What’s happening to my state?
ABOARD THE MV MATANUSKA, on a 1,000-mile journey up the rainforest coast from Washington, a cross section of modern-day Alaska’s citizenry relaxed to a gentle January swell—old salts in halibut jackets bound for port towns; rotund men goat-t’d up, ball caps blazing with logos of off-road-vehicle brands; young hippies, all dreadlocks and skirts-over-pants, moving North to the Future; a grandma and grandpa duo going home to Ketchikan from Seattle, where they’d bought a monster truck; feds in their civvies (glasses, fleece, Xtra-Tuffs); pro greenies on their way to Juneau to bash their heads against the wall of the Legislature; a crazy guy in duct tape-patched Carhartts and a beret, pacing on deck for hours; a teenage girl in a t-shirt that pronounces, “I am a hardcore Christian.”
