On the morning of Nov. 5 sunlight burst over the Chugach Range and a salmon-colored glow crept down the flanks of the highest peaks into Eagle River Valley. Somewhere amidst my backyard trees the black-capped chickadees were chirping merrily, as if they had just located a bonanza of seeds. There was a strange, melodic tune coming from somewhere, and I quickly realized it was me whistling.
It was the day after the election, and the world, as I once knew it, was finally returning.
The television, which I'd been reluctant to turn on for the past year, was not droning on incessantly with innocuous political ads. Telephone robocalls had ceased. Forests of political signs were coming down. The newspaper contained news instead of candidate photos and propaganda. On the drive to work I could listen to the radio again. Sign wavers had vanished. It was a glorious day!
A friend who had just returned from a seven-week car-camping trip in the western U.S. said that it had been the same down there -- total saturation, a multi-million-dollar political blitzkrieg.
I'd emailed another friend and told him that with the delayed snowfall, I'd been doing a lot of hiking in the mountains. He replied: "You'd do anything to avoid all the political ads."
I upped the ante with this reply: "To avoid political ads, I would crawl across broken glass through a sewer pipe like the one in the movie 'Shawshank Redemption' to a pile of logs that I had to cut into a cord of wood."
If that sounds like an exaggeration, be assured, it isn't. I don't think it takes 85,000 ads (a conservative guess) and hundreds of millions of dollars to educate voters on candidates' positions on key issues. Or to borrow part of a quote from the movie "Jerry McGuire:" "You had me on announcement of your candidacy."
I've lived here long enough to remember when government documents listed parts of northern Alaska "unmapped," or to put it another way, when you could see Portage Glacier from the parking lot before there was a visitor center; and I've never seen anything close to this recent political maelstrom.
In the past we've had entertaining, mudslinging races for national and state offices -- but not an all-out media bombardment like we just experienced. We're all exhausted.
Don't get me wrong. I'm a champion of our country's democratic process and especially grateful for our nonviolent transfer of political power. But state and national campaigns like we've just endured are a far cry from nonviolent. They are an overt assault on people's sensibilities, and on a more subtle level, a covert attack on our individual and collective sanity.
Those of us who have survived the 2014 election relatively intact probably don't like our candidates as much as we did at the beginning of their campaigns. Winners or losers, I suspect it will take a while for them to endear themselves to us. We won't soon forget the recent Orwellian mind-control blitz.
In the remote possibility that our new elected leaders at both state and national levels decide to actually begin leading and getting things done, rather than squabbling in partisan politics, perhaps the agonizingly long campaign was worth it.
Even though we're still losing daylight by leaps and bounds, there is brightness on the horizon. There is room in my post office box for real mail. The birds in my backyard are singing. We will enjoy peace and tranquility going into the holidays, and for a while after that.
But moving into 2015, the presidential race for 2016 will heat up quickly. Before then, I'll probably remove the radio and television from my home and cancel the newspaper.
And if that's not enough, for escape, I'll look for that pipe from "Shawshank Redemption."
Frank E. Baker is a freelance writer who lives in Eagle River. Email frankedwardbaker(at)gmail.com.
The views expressed here are the writer's own and are not necessarily endorsed by Alaska Dispatch News, which welcomes a broad range of viewpoints. To submit a piece for consideration, e-mail commentary(at)alaskadispatch.com