“Outside, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“But it’s nicer too, isn’t it?”

“I think so.”

“I do, too.” She had been nowhere. “But if it’s rougher and harder why did you and Grampa Czar come? And then stay here?”

“You know all about that as well as I do. You know we came on the same ship. Czar came to earn his living and get rich if he could, which is a fair and legitimate ambition. I came to study Alaska, in a way, and I thought it would give me a feeling of freedom, and it did. I did my work and Czar did his. So we’ve both lived the life we wanted to live. We’ve lived history. Anybody who lives even a year in Alaska is history.”

From the vantage of her grade-school knowledge Christine disputed this statement. “You have to be dead to be history. History is war. And long journeys to places like the Pilgrim Fathers. In history you wear different clothes and do brave things or bad things, and anyway you’re always dead if you’re history. At the end, I mean.”

Thor might have retorted flippantly, “Aren’t we all!” But he cared too much for that. He cared too much about the child Christine; and about Alaska. To him they were not merely a beloved human being and a region at once familiar, dear, and awesome. They were symbols of the future of the human race.

“History is just people, Christine. History isn’t only yesterday. It’s today. We’re making history right now, this minute, here in Alaska. There is no history without people, any more than there is sound without hearing. If a great tree falls in the forest and there is no one there to hear it, it falls without sound—no, forget that, it will only confuse you. What I am trying to say, child, is that for about three quarters of a century now—ever since 1867—Alaska has been a living example of United States history. And you are part of it. You are history.”

The child stared at him. “Me! This minute!’

“This minute. You.”

“Are you history, too?”

“I am. And so is your Grandpa Czar. And Bridie.”

“Well, my teacher didn’t say so.”

“Then you tell her. Those people who came to Virginia and Massachusetts and California and Oregon a hundred years ago, or two hundred or three, are history, but they didn’t know it then. Alaska is history made while you wait. People who live through such things and stay with it, and their children, and their grandchildren—–”

“Like me?”

“Yes, like you, Christine. Those people have what is called the élan vital.”

“What does that mean?”

“I was going to tell you. It means a vital drive, a strong life force. Enthusiasm. Vigor. They endure, they last, in spite of everything—hardships, and enemies, and hunger, and fear. It’s a wonderful thing to have, it’s the most valuable quality you can possess. Whole nations have it. The English people have it, and the Norwegians. Perhaps a few besides. The Jews, too. They’ve persisted these thousands of years in spite of incredible horrors. It is a quality that can’t be taught, it can’t be commanded. It must spring from within. The United States has had it for centuries. Boiled down, the essence of it is the will to keep your spirit and independence even at the cost of your life. But now things are too easy, too lavish, too rich in the United States, we’ve grown soft and careless. The vital drive has weakened, we let others act for us, they think for us, even play our games for us. The drive now isn’t much more than a mechanical thing at the wheel of a big shiny automobile. We’re losing it. It may already be lost.”