Alaska: where the heart is.

• Author: Cutler, Debbie
• Position: From the Editor - Personal account

I actually thought about leaving Alaska--for a nanosecond. My two daughters are grown and gone and living in the Lower 48 with their families. I miss them, and don't get to see them near enough. My parents and brother also live south, and visits come once a year or less.

I've lived in Alaska since 1986 and have since called this home. Home is not Phoenix where I grew up, where I still have friends, where I spent my entire youth.

Home is here, even in the depth of winter. I love Alaska.

I remember the first time I saw this state. I crossed the Canadian border into this Great Land and had to stop my vehicle as a herd of caribou scattered around the car, reminding me of the parting of the Red Sea. I was in awe and turned to my husband of the time and said, "I'm never leaving." I remember my first glimpse of Matanuska Glacier. I remember my first view of Anchorage.

I have great memories of my kids growing up on the same street I live now, starting kindergarten, graduating, going on to college. Alaska is a place they still call home, even though they have been gone for many years and have their own lives in Missouri and Georgia.

ALASKA'S A GOOD PLACE TO LIVE

Alaska has been good to me. Here, as the rest of the U.S. is still in the throes of a recession, we are doing well as a state, and I am doing well as an individual. Here, as magazines nationwide stumble to survive, ABM is still profitable and read by 100,000 monthly.

Alaska offers beauty, a stable housing market, a sound financial industry--and opportunity for growth, if we allow it.

People leave, they come back. They leave, they come back. It's a haunting place. Once it's in your...