OK . . . so why would it be so hard to write about that, especially with so many great streetscapes in such a great issue? Well, you see . . . I just got off the boat from a cruise through the inner passage to the glaciers of Alaska . . . And there were not a whole lot of streets to see. Instead, there was a whole lot of landscape.

When I say landscape though, I don?EUR??,,????'???t mean the kind rebuilt by you . . . I mean the kind that has been there since the last Ice Age, the kind all of you try to emulate after the bulldozers tear up the city.

Alaska is so vast and so naturally beautiful it is no wonder there are only about 50 RLAs in a state that is bigger than all but a handful of countries.

Sure, I saw places where there had been logging, but I did not see damage. I saw responsible replenishment. Sorry, but that is what I saw. For endless mile after mile I saw the lungs of the earth, breathing out the plentiful oxygen from a vast sea of evergreen . . . I know they call the Amazon the lungs of the earth, but Alaska is definitely a rival.

The difference though, between the Amazon and Alaska, is that in the Amazon the government and the people are still in a state of denial . . . In Alaska, the tearing down of a tree is almost always met with the replanting of another. That is what makes America such a great country. So many of us in the U.S. cried and carried on about cutting down forests that most trees today are not clear cut, but are singled out and cut individually from the forest . . . True in America . . . not true in the Amazon.

I fished and hiked and canoed and spent hours with the binoculars . . . I met dozens of native Alaskans and not once did I hear a concern about the state of the forest. Instead I heard pride in their management of the forest. The Alaskans I talked with knew the percentages of each forest to be cut and which parts would be left alone. I did see areas that at one time were clear cut, but all except the most recently cut were thriving, showing the results of the efforts of the conservationists who spent their lives making an impact.

I tried to talk development and logging and environment, but was consistently met with a native shrug of diminished concern. From what I saw, the state of Alaska is doing just fine and could be looked at throughout the world as the state-of-the-art of forestry management. In fact, the only negative impact I heard discussed was that the Hubbard glacier was advancing.

The native Alaskan who was leading the shipboard education on the area, was first saying how his tribe/band had been in the area for centuries and were the ones who truly appreciated the natural landscape . . . then he said that the Glacier was advancing to a point where it might block off a river and cause flooding on the backside of the mountain. That would threaten their tribal city, so they were planning on cutting through either the glacier or the mountain to divert the water . . . It was amusing to hear that second verse of the native song . . .