Keep on Running

'I see God's hand all over this place,' Sarah Palin says of Alaska in an interview with Runners World. The former mayor, former vice-presidential candidate, now former governor, is much absorbed by running, and it's on a run that she knows profund thoughts. 'As I get out there and run,' Palin says, 'I see the most beautiful signs of this evolutionary process that has created the mountains and the glacial retreats that have left the valleys and the rivers.'

In the version of the resignation speech that was released just before Palin's delivery of the real thing – the two are somewhat different; this isn't the first time Palin hasn't stuck to her script – she expounded on her kind of Alaska:

Alaska's mission – to contribute to America. We're strategic in the world, as the air crossroads of the world, as a gatekeeper of the continent. Bold visionaries knew this – Alaska would be part of America's great destiny... Remember Alaska... America is now, more than ever, looking North to the Future. It'll be good. So God bless you, and from me and my family – to ALL Alaska – you have my heart.

Alaska, the Heathrow of the Arctic circle? Alaska the gatekeeper – from what, exactly?