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So last night I was watching an episode of Northern Exposure with my husband, the episode where Ruth Ann hurts her ankle and Ed gets all freaked out at her turning seventy-five and he ends up throwing her a surprise party and her gift is a patch of land for her grave and before the credits, Ruth Ann says she wants to dance on her grave, because it's one of those rare opportunities, and so they do and the camera pans out and you can see all of that Alaskan glory, the pines and the lake and the great mountains.

The very next episode, by the way, opens with a handful of people (in an old-fashioned circus, bus broke down) walking down a wooded dirt road with a bear on a leash. I cannot handle how much I want to snuggle with one of these tame animals on the show--the elk, the deer, the brown bear. No worries, I still abhor the idea of wild animals as pets, but I still can't help but get squishy at the idea of touching one.