Bagging Rogue: A Teenage Life

Keeping sane in Sangin: life and death in Afghanistan's most perilous military posting

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But then, as now, our wildlife inspired excitement, and even today we'll still pull over ro look, and take a picture. My parents instilled in me that appreciation; we were not ro take for granted the wondet of God's creation. To this day, we still call each other even in the middle of the night ro reporr an awe-inspiring aurora borealis display. We never tire of the dazzling Norrhern Lights, shimmering like the hem of Heaven.

So it's not uncommon ro get a midnight call from' friends or family: Look out the window! Construction of the eight-hundted-mile-long Trans-Alaska Pipeline was under way. High-paying pipeline jobs brought 'thousands of new workers ro the state. It was a new gold rush that sent truckloads of cash into the state's economy.

But he loved teaching and he loved his students, so he chose making a difference in kids' lives oV,er making money, The employment boom and energy production were the upside of development. The downside was the concurrent spike in social problems. Without the law enforcement resources to keep things in check, prostitution, gambling, and illegal drugs proliferated in the growing population, especially in pipeline towns like Fairbanks. The boom also stressed local infrasttucture, including schools and health care facilities.

Meanwhile, some Alaska Native leaders knew they must aggressively protect the natural resources to which they were spiritually and physically connected. Thankfully, the young state's founding fathers and mothers ensured that the state Constitution contained specific language guaranteeing equal rights and protections to all Alaskans, and empowered the First People's participation in the state's economic and political life. The legislation would ultimately secure laod and money to establish Native corporations, and ensure their inclusion in future resource developments that came from their aboriginal lands.

She sought further spiritual fulfillment in addition to the liturgical traditions of the Catholic Church. In Wasilla, she volunteered as a secretary at the Presbyterian church on weekends and traveled to northern Alaska Eskimo villages on mission trips. Back in Wasilla, the most "alive" congregation was our local Assembly of God, so my siblings and I attended Sunday School there and enjoyed attending the youth group with our friends. There weren'r many churches in our small town, and though my family would eventually worship at a nondenominational Bible church, a lot of kids joined the youth group because it did a great job with activities that were what people used to caii "good, clean fun.

Looking around at the incredible creation that is Alaska-the majestic peaks and midnight sun, the wild waters and teeming wildlifeI could practically see and hear and feel God's spirit reflected in everything in nature. I reasoned that if God knew what He was doing in this magnificent creation, how much more did He know about me? If He is powerful and wise enough to make all this and thought also to create a speck like me, there surely must be a plan, and He'd know more than I did about my future and my purpose. I made the conscious decision that summer to put my life in my Creator's hands and trust Him as I sought my life's path.

I got into the habit of reading Scripture before I got out of bed every morning and making sure it was the last thing I did at night. Ever the pragmatist, I also tested God's promises. For example, God says in Scripture, "'Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Later, Todd and I saw that there were many other ways to share our blessings with others, like buying a rank of gas for a bush pilot so he could fly supplies to a remote village. Not only was doing those things personally tewarding, but God continually ptoved His promises true, blessing our giving with giving of His own.

Dad wasn't into organized religion so much, and he was usually busy Sunday mornings getting ready for our afternoon ski trips Ot hunts or hikes; he said it was in the great outdoors that he "did church. And Mom never let us get by with any weak excuses. Looking back, I'm grateful to them for "forcing me" to go. Withour that foundation of faith, we would never have been able to get thtough some of the tests and trials that have come our way. One such test came when I was in elementary school.

The telephone rang during dinner. Then he turned away and stood stock-still, gazing silently out the big picture. Looking at him, I was pretty sure he'd just received some bad news. Dad's best ftiend, Dr.

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Curt Menard, had been working with his sao, Curtis Jr. Curt, a dentist who had moved up from Michigan, was, like so many Alaskans, also a private pilot. He wanted ro increase the visibility of the power line so that he could land his Citabria safely at home. While Curtis was holding the bottom rung of the metal ladder and Doc was standing on the top step slinging the flagging over the wire, the tip of his finger brushed the line.

When the wire finally let him go, Doc plunged to the ground. Medical workers said later that the impact probably started his heart again and saved his life. Miraculously, Curtis had let go of the ladder a split second before the accident and was physically unharmed, When Dad took the phone call, he found out that physicians had to amputate Doc's right arm. I'll neVer furget the stricken look on Dad's face. I could see that he was crying. I had never seen him cry before.

Until then, I remember our family life being pretty idyllic. No deaths among close family. After Doc lost his arm, Mom and Dad explained to us that every family goes through struggles and times of testing. That scared me at first. But then she comforted me, saying, "Maybe our challenge will be to care for other families who do. That everyone has a struggle and that when you don't, you comfort and support those who do. Plato said it well: Doc fought his battle bravely. He retrained himself to be a left-handed, one-armed dentist. His staff would be his right arm, he said.

My dad volunteered to be one of his first patients. Doc went on to serve as our borough mayor and in our legislatute. For nearly four decades our two families' lives intettwined like flourishing vines, so much so that Curtis Jr. Going Rogue 5 In the Heath home, vety little time was spent watching the "boob tube;' as my folks called it. Even in the '70s, television shows were still tape-delayed in Alaska by as much as a week, and a lot of news was old news by the time it filtered up north. It was sometimes easy to fall Out of the news loop, but still, in , I noticed that the newspapets kept running front-page stoties on what they wete calling Watetgate.

Teens can apply for C2 deer hunt

News broadcasts kept tepeating the same theme: President Richard Nixon was in ttouble. That year, when I was ten, we traveled back down to Skagway for a visit. Duting out visit, Mom and Dad took some ftiends mountain-goat hunting and trekking. Sometimes Dad guided in the summets and would take groups of travelers on the Chilkoot Trail, the same route used during the Klondike Gold Rush.

