Posted on: Thu, 15 Jan 2015 17:40:22 +0000
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