Family gatherings can be such a bind. It's not just that they are often sombre occasions, such as funerals; even the happiest events — weddings, anniversaries, births — can be diminished by the fact that they are invariably celebrated in the back end of beyond. The journey turns the whole thing into a chore. This thought was with me as I stood uncomfortably in a US$40,000 grizzly bear coat holding the fossilised remains of a walrus penis.
The kind (and drunk) proprietor of an Alaskan restaurant in downtown Anchorage had insisted that her English guest posed for pictures with her father's antique fur. I wouldn't have minded so much, but I'd just eaten one of the worst meals of my life: soggy defrosted chicken with soggy defrosted corn on the cob, washed down with warm medium-dry wine. But guess what? I was having the time of my life, and it was about to get better.
The few people who make the long and arduous journey to Alaska usually come between May and September, when the weather is mild and the snow has all but disappeared save for the ice-bound mountains and the 100,000 or so glaciers that carve up this most spectacularly pristine corner of the United States.
I was here for a reason, but it wasn't a chore. It was the baptism of my godson, Stephen, who was born in Argentina but whose American parents, Bill and Michelle Scannell, decided to bring him up in the Last Frontier.
The word "Alaska" carries a lot of stereotypical baggage, so what is truth and what is myth?
First, yes, in the winter it is unrelentingly, unimaginably cold. The sun can be shining (as it did for me for five days in February) but the temperature is still –30oC. I discovered this on my first morning when I strolled across the parking lot of the Dimond Center Hotel, on the edge of town, to buy provisions. I hadn't got 200m before I had to return to fetch my fleecy hat, the one in which I looked ridiculous, but the one that would stop my ears falling off.
Second, it is also undeniable that Alaska, tucked up between northern Canada and western Siberia and twice the size of Texas and more than six times larger than Britain, is a place apart from the rest of the US. The people are fiercely independent and many only reluctantly identify with the rest of the US, which they refer to as "the Lower 48" — but they respect anyone who has made the effort to visit and outsiders are warmly welcomed.
But the image of the state as inhospitable and impenetrable is not wholly accurate. In summer, the countryside opens up for walking, canoeing, mountaineering and salmon fishing. And, believe it or not, in the interior temperatures can reach 25oC. Transport can be difficult — there is just one railway line, from the port of Seward to Fairbanks in the heart of the interior, and only a couple of major highways outside populated areas -- but there are ferries and plenty of reasonably priced short-hop flights.
My visit coincided with the annual fur "rondy" (rendezvous), which commemorates the days when fur trappers used to come into Anchorage to sell their wares, get drunk, blow their cash and then return to the wilderness. Today, it is marked by a carnival, dog-sled races, ice sculpture and generally more genteel pursuits.
You can still buy furs if you want to. A wolverine pelt will set you back US$525, a lynx US$295. Hats of beaver will fetch US$215, blue fox US$225. Only your conscience can be your guide. John Sarvis, a 59-year- old former trapper and fur salesman, claims that only "excess animals" — those that would die anyway due to natural selection or a lack of food — are "harvested."
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