Just 20 miles duewest of the city is a 10-foot-high glacial moraine that separates the Mississippi and its vast north-south system of tributaries from the Great Lake waterways.
One day, I flew duewest from Anchorage to the town of Bethel, on the flat, drab sprawl of waterlogged tundra that reaches between the deltas of the Yukon and Kuskokwim Rivers to the shore of the Bering Sea.