One summer it was a Flotida businessman named Tad Duke and a group of his friends. Many of those people started out as toutists and wound up as lifelong Heath family friends; Tad Duke was one who ended up helping me thirty years later on the campaign trail. Our family loved that rugged Chilkoot hike, and Dad was happy to be out on the trail again that summer. I distinctly remember my folks returning after a week away and walking into the Moores' big kitchen.

They hadn't had access to television or newspapers for days. Omigosh, that's right, I thought. He doesn't even know that Richard Nixon resigned. Almrica has a new president! I had been keeping track and was fascinated with the civics. It amazed me that the whole countty seemed riveted, unified by watching the events unfuld.

It was the fitst time since the moon landing that r d seen that, so I knew this Watetgate thing had ro be big. When Gerald Ford took ovet, I knew who he was because I temembered teading about him and seeing a pictute in a scholastic magazine. He'd been Ametica's vice ptesident then, sitting parade-style atop the backseat of a convertible, waving at the ctowd.

Now he was our president! Looking back, it seemS significant that many of my clearest childhood memoties involve politics and current events. I don't remember my ten-year-old friends being especially interested in who the president was, but to me it was a pretty big deal. We finally got a TV at home, but Dad was clever with his limitations on it. He and his Idaho buddy Ray Carter, by then a fellow Wasilla teacher, built an unheated, gravel-floored garage attached to our house.

On top of the sttuctute they built what they called a family room, uninsuIated and unfurnished, with only a woodstove to heat it. It was rarely wotth chopping and hauling extra fitewood, stoking the flames, and waiting hours for the ftozen room to heat up enough to enjoy watching anything-a dynamic that Dad was well aware of when he put the TV out there. But on Friday nights we sometimes braved thirty-below temperatures to watch The Brady Bunch, huddling together in down sleeping bags, so cold that when Greg, Marcia, and the gang finally solved the family problem of the week, we foughr over who would have to venture out to change the channel.

On Sundays, it was The Lawrence We! In our teen years, if we stayed awake long enough, we'd sneak upstairs and watch Saturday Night Live. Having grown up in a house where "butt" was a bad wotd and we had to say "bottom;' we assumed we had to sneak. My folks were smart: Lewis, I would put down one book just long enough to pick up another.

The library on Main Street was one of my summer hideaways. I wandered through the stacks, thumbing through the smallish collection as though it were a secret treasure. One of my dad's buddies said that he never stopped by the Heaths' house when we didn't have our noses in a book or one of the magazines we subscribed to, including National Geographic, Sports Illustrated, or Ranger Rick, The s also ushered in the running craze across America, and my family was hooked.

Mom and Dad had their friends training for marathons even on subzero winter days, and in the summettime, we ran together in the sunlit nights. On weekends, we squeezed in 10k family fun runs. My parents and sistet Heather became decent marathoners. Mom, who was not at all athletic growing up, won her age group in the 26,2-mile Mayor's Midnight Sun Marathon, a testament to how Alaska can change a person.

At the time, running with my family was just a fun and expected thing to do, but it became a lifelong passion for me. For one thing, you don't have to be particularly coordinated or talented to do it. Eventually, though, I realized that the road, and especially marathon training, holds invaluable life lessons. That to reach your goal you have to put in the tough, drudging miles.

That the best rewards often lie on the other side of pain. And that when it seems you can't take another step forward, there is a hidden reservoir of strength you can draw on to endure and finish well. We all have opportunities to tap it. A couple of decades and four kids later, I finally reached my goal of running a sub-four-hour marathon. By a few seconds. When I finished that hellish exercise, I considered it one of my greatest accomplishments because it just hurt so bad.

Every year in school I ran for something in student government-vice president, treasurer, something. One year, I served as one of the student representatives for the Mat-Su school board. Our rival school, Palmer High, sent a representative who was the undisputed queen of the Mat-Su Valley, a dazzling and brainy cheerleader, Kristan Cole, who would play an important role in my future.

We were all expected to participate in most everything offered in our hometown: Ofcourse we'd take foreignlanguage courses and join the National Honor Society. And we went from sporr ro sport to sport.

In the mud with Geoffrey Household’s Rogue Male

One part of athletics I really appreciated was our local chapter of Fellowship of Christian Athletes, which I co-captained under the leadership of the Wasilla Warriors' wrestling coach, Mr. At least sixry of us met in public school classrooms for Bible study and inspirarional exchanges that morivared us to focus on hard work and excellence.

In those days, ACiD activists had not yet convinced young people that they were supposed to feel offended by other people's free exercise of religion. As an athlete who advanced more on tenacity than talent, I wanted sports to be my future but was realistic enough to know I wouldn't always be a player. That's why with my passion for both sports and the written word, becoming a sports reporter seemed like a natural fit.

There were few women in the field, but. Lesley Visser had already sharrered rhe ceiling, breaking inro rhe profession when the rules of the press box were plainly printed on media credentials: I set out to follow that path, even memorializing in my high school yearbook my goal of someday working in the broadcast booth with Howard Cosell. Granted, conventional wisdom at the time was that sports reporting was a man's world, but in my family, gender was never allowed ro be an issue.

My parents gave us equal opportuniry and expectations. We were all expected to work, build, chop, hunt, fish, and fight equally. I'm a product of Title IX and am proud that it Was Alaska's own Senator Ted Stevens who helped usher through the federal legislation in to ensure girls would have the right to the same education and athletic opportunities as boys.

I was a direct beneficiary of the equal rights efforts that had begun gaining traction only the decade before. Later, my own daughters would benefit, participating in sports like hockey, wrestling, and football, which had been closed to girls for decades. I didn't subscribe to all tbe radical mantras of that early feminist era, bur reasoned arguments for equal opportunity definitely resonated with me.

