Dog sleds and cold beds.(Airman's Notebook)(Alaska)(Column)

When the editor was looking for a volunteer to shoot a feature story in Alaska, my hand shot up quicker than an ejection seat busting an F-16 canopy,

For one, I'd never set foot in the "Last Frontier" and have heard nothing but glowing accolades front fellow Airmen who'd been stationed there. Secondly, one of the stories involved shadowing a group of arctic survival students for a week. Having completed the Air Force's combat survival course at Fairchild Air Force Base, Wash., in 1998, I felt like it was familiar turf.

Fortunately, our journey started in Montana, which served as a dry run for the colder temperatures we'd experience later in the month-long assignment. It was there that I discovered how poorly my gloves and sucks insulated my hands and feet. After a 20-minute outing with security forces patrolling a fence one icy morning, I limped back inside on numb feet to thaw a pair of hands that felt like they'd barehanded a Wayne Gretzky slap shot. When a young salesman at a local sporting goods store introduced me to polypropylene glove inserts and Smart-Wool socks, my frostbite worries melted.

Upon arriving at the Anchorage airport, I picked up a local newspaper to acquaint myself with Alaskan culture and current events. On the front page, a sled-dog team sprinted at full stride with text that detailed the rigors of navigating the new 1,150-mile trail for the upcoming Iditarod sled-dog race. A smaller feature introduced a blind woman from Oregon who was lobbying for approval to enter the race with her team of dogs. On page 3, a hotel made entirely from ice was the latest rage on the tourist circuit. Further back in the paper, family members were killed when their car collided with a moose--a common type of accident I later learned.

While fascinated with the local lifestyle, all the stories were totally ...