I spent all of 1990 in Alaska, mostly out in the Aleutians. My wife and I went touring there a couple years ago, including a visit to Fairbanks in mid May. Alaska is a spectacular place. I remember flying over the state for over an hour and not seeing any sign of human activity - no roads, no buildings, nothing. It was a true wilderness.

Hyder is relatively far south, so the midsummer days aren't quite as long as in Fairbanks nor are the midwinter nights so long. During my time, bad weather was the more common theme (we only had a 100 hours or so of clear weather a year.) I do remember going out at midnight on a rare clear summer evening and it was bright enough to read a newspaper. Mostly, I remember weeks at a time of high winds, fog, and rain. In a word, the weather was just plain lousy.

Of the 100 or so people who live in Hyder, I didn't see any mention of how many of them might be school aged children. Odds are, those kids are probably home schooled or the town makes alternative arrangements. I remember watching a documentary several years ago on families who lived deep in the Alaskan interior. Their kids were home schooled, with regular visits by a teacher who flew out in a ski plane to review their progress. Their teenaged daughter would go out for days at a time on a dogsled to check her trapline. She was probably the only teenaged girl in America whose parents worried more about her getting eaten than getting pregnant. The next nearest home was at least 40 miles away.

The article points to a difference in mindset that's quite foreign to a lot of people, including probably most Americans. In towns like Hyder, the people who choose to live there don't look for government to solve their problems. For example, when it comes to snow removal, they mount snowblades on the front of their pickups and do the job themselves. Imagine that.