It was a matter not of ideology but of simple fairness. Standing on the shoulders of women who had won hardfought battles for things like equal pay and equal access, I grew up knowing I could be anything I wanted to be. Years later I came across a book by fellow Alaskan and former basketball rival from Fairbanks Jessica Gavora called Tilting the Playing Field, about the liberating effect of Title IX on women's sports, and I agreed with a lot of what she wrote: SARAH PALIN depicts women as passive victims rather rhan the makers of rheir own destinies, and overlooks our individuality in favor of a collective political identity that many of us lind restrictive.

Jessica and I are from the same era and have the same Alaska spirit, so it's no surprise that we consider ourselves more liberated rhan some women's rights groups would have us believe we are. Dad coached many of our teams, Mom was an assistant running coach, and they expected us all to participate and work hard, no matter what our talent. We lived by the creed thar passion is 'what counts. Our parents were as proud of us when we won litrle awards, like the Presidential Physical Fitness patch, as when we won bigger ones, like the time I was named MVP of our high school cross-country team.

My siblings all won many more sports awards than I, as I wasn't equipped with anything close to their natural talent. But I once overheard Dad say to another coach that he'd never had an athlete work harder, Overhearing those words was one of the most powerful experiences of my life. Maybe God didn't give me natural athleticism-other athleres could run faster, jump higher, and hit the basket more often-but I loved competition.

I loved pushing myself and even relished pushing through pain to reach a goal. I realized rhat my gift was determination and resolve, and I have relied on it ever since. Because Dad was our coach, thete was extra scrutiny and pressure. It seemed to me that he went out of his way to dispel any perceived nepotism. Going Rogue forting arm around the shoulder but would give me the proverbial slug in the arm and rell me to "work harder. There were practical benefits of having Dad coach, though.

He knew how much I disliked playing in the pep band after a rough basketball game, but it was required of all band students that we play for the boys' games following ours, so Dad would tape my fingers and I'd explain ro the conducror that I needed to be excused yer again from the flute section: One night at the dinner table, Dad noticed some ink marks on my hand. I quickly put my hand under the table.

You can't have both. Some might see rhat as the wrong way ro set parameters. But for me, it was fine to have these high expectations made clear. Just because Dad steered me away from an early crush didn't mean he couldn't appreciate that I had a softer side. Early one morning when I was a teenager, he and I went hunting before school.

Killing rwo birds wirh one srone, he could fill our freezer plus bring in specimens ro dissect for his srudents. But when he saw me wrinkle my nose and shake my head slightly, he set them aside. He realized that even though he had raised me to be a solid hunting buddy, I had my limits. My sister and I picked strawberries in the mud and mosquitoes at Dearborn's local farm for five cents a flat.

We inventoried groceries on dusty shelves at the local store. We swept parking lots to raise money for our next softball tournament and raked leaves to make money for trips to basketball camps and track competitions in Texas. We did not think to ask our parents to pay our way. I was proud to be able to buy my own running shoes and sports equipment. I took pride in my work, and my parents took pride in my working.

The expectation was that we would all go to college and pay our own way, no questions asked. It was in softball that Coach Reid Smith taught me another lesson that served me well for years. He told one of out tookie outfielders, who was almost as weak a playet as I was, to quit jumping around and acting all gleeful when she successfully caught a fly ball. In high school, I played basketball, my name next to number 22 on the varsity toster all four years.

I mainly rode the bench during close games, until my senior year, because I played point guard behind a much stronger player, my sister Heather. Our team was made up of a group of best girlfriends, like Kim "Tilly" Ketchum and Karen Bush, who shared everything, including our faith.

Tilly taught me to drive her sister's VW stick shift on the way to practices, and she and our other girlfriend, Adele Morgan, were my partners in shop class, which we took to avoid home ec.

We were the Cinderella team my sophomore and junior years, having fallen short in hard-fought state championship games in back-to-back years. I loved those guys a lot, but I looked at them all like brothers. I had just about given up hope that I would ever meet a guy I could really like as more than just a buddy, Then a new kid came to town.

In late August , my dad drove fO Wasilla High to get his classroom ready for the start of the school year. That night at dinner, he had news to share. I watched him practice for a while. I can tell you right now, he's the best basketball player Wasilla's ever had. A week later, between our pickup basketball scrimmages in the Warrior gym, I finally met rhis mystery guy.

When I saw him, my world turned upside down. Handsome and independent, he was part Yupik Eskimo and had moved to Wasilla from Dillingham, a fishing town on the chilly, rugged shores ofBristol Bay. Todd was only sixteen and had come ro rown to play his senior year of basketball on a strong Warriors squad, a goal that coincided with career opportunities for his parents. His newly remarried father, Jim Palin, was in line to run the local electric utility. His stepmom, Faye Palin, would move up ro vice president at the telephone company. Todd was so different from any kid I'd ever known.

He made all his own decisions, from finances to future plans. Not only was he one of the only kids in rown who owned his own ride-he owned two, the Mustang and a Ford F long-bed pickup that he used to haul a pair of Polaris snowmachines. By the time I met him, he had honed an independent spirit and a sterling work ethic that drew me like a magnet, and would help define me and clarify my life's priorities more than anything else.

Todd thought nothing of doing things like driving the fifty miles into Anchorage by himself anytime he wanted to, which was a big deal to the rest of us, who had neither vehicles nor parents who would let us do such a thing. Todd had purchased his rigs himself, which blew us away because not many Valley kids had such luxuries, much less owned them outright. He waS a commercial fisherman, drifting fur red salmon in the rich waters of Brisrol Bay. It was his Native family's tradition ro make their livelihood and subsist on the water.

