Going Rogue: An American Life (26 page)

Chapter Three

Drill, Baby, Drill

Our

to

.
…
I will tellyou 01le of

we rememoer 011 our

We rememoer

our

for it-with

lives.

-JOHN

I stuckmyheadoutthewindowofmyblackJettaandshifted

into fifth aftet cresting Thompson Pass. It was winter 2005. The girls were finally asleep, and I needed another gulp of ten-below-zero air to keep from joining them. I fumbled with the CD changer, loaded the kids’ Toby Keith, and cranked up “How Do You Like Me Now?!”

It was the middle of the night, and I had just emptied my last sugar-free Red Bull. I was already second-guessing my decision to drive the twelve-hour round-trip to the Valdez meet-and-greet campaign event in the middle of winter—a distance like going from Raleigh, North Carolina, to New York City. Thompson: Pass is treacherous in the winter, with an average snow dump of fifty feet, and I kicked myself for not driving Todd’s big Dodge truck even though it was cheaper to drive my little diesