Aimee and I are all ready for our trip to Alaska, for ten days of hanging out, meeting Mom, visiting my haunts, and figuring out where it is exactly I came from. I’m excited to show her where I grew up, went to school, learned to drive, learned to ski, bought my first cd, got in my first car accident, and everything else in between. She said a funny thing yesterday, that it’s a little strange, finally coming to a place about which you know very little. It’s almost a little sad, that all of that unknown quality about it, all of the wildness and weirdness and general blank-ness about it in her mind will be erased and replaced by equal parts midnight sun and strip mall. I’ll do my best to show her the highlights: home in Anchorage, 4th of July in Seward, the Spit in Homer, the Parks Highway, Denali, Chugach State Park, and whatever else we can fit in. I just hope the massive cloud of smoke doesn’t obscure everything.