Todd's' grandmother Lena, who is almost ninety, is a Yupik Eskimo elder and was one of the first female commercial fishermen on the bay. His grandfather Al Andree was a boatbuilder. Togerher Al and Lena helped start the Bristol Bay fishery in the s, drifting for salmon from sailboats, navigating the frigid winds and ebb and flow of the tides, figuring out even on windless days how to get fish to the tenders, where they sold for just a nickel apiece.

The women braved the icy chop, the fish slime, rhe blood, and the stench, out there fishing with the men, and Lena was one of the first. Todd started fishing Bristol Bay at a very young age and grew up in this multigenerational industry. Lena saw the fishery as a God-given resource that provided for the family.

She believed in sweat equity.

Using commercial fishing as an economic bootstrap, Todd's family owned and operated the town's hardware store, hotel, mechanic shop, and other businesses, ultimately employing scores of people. Their efforts in free enterprise became an economic engine in rhe region. The Palin-Kallstrom family was also the most generous I have ever met, willing to give the shirts off their backs for those in need. Todd's morher, Blanche Kallstrom, ran her businesses that way and has been materially blessed for being so generous to others. Todd has always had great respect for Alaska's environment. Through meeting him and his family, I began to truly appreciate not only Alaska's natural diversity bur irs social diversity, too.

Though his upbringing was unconventional and tough at times, Todd bnte down and built a reputation fot wotking hatdet than men twice his age-men who had fat mote tools and advantages than this kid who shuffled among patents', grandpatents', and gteat-gtandpatents' homes. Todd had what is uniquely beautiful in out Native cultute-"cousins" evetywhete. It's tradition that even a second ot thitd cousin is tefetted to as "cousin," and his family seemed to have hundteds. Todd witnessed things that many Ameticans nevet will.

Thete ate tough conditions in some villages, and the hatsh citcumstances lead some to abuse both alcohol and each othet, and societal ills that include despondency and suicides. Todd saw it all. He also saw oppottunities to teact to citcumstances in productive ways. Despite his steel cote, Todd was shy and quiet in demeanot, typical of Yupik men, who, unlike some others, don't feel the need to fill up the air around them with words all the time. He was also incredibly well-mannered and polite to my parents, who were smitten with his work ethic and his constant offers to help anyone who needed anything.

He stacked firewood for Dad and drove my mom out to the mountains so she could find the perfect skiing conditions. He picked up Molly and me for practices so we wouldn't have to walk. Todd and Dad hit it off because not only could Todd fix anything, but Dad had never met anyone who had an even greater respect for Alaska and her wildlife than we did. My family fell in love with Todd right along with me. But he tells me that he was most attracted to my solid family. He was crazy about my parents and knew that if they were such good family people, we had the potential to continue that tradition.

As we grew up and ,.

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Neither of us was inro heavy-duty materialism. We weren't into fancy food, fancy clothes, fancy anything. He was very practical: We certainly had differences. I played the flute. He didn't go to church. But when he told me he had become a Christian and had been baptized at a sports camp a few years earlier, rhat was the clincher for me. Amidst our hometown group of friends' shared inrerests, difference after difference struck me with Todd.

He seemed so much more enlightened than the rest of us and had such a sense of justice. He hated gossip and pretension. He opposed any physical disrespect of the land, from litter to irresponsible developmenr. He talked about respect for nature, especially for the warers he was born and raised on. He truly was a conservationist and was adamant about using every part of any animal he hunted. I admired Todd's great reverence for his elders, especially his wise grandparenrs. At the time, I felt I barely knew my grandparents, and I envied his Native culture, which taught him to know well and honor those who had helped raise him.

I learned from Todd that Native youth are taught to listen and learn from their elders and not to run their mouths. Todd absolutely loved children. He had a cousin with Down syndrome whom he cherished, and even with all my babysitting jobs I had no experience with children with special needs. I always wondered how 1'd handle someday meering this special relative.

Lakers sweatshirts, Todd gave me gold nugget earrings, nestled in a grass-woven Native basket instead of a gift box, the consummate Alaskana gift. He didn't worry about money as much as my friends and I did because he knew he'd fish rhe next season and would be rewarded according to how hard he worked the waters. Because Todd had been exposed to conditions in rural Alaska many of us cannot imagine, he'd made tough decisions on his own from a young age.

Because of that, principles like honesty, justice, and accountability became crucial to his life perspective, and he understood intuitively that you get to choose how to respond to circumstances around you-even those out of your control. You get to decide what's really important and what your attitude will be. Our background differences were exciting to me and opened up my more sheltered world. We spent more and more time together, and when we couldn't, we still stayed connected.

With four teenagers in our house, our single landline phone was off-limits for long boyfriend-girlfriend calls. But Todd and I discovered we could close the five miles between our homes if we stood on our back porches and used the handheld VHF radios he used on his fishing boat in Bristol Bay. For months, we snuck whispered nighttime chats until we discovered that the commercial rruckers barreling through town could hear us. I snuck other things with Todd, too: Copenhagen dipping tobacco, which I tried for the first time about an hour before I met his mother, Blanche.

Todd cracked up watching me trying to make conversation with her, while I gagged with dry heaves and cold sweats caused by the nauseating chew. My first chug of beer, with Todd and Tilly the summer after we graduated. But the truth was, I was a never-really-been-kissed nerd. As soon as Todd hit my driveway, I jumped out of the cat, scared to death that this suave worldly guy that I was ctazy about would find out what a wallflower I was. He thought it was sweet and figured it reflected innocent modesty, but I was humiliated, sure that the whole school now knew the story.

