What Does it Mean? "The Loneliest Place"

To those who don't live there, Alaska represents a kind of mythology. Images of igloos and icebergs fill our imaginations of a place so big and diverse no generalized statement can possibly do it justice.

This means that lots of folks come up here to satisfy their curiosities. Alaskans have mixed emotions about tourists. On the one hand, they fuel our economy and give ample opportunity to share all the great features of this Great Place. On the other hand, they crowd the streets, clog the waterways with polluting cruise ships, and take uninformed risks that often get them killed. (We actually have a saying around the house: "In Florida, stupid tourists just cause traffic jams. In Alaska, stupid tourists die.")

The location of St. Matthew Island (©2021 ADN)

So I paid attention a few months ago when the remote island of St. Matthew began receiving attention as "the world's loneliest place." Both National Geographic (partnered with Cornell University's ornithology laboratory) and our own Anchorage Daily News ran spots on the island's remoteness and its utter lack of human development.

Of course, this attention almost guarantees that tourists will begin showing up. It's a pretty reliable pattern. This made me sad for two reasons. First, mass-market tourism really does stress the fragile environments found throughout the arctic and subarctic. And, perhaps more importantly, since loneliness is a human experience, it cannot be defined by the lack of human interaction. As I move around Anchorage, plenty of desperately lonely people appear at every step: in my classrooms, on the street, even in my own house. 

The displaced Alaska Natives in Anchorage take a particular hit on this front. Often families or individuals will leave their remote villages looking for a new start, only to find that culture shock and financial challenges stop them in their tracks. Some succumb to despair and addiction. Others return home, overwhelmed with homesickness but carrying guilt from their failure. Often instead of help and encouragement, they get stereotyped and criticized. That's a loneliness that tourists cannot relate to and most certainly don't want to see.

So these lines arose on a day when I was walking to work, thinking about St. Matthew Island and the Yup'ik villages in nearby St. Lawrence Island and on the Bering Sea coastline, wondering how a big city like Anchorage, with its support systems designed more to serve wealthy tourists, can help the desperately lonely.