With all the bad news, turn your attention to the great Alaska outdoors

To say I'm constantly low-key stressed these days is an understatement. If anyone needs to understand why, read the actual news in this paper. Or, indulge me here for a minute.

I know. Indulgence is a lot of what I write about. Let's go explore, bring your friends, Instagram it, and maybe complain now and then about things that don't really matter in the scheme of things (like running next to someone who is blaring music).

It occurs to me often as I write these pieces, all of which connect somehow to the outdoors, that there's an uncomfortable juxtaposition when one compares my outdoors column to the latest headline.

It often looks and feels something like "Why sun is really great" a couple of items below a story about a homicide.

Yet, I keep writing.

In many ways we collectively are in the fight of our lives. This fight is incredibly uneven. Some of us are fighting for survival, and some are fighting to stay ahead of an ever-steepening financial curve. Alaska is experiencing fiscal uncertainty we haven't felt in years, and there is no single, straightforward solution to dig ourselves out of our deficit. And again, many people are scared — for their families, for their cultures, and for their physical, not to mention emotional, safety.

Back to "Why the sun is really great" and other such writings of mine. Where does this type of thing fit in, if anywhere?

I have a few thoughts.

One, I agree that the juxtaposition between current events and, for instance, outdoors writing is often uncomfortable. I wince sometimes when I glance at my smiling mug next to a story about something much more pressing.

However, I'm OK holding both of those pieces as separate yet somehow related parts of life in Alaska, and the human experience overall.

I think we as a culture are getting far worse at holding two seemingly conflicting concepts as valid and true. Humans don't like to do that because it leaves us uncomfortable. We like to pick sides.

And often, we should — I believe on some issues there is a bright moral line. But the internet allows us to pick one side and almost solely consume it. This kind of monoculture is bad for any kind of life form that naturally thrives in diversity, and growth almost always comes from feeling uncomfortable.

Then there is the underlying universality of what I narrowly write about: the outdoors.

In so many ways, Alaska holds the ultimate remaining existence of true, intact wildness. This is a lived experience for those of us here, from Alaska Native people and cultures that have survived and thrived for millennia despite enormous odds, to people like me who traveled far to come here to be near mountains. Then there is the rest of the world, which may never visit but dreams of Alaska as a symbol of hope.

The natural world that underlies our state is part of the bigger world that supports us in the most fundamental ways — the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat and the ground we stand on. My outdoors adventures? These are, like most things we do in life, an attempt to connect.

This leads me to my defense of what seems like frivolity in a world that is in pain.

We each get one shot at life. My shot at my life is frequently over the top, sometimes misses and is almost always earnest. At the end of the day I am very lucky to be born into the circumstances and supported to the levels I have been. I feel that I don't have a choice in my life but to spend most of my energy on the fight raging all around me. But to do that well, first I have to be me. I need to know who that is, and I need to take care of her to the best of my ability.

As serious and brooding as I can be, I am simultaneously over the top. People hear me laugh across a restaurant. I get overly excited about a beautiful day spent outside. So I spend as much time as I can out there, breathing good clean air and taking the gamble on adventures.

It's not for everyone. But I feel fortunate to share stories and hopefully insight and guidance here and maybe help someone realize their life a little more fully.

Alli Harvey lives in Palmer and plays in Southcentral Alaska.