My young, crushed spirit learned a lesson about guys that day: A reportet from the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman asked for my preseason prediction. Speaking for rhe team, I declared that we'd go all the way, that we wanted a state championship. To us, losing state for a third straight year would be intoletable. I spoke off the cuff and from the heart, but walked away from the interview with a sense of dread, fearing that my wotds would be interpreted as cocky and naive.

When the spOtts page came out, I swallowed hard, read what I'd said, and decided I'd have to work that much harder to live up to my bold proclamation. It was supposed to be a rebuilding year for the Warriors. We were determined to make up for it, to show our respected Coach Teeguarden and Coach Randall what rhey'd been missing out on, and to seize the opportunity to win. I left everything on the court because I simply wanted rhe team to win. I was certain I wanted victory for my team more rhan any opponent wanted it, and that would be the key to reaching my goal of a state championship, even though we were an underdog team.

When I have opportunities ro speak ro arhleres today, I. Who wants it more? Who will work harder for it? And who will be most prepared when the opportunity arises to score and win? I was bold but pragmatic. I reminded my teammates that thtough all our years playing the sport together, all our camps, our practices, games, seasons, our obsession with it all, at one time or another we had defeated everyone of our opponents. So there was no reason we couldn't beat them one more time in that final, shining season. Game by game, week by week, our scrappy but determined team surprised everyone by piling up victories.

As the season progressed, I recalled my newspaper prediction and thought thar maybe we had a shor at making it come true. We were on a roll. But then I stumbled. It was hard, painful, and very public. During a game in the regional tournament a week before state, I came down wrong on my right foot, twisted my ankle underneath me, and felt a sickening pop. Coach Teeguarden carried me off the Boor and the rest of the team carried us to regional victory. I was devastated ro think that my season, my dream, was over.

It was just days before the state tournament, and I refused to see a doctor because I didn't want to hear him say something was btoken. I hobbled around and sat on the bench through a week of practices with my foot planted in a bucket of ice. Going Rogue we'd been through, I decided it would be over my dead body that I'd sit the bench in the state tournament.

Ar state, we batrled through rhe bracket and made it to the championship game. I had shown him through four seasons rhar I would give percent effort no mattet the cost, so he took a chance and gave me a shot. He put me in the game. I made it up and down the court, not gracefully but playing as hard as I could. I'd never worked so hard for anything in my life, because I'd never wanted anything so badly. I felt like I couldn't pull my weight, but I encouraged the team: My teammates were tenacious, intense, and focused, and we never let up.

I scored only one point that game, a free throw in the waning seconds. Bur we pulled off the upset. That victory changed my life. More than anything else to that point, it proved what my parents had been trying to instill in me all along: Everything I ever needed to know, I learned on the basketball court. And to this day, my right ankle is a knobby and misshapen thing, a daily reminder of pushing through pain. In May , Todd and I walked together during our graduation ceremony in the Warrior gym, dressed in caps and gowns to match our school colors, red and white.

Over the next six years, we kept walking together, though we'd be thousands of miles apart. Todd headed off to play basketball at a college in Seatrle but eventually felt drawn back to Alaska, to the kind of hard work he thrived on. He earned his private pilot's license in Prescott,. I kicked off college by taking a semester to thaw out; along with Tilly and two other girlfriends, we flew to Hawaii for our freshman year of college.

Our intention was to play basketball there, but we made it to only a few tryouts and then decided we'd better concentrate on our studies It turned out that Hawaii was a little too perfect. Perpetual sunshine isn't necessarily conducive to serious academics for eighteenyear-old Alaska gitls. Besides, we were homesick for mountains, cooler seasons, and even snow.

After that first semester, we realized we'd better transfer back to sometbing closer to reality so we could actually earn our degrees. Tilly and I opted for a more conventional and affordable campus, choosing Idaho because it was much like Alaska yet still "Outside" Alaskans' alternative term for the Lower I still desperately wanted to earn a journalism degtee and to put my passion fat sporrs and writing to work as a sports teporter. After our freshman year, Tilly and I returned to Wasilla for summer work at a little diner. While we were home, our friend Linda Menard, Doc's wife, talked me into entering the local Miss America Scholarship Pageant wirh the promise of tuition for college.

I thought it was a horrendous idea, at first. I was a jock and quite square, not a pageant-type gitl at all. I didn't wear makeup in high school and kept my hair shorr because I di"n't like wasting time primping. I couldn't relate to the way I assumed most cheetleader types thought and lived, and figured it was those girls who were equipped for the pageant thing. On the other hand, there was the scholarship money. I knew I wasn't a good enough athlete to get a Division I scholarship, but I did want to graduate debt-free. Was there some way I could make this work? I thought about it for a couple of days.

My stomach knotted up at the thought ofparading around onstage in a swimsuit, especially. But a scholarship was a scholarship, and in the end, pragmatism won OUt. Half seriously, I wondered if the pageant organization would accept for the talent portion of the competition a fancy display of right- and left-handed dribbling.

But Linda suggested I play the flute, something I'd been doing since age ten. Linda also reminded me that the scholarship money was generous, especially if I won individual competitions within the pageant, in addition to the Miss Wasilla crown. I enlisted the advice of a former pageant winner, my friend Diane Minnick.

Then I shocked my friends 'and family, put on a sequined Warrior-red gown, danced the opening numbers, gave the interview, and uncomfortably let my burt be compared to the cheerleaders' butts. I played my flute, and I won. In fact, I won every segment of the competition, even Miss Congenialiry. The Miss Wasilla Scholarship paid my college tuition that fall. The following summer, I progressed to the next round and was crowned second runner-up and Miss Congeniality in the Miss Alaska Scholarship Pageant.

