Today continued the streak of messages that dealt with the reign of God over the universe in an excellent and thought provoking sermonette that discussed a point that had come up in a conversation with a longtime friend that commented on how God showed different facets of himself in meeting people where they were. There is a great deal of complexity to God, and all too often we tend to think that we understand all of God when we are really seeing only those facets of God that are most like ourselves, and thus we reveal what we are (or think ourselves to be) in our discussions of God as we understand Him. The sermon, given by the co-in-law of the sermonette speaker, gave a less complex but no less worthwhile message that focused on the sorts of attitudes we should have in the feast that was certainly very welcome as well.

Lacking the wheels and the time, and in at least one case the mobility, to do so, we decided not to go to the dog kennel event in Wasilia today that was scheduled for the early afternoon, but that does not mean we did not have an interesting afternoon. I will have more to say about our dinner experience in a separate and forthcoming review, but there was still a lot going on before that. Before the feast my mother and I in particular had been looking to do some flying around Anchorage to further our fondness for enjoying general aviation, and we had tried to schedule a trip to a flight tour to some glaciers that fell through because the company was unable or unwilling to respond back to us. We managed to find a company advertised in a coupon book we got on opening night and it turns out that the weather was good and they advised us not to wait but rather to go today, and so we did.

We arrived to the flight place about an hour early, and that gave the three of us (my stepfather, my mother, and myself) the time to explore the Alaska Aviation Museum across the street, in three hangars that showed off planes, memorabilia, and plenty of information about the history of aviation in Alaska. It checked off all the boxes one would expect from a contemporary museum, starting with a focus on corporate history that included a panorama look at at least three important historical companies in Alaska aviation, including Alaska Air and its corporate history. Other boxes to check off include a focus on women in aviation, indigenous people in Alaska’s aviation history, and an effort to reconcile the military focus of much of the museum’s exhibits with a look at the Japanese perspective of the Aleutian campaign of 1942-1943, which was surprisingly melancholy.

After viewing the museum with considerable interest, since the aviation history of Alaska is not something I was particularly familiar with, and surprisingly more lethal than I had expected it to be, we returned to travel on an hour and a half flight to visit the near glaciers to Anchorage and look for animals, which we were very successful at. The pilot was particularly interested in showing the tidal mud flats on the north side of Anchorage as well as the receding glaciers that are leaving a substantial gap between the trees (which were in full fall colors) growing and the ice falling back a great deal. It must be admitted, though, that as this was going on there was also evidence of an early winter in the glacial melt already starting to freeze. There was a lot of animals that were out in the open for one reason or another, including a couple groups of moose, one of them who the pilot said were doing some sort of dance party on the snows in the Chugach Mountains we flew by, a couple of black bears, and large numbers of sheep and goats who were high up on the mountain, and even a hiker walking down the summit line of one of the mountains. By the time we arrived back at the lake, we had heard plenty of interesting conversations on the ATC, were very hungry, and looking forward to dinner, having enjoyed our explorations of the air and terrain around Anchorage. But dinner is a story for another post.