How did I end up analyzing Alaskan men?

I didn't expect to be writing about men so much. MAP happened because I followed that old adage and wrote about what I knew. (It's also because I spent a couple of years writing about it for college in a dry academic way and wanted to use all that research in a more lyrical way.) But now, what I'm trying to do now, is more.....planned. It's me deciding I really want to write about Alaska because there is more I want to know and more I want to say. What's interesting is that most of the telling is about men - men who fly in mountain passes, men who mapped mountain passes, men who climb mountains, men who land aircraft on mountains and, well, lots of men.

I blame the compulsion to unravel even more myths about Alaskan manhood on ridiculous bits of hyperbole like this. (If you follow the link it's another reality show, this time about a place that we flew into every damn day- at 7:30AM with the priority mail. Hell, they had mail in their mailboxes before we did in Fairbanks. But oh no - "People struggle to find food and heat; battle life-threatening predators just to survive.") (It almost hurts just to cut and paste that crap.)

I don't know if I can write about Alaska without exhausting my laptop's supply of exclamation points. I keep wanting to use all caps and scream "THIS IS HOW IT REALLY IS!!!!" But no one wants to read that book. (I understand why, really I do.)

But I digress.

In researching about climbing and flying, I kept coming back to the same thing over and over again - not the acts themselves but the men who did them. And I don't think they were perfect or even exemplary. The myths about them - or the ideal of them - are what really intrigues me. We just love myths, don't we? We can't resist them. (I'm kind of having a love affair with Joseph Campbell right now.)

So, yeah, I'm writing about men. Now if I can just convince my husband it's not all about him then this book would go a lot easier....