I had to admit it was good tuition money, as well as a good testing ground for public speaking and issue advocacy, and I was happy to be even more involved in the community via this nontraditional adventure that took me out of my comfort zone. I went on to pay for two more years of college the same way. Molly laughed as she recounted the exchange about the fact that not much has changed, besides the 'SOs pageant hair. Geraldine Ferraro recently became the first female vice presidential candidate reptesenting a major American political party.

Do you think a woman can be vice president? I believe a woman could be vice president. I believe a woman could be president. Would you vore for a vice presidenrial or presidenrial candidare just because she was a woman? No, I would not vote for someone just because they were a woman. I would vote for the candidate that reflected my political beliefs and had strong character and family values.

What do you think are Alaska's best attributes? One of the best attributes of Alaska is its beauty, and everything that the great Alaska outdoors has to offer, from hunting and fishing to snowmachining in winter. And Alaska has amazing potential in drilling for oil on rhe North Slope. Bur unfortunarely some Oursiders don't understand Alaska's porential in developing our vasr narural ME: Thar exchange, a quarter century ago, now seems, either srrangely coincidental or a Providential signpost pointing toward my futute.

And I don't believe in coincidences. Childhood friends from the Carter and Carney families attended the University of Idaho with me, and even Chuck and Molly were fellow Vandals. But I, ever the independent, was proudly GDI. I was amazed when my education became an issue in the vice presidential campaign. Tilly and I came home to Alaska between semesters and worked so we could earn money to pay for the next term. Sometimes we had to take a semester off and work until we could afford tuition again. I remember when that was an honorable thing. At VI, I lived in an all-girls dorm.

I planned on a political science minor because I loved studying U. Although my family wasn't political, and certainly not obsessively partisan, I registered to vote in , at age eighteen, and proudly checked the Republican box on the registration form. I had tead both major party platforms, and the GOP just made sense for someone like me, a believer in individual rights and responsibilities rather than heavy-handed government; in freemarket principles that included reward for hard work; respect for equality; support for a strong military; and a belief that America is the best country on earth.

I looked forward to every poli sci lecture. I attributed my enthusiasm to patriotism and a fascination with current events. I was also eager because this was the s and our studies centered on one of the most inspiring individuals ever to occupy the White House, President Ronald W. I was in high school the day Reagan took the oath of office. On the same day, minutes after he was sworn in, a band of Iranian militants released fifty-two Americans, after having held themand our national pride-hostage for days.

I had followed the Iran hostage crisis and remember wondeting why President Jimmy Carter didn't act more decisively. From my high schooler's ,perspective, I thought the question was, Why did he allow America to be humiliated and pushed around? The enemies of freedom rook notice. In years ro come people would ask, What did he have that Carter didn't?

To me the answer was obvious. He had a steel spine. I appreciated Reagan's passion and conviction, and the way he so plainly articulated his love for our country. Like millions of others, I related to him personally-he was one of us. I liked him, and I liked the fact that he was never aftaid ro call it as he saw it. During the previous decade, we seemed to have slid into a darket period as a country: Vietnam, Watergate, the energy crisis, the perception of environmental abuses,.

Reagan's optimism resrored our faith in outselves. Yes, maybe our nation had veered off course, he seemed ro be saying, but not only could we right ourselves, America's best days wete still ahead. As Reagan's presidency unfolded, I also appreciated his focus on a handful of overarching themes, such as reining in the intrusiveness of government, building a strong national defense, and cutting taxes.

I knew the previous administration had left a legacy of soaring unemployment, sky-high taxes, and rampant inflation. Reagan's plan for growing out economy made comon sense: At the peak of Soviet military power, Democrats had retreated into an embarrassed pacifism, cutting defense projects and reducing our troop strength. But the new Republican president I was studying in school unabashedly set out to make the United States the strongest power in the world.

Reagan's plan for national defense was logical: Critics derided him as a warmonger, but as the violent twentieth century came to an end, Reagan's Going Rogue position ultimately led to a climactic victory for freedom and peace with the collapse of the Iron Currain and the liberation of millions from the tyranny of Communism.

Reagan won the Cold War withour firing a shot. I had always subscribed to concepts like Providence and purpose, that people aren't just random collections of molecules stumbling aimlessly through hisrory. I believed-and still do-rhat each person has a destiny, a reason for being. So Reagan's sense of national purpose resonated with me. His speeches on the subject evoked in me the sense of national pride I had felt even back at Eagle River Elementary School when I watched our astronauts explore the Final Frontier. As Reagan said, America was more than a place in the world; it was a world-changing idea, founded on a set ofprinciples that had weathered many storms.

Reagan restored our faith that those principles would prove themselves again. During semesters in college and summers back in Alaska, I interned at a couple of TV sporrs desks. I covered high school and college spores, putting 'together packages and writing sports copy for many anchors, including the two guys who gave me a chanceJohn Hernandez and John Carpenter. On weekends during one season, I anchored the sports desk live. I loved the intensity of the newsroom, the deadlines, the adrenaline. Unmarried and with no kids, I spent hours and hours at the station.

I felt I was on my way. It was always politics first and everything except natural disasrers second. In Alaska, we don't have big-league professional sports teams or many celebrities except famous dog mushers , so for many up here politics is just another sport. So even as I covered sports, my interest in public policy and how it affected people continued ro grow.

In Alaska, much of our local news involves natural resource issues, balancing human needs with environmental ones. The Alaska Consritution charges state government wirh managing natural resources "for abundance"-for equal access ro plentiful supplies-and that takes conscientious stewardship. For many in Alaska, being "green" isn't abour wearing Birkensrocks and driving a hybrid; it's about survival. Throughout this time, Todd and I continued ro see each other.

