TALK ABOUT BEING “BIG!”
We have all been well-schooled concerning about the the size of the State of Texas really is as a state, then , along came Alaska, and Texas seemed puny.
An metaphorical story has a young Texan couple deciding whom should tell Junior the facts of life. Finally, the father agreed: “Okay, you tell him all about the birds and the bees, and I’ll tell him about Alaska!”
But many citizens of the lower forty-eight, are woefully ignorant of the dimensions of the State of Alaska. It makes Texas seem puny.
If you could pickup the entire chunk of real-estate we call Alaska . Break it away from Canada in a straight line, and place it over a comparably-sized map of the United States and your will see some convincing evidence of it's large size.
Someone who has done that sort of thing tells me that if you place the southern end of the the map of Alaska over the edge of Florida on the map you will find a chunk of it goes up into Canada above the Great Lakes area and the west end extends to within a few miles of Santa Barbara, California.
Alaska has varied, uneven coastline dotted with an uncounted number of islands and it is bounded by three distinct bodies of water.
Three coasts? There’s another informational trap awaiting us. If you were a contestant on a TV quiz show you might well be asked: “What bodies of water border the State of Alaska?” Most of us would say “Pacific Ocean” and we would be one-third right. Everything above the long string of the Aleutian Islands is the Bering Sea and along the north coast is the Arctic Ocean. Two oceans and one ocean-sized sea.
The west end of the State of Alaska is the island of Attu ,scene of one of the bloodiest battles of World War II. Today the total population consists of twenty-four weather station personnel on assignment to the lonely outpost. Attu is said to have been the last place in the world to enter the 2lst Century. Alaska spans six time zones. It would be seven if someone had not decided to make a little box around Attu to keep it in the same time zone with others nearby.
Anyway you might look at it – Alaska is big.
A.L.M. February 25. 2004 [c415wds]
