First, let's get the Alaska jokes out of the way.

Every newcomer to Alaska is told "The mosquito is our state bird" after asking "What is that sparrow-like thing that just bit me?"

What is the difference between a reindeer and a caribou?

A   Caribou don't fly
B   There's a fence around the reindeer
C   The seasoning

Those tanker cars on the railroad? What's in them, oil? No, mosquito repellent.

If it's tourist season, why CAN'T we shoot them?

And, finally: Alaska State law: A tourist may never stray more than 200 yards from a gift shop.

We're back from a 15-day land and cruise tour of Alaska. We started near the arctic circle and finished in Vancouver, Canada. It stayed light most of the time, and in Fairbanks people plug their parked cars into electric sockets so the oil pan won't freeze while they're shopping.

By late May summer is in full swing. The air is fresh, the mountains amazing, the rivers running well, the glaciers calving. The husky sled dogs are overheating.

Before summer there's a week of spring, and after that about a month of fall. The rest is winter. And there are two distinct breeds of Alaskan: those who come for the summer, and those who stay on through the entire year. You can tell the latter by their vacant stares.

Alaska's state flag is beautiful. The big dipper cavorts on a field of deep blue. The big dipper's scooper points to Polaris, the North Star. There's a children's book that explains this. It's in every gift shop in Alaska but I forget the title.

We saw groups of bears and moose, brave male ptarmigans by the side of the road, beaver, eagles in abundance, mountain goats, all sorts of aquatic birds, killer whales and humpback whales, seals and sea lions, the elusive porpoise, even the sea star, sea cucumber, sea urchin, seaweed and a rabbit.

One day, on the mandatory visit to a gift shop, I purchased a copy of Alaska by James A. Michener. I didn't suspect at the time that not only would Michener's Alaska put my luggage over the weight limit, but the minus 5 pt. type would finally finish off my remaining eyesight.

By the time we sailed down the Inside Passage I was passing page 159 with 900 more to go.

Alaska begins when continents were bumping into each other, tossing mountain ranges into the air like you'd flip hotcakes.

Various ancient humans named Varnak and Oogruk cross the land bridge from Asia into America and immediately burrow into the snow because darn it's COLD over here!

They hunt the mammoth. They hunt the seal. They kayak out to where the whales are swimming and they hunt them, too. They become the Athabascans, the Eskimo, and thirty other tribes. Some emigrate south and become the Navajo.

Here Michener presents a fascinating concept of emigrating while never leaving home. As he explains it, a family might move south a day's walk from their home village, and set up housekeeping. They would stay in touch with their kin to the north, so the movement south would be almost unnoticeable. Over succeeding generations others would move a bit more south toward heat and thawed water, until some of the Asians who became Alaskans also became the Navajo.

That this must have happened is demonstrated not only by the similarity of language between these groups, but the likelihood no humans in the stone age could have made a journey so far south in one lifetime.

In addition to Alaska there is Mexico and Texas and Caribbean and Poland and Sayonara and Space and Iberia and dozens more. It's an amazing body of work. Michener once said, "I have never thought of myself as a good writer. Anyone who wants reassurance of that should read one of my first drafts. But I'm one of the world's great rewriters."

James A. Michener died in 1997 at the age of 90.

Aired Sunday June 18, 2006 at 10:55 am and Wednesday June 21, 2006 at 1:00 pm

Orders/Information:

Alaska by James A. Michener. Fawcett paperback $7.99. ISBN 0449217264.

Source of the Michener quote: http://www.brainyquote.com