Though miles apart during college, we wrote letters, made phone calls, and saw each other during vacations. But it was challenging trying ro stay together while,so far apart. It was a huge relief when I graduated, grabbed my diploma, and beat feer back ro Alaska, happy to be in the same state as Todd. I joined him on the Bristol Bay fishing grounds. During slow salmon tuns with Todd, I worked messy, obscure seafood jobs, including long shifts on a stinky shore-based crab-processing vessel in Dutch Harbor. Another season, I sliced open fish bellies, scraped out the eggs, and plopped the roe into packaging.

All of us on that job thought it was hilarious that the company would slap a caviar label on the Practically every kid in Alaska has spent at least one summer working some kind of "slime line. Then he jumped into his truck to drive Going Rogue the empty dirt road home-and got busted for a DDI.. It was a humiliating mistake, a big wake-up call to be charged with drinking and driving in his hometown. He'd later tell an employer in a job interview thar it was his most critical lesson, because ir woke him up to the danger of making stupid decisions.

He said it changed his life. In the summer of , I fished again with Todd, but this time during slow runs I waited tables at the towdy Bristol Inn, where drunken fishing crews doled out more in tips than I earned on the water all season. Still, money was tight because we had to reinvest our earnings in new nets and boat motors that season. By the end of summer, Todd and I didn't want to spend more time apart. So we took our broke butts down to the Palmer Courthouse and lassoed a magisrrate to pronounce us man and wife.

Our witnesses would come from where they often do at this courthouse, across the street ar the old folks' home. I walked over to the Palmer Pioneers Home ro see who was available, and Todd followed me in rhe car, saying, "See if you can find a couple of people who can make it to the car without wheelchairs. Bur I found a nice elderly man with a walker and a kindly old lady in a wheelchair who agreed to see us into matrimony. They couldn't squeeze into Todd's litrleHooda coupe, so we had no choice but to escort them across the street, where, on August 29, , those nice Alaska pioneers witnessed the beginning of two lives joined together at the Palmer Courthouse.

Fife, was young and brand new to the position, and she cried as she read the boilerplate vows. Then we walked our witnesses back across the street and scopped by the Wendy's drive-thru for our wedding dinner. I heard later that Mom bawled. I'd do the same. I tell my kids now that I'll wring their necks if they do what I did. I want my kids to have the wedding I didn'r have. Todd moved into the apartment that my sister Heather and I shared in Anchorage, and the three of us undertook a whirlwind work schedule that turned our tiny apartment into a revolving door.

Todd worked as a baggage handler for an Alaska Airlines subsidiary during the day and worked at night plowing snow and clearing the steps of the BP Exploration Alaska office building until the fishing season would start again. I worked customer service at an Anchorage electric utility during the day and reported for a local station part-time in the evenings and on weekends. Heather put her college degree to work, working with audiologists in special needs children's classrooms.

Todd applied for a full-time job with BP working in the North Slope oil fields. We hoped he'd land the kind of Slope job so many young Alaskans dream of so he could work a schedule that would allow him to enjoy as many of our outdoor passions as possible while making a good living. While he waited, he worked. I remember him working so hard that he dropped to about pounds from handling the bags in the belly of the plane.

Surely it couldn't have been my newlywed cooking skills that conttibuted to that. While he slimmed down, I porked up, pregnant with our first child. As the months went on, Todd's prayer was answered by an offer for a permanent position with BP: When I made the happy announcement that Todd would be a Sloper, Dad responded, "Is that good news or bad news?

Going Rogue He knew the pros and cons of the physical sepatation endured by Slope families. He'd seen many of his students whose parents' marriages collapsed under the demands of Slope life. Todd and I were excited about it, though. We'd been together but separate for many years already, so we figured we could handle whatever life dished out. We put it all in God's hands.

I became a mom. I had no idea how this tiny person, my son, would turn me inside out and upside down with the all-consuming love that swelled my heart from the second he was born. As cliched as it sounds, that was the happiest day of my life. The two previous days, however, were not. On April 18, I went into labor. I called Todd and asked him to fly home early from his weekly hitch on the Slope-a mere mile commute, one way-to meet me, my mom, and Blanche at my parents' house.

I had set up camp there for the night, trying to find comfort while ignoring Dad's attempt at humor: I'd gone through the requisite childbirth class we were going to use the Lamaze method , and, being an athlete used to pain, I figured, How tough could giving birth be? I thought I was going to die. In fact, I began to pray that I would die.

A laserlike searing rolled through me in waves, from my knees to my belly button. Had any woman ever hurt this much? I didn't think so. I gritted my teeth and willed myself not to scream. Between nuclear-level contractions, I couldn'r climb into our truck, so I squeezed sideways and backward into the passenger seat of Mom's Subaru, my belly poking out like a medicine ball, and Todd drove me ro Valley Hospital. He parked the car, helped me out, and we entered rhrough a rear entrance.

Struggling down hallway after hallway, stopping for contracrions in the industrial zone, I glanced over to see Todd near a janitor's closer telling a maintenance worker: I figured I'd just die there near the delivery rrucks. I even came close to thinking that someday we'd laugh about it. All rhrough my perfect, healthy pregnancy, I had pictured this peaceful Earth Mother birth experience, the lights low in the delivery room, maybe even some of that nature-sound music playing in the background. Like a pioneer woman, I would bravely deliver our firsrborn, Todd beaming beside me, wirh the Alaska wilderness waiting ourside to welcome our son, the newest addirion to Nature's grand march of creatures great and small.

Instead, by the time the nurses gor me prepped, I was sweating and panting, trying to do those infernal breathing techniques, when what I really wanted to do was scream bloody murder and beg for drugs. Blessed Mother ofJesus, I finally got them! The delivery room was chaos: Many hours later, though, chaos evaporated when Track CJ.

Going Rogue Palin was born. The world went away, and in a crystallizing instant, I knew my purpose. As the nurse laid my son genrly in my arms, Todd and I laughed and cried together. It was a profuund moment, unexpected, overwhelming. In the space of a few minutes, we'd gone ftom being two individuals to being a family.

My nature-loving dad became a grandpa fur the first time that. He said he'd never forget the day because it's when the geese return north to migrate. He liked Track's name, but he mistakenly assumed it signified adventure. It took us aback to realize that the name sounded odd to others. After so many people did a double take, we sighed and gave in, joking that his real name was "Track? He turned his tiny face up, brown eyes blazing. Ftom the beginning, I was head ovet heels in love with him and convinced that I was the most important person in his world.

He had my heart then and now. Becoming a mom mellowed my drive towatd making it as a big-time sports reportet. I didn't want to leave Ttack with anyone, so I only worked weekends at a couple of network affiliates in Anchorage. Heather babysat at her house near the studio and brought him by when I couldn't stand another minure without inhaling the soft scent of his downy hair and baby skin. When Track was just a couple of months old, rhe commercial fishing season began. Todd was low man on rhe BP totem pole, so he couldn't take much rime off to work our leased site on the shores of Bristol Bay.

We depended on the season's catch as part of our an nual household income, so Dad and I, along with our fishing partner, Nick Timurphy, a full-blooded Eskimo, fished it withour our captain. Yet the constant risk of death and mutilation helps bind the troops together, forging friendships and loyalties through experiences which they will never forget. Inside the base, despite the ever-present threat of a grenade being lobbed over the wall, there are unexpected and sometimes incongruous sights: Everyone is on first-name terms, we all know each other inside out and because everyone in Recce Troop is that much older, there are no real dramas; we all pull together.

The daily routine begins around 6. Breakfast might be muesli with sterilised UHT milk, or a boil-in-the-bag ration of sausage, beans, bacon and scrambled egg. The marine will patrol for up to four hours at least once each day, and must prepare for this by checking weapons, attending a briefing and then putting on their hot and heavy body armour that can weigh lbs.

Outside, they can proceed only painfully slowly: In the distance, both to the north and south, you can make out the sandbagged guard posts and flags of bigger British and Afghan bases, but for the troops of this particular Patrol Base in Sangin they might be miles away. The white pennants of the Taliban flutter contemptuously nearby, almost certainly booby-trapped. It is a relief finally to return through the corrugated iron gates of the compound, throw off helmets and armour and attempt to cool off from the searing heat — which could prove overwhelming were it not for the miracle of icy cold water, hand-pumped from a well driven feet into the ground.

Sinking their burning heads into buckets of chilled water or hosing each other down if there is water to spare is the closest to bliss that these marines can get. Life inside is a strange combination of liberation — from the fear outside — and incarceration. The gym is the fulcrum of life on the base: The population hates us around here. Strangely, as if not satisfied with the real life combat, many of the troops seem to enjoy gritty war films, perhaps as a fix for the off days when there's no "contact" with the Taliban. Outside in the compound, in the relative cool of morning or evening, men in shorts train by running in an absurdly small circuit within the walls, where a lap takes barely a minute to complete.

Being so far from the rear, where formality rules, all of those inside the patrol base are on first-name terms, whatever their rank, and any of them may take a turn at the preparing and cooking of food — though if someone is regarded as a good cook, like Corporal Jim White when The Sunday Telegraph visited, they are likely to take turns more often than others. There is little in the way of fresh food, and an occasional box of apples delivered from a larger base is regarded as a luxury. Lunch and dinner might be pasta with tuna and sweetcorn, spaghetti, or rice with tinned tomatoes.

Once in a while, a few cases of soft drinks might arrive — though it is hard, with just one refrigerator on the base, to get these cold enough to be truly refreshing. Guard duty, behind sandbags on the four corners of the base, is a regular two-hour chore for the marines — vital if the compound is to be kept safe. Tiredness can be a problem that they have to combat, for sleep is difficult to achieve with much satisfaction. A handful of occasions when a grenade was tossed into the base by an unseen Taliban fighter outside have put paid to the luxury of sleeping outside under the stars, where a cooling wind would ripple through the mosquito net.

Instead, the troops have been forced back inside the rooms of the compound — and whereas the thick walls soak up the worst of the daytime heat, at night, they release it again, making it too hot for sleep to come easily. Few manage more than three or four hours, so by day they will often snatch an hour when the opportunity comes. Even urinating can be hazardous — principally because the plastic piping hammered at an angle into the ground that is gracefully nicknamed a "Desert Rose" is close to the spot where grenades have occasionally landed.

Thankfully, there are no longer stinking lavatory pits, but instead a system of "wag bags" in which waste is sealed with a zip lock before being burned. There is some recompense for the conditions: At around 7pm, as the sun begins to go down, the marines eat dinner, their most communal meal of the day, before holding a regular 8pm round-up of the day's events on and around the base.

There is little news from outside unless someone has made a call home. Diesel generators provide some power, but white lights are forbidden at night and by 10pm many are turning in — a few perhaps watching a film on their laptops, taken from the base's small selection of DVDs.

• The Spell Breaker: A Paranormal Romance
• Two Wolves and a Candy Seller [Werewolf Castle 1] (Siren Publishing Menage Everlasting)
• Internal Medicine: Common Pain Disorders in Primary Care (Audio-Digest Foundation Internal Medicine Continuing Medical Education (CME). Book 57)
• THE REAL GODFATHER: DID DON VITO CORLEONE MIRROR CHICAGOS TONY ACCARDO?
• Low Carb Rezepte: Frühstück ohne Kohlenhydrate (German Edition)
• Your Angry Child: A Guide for Parents
• Schokoladenkind: Meine Familie und andere Wunder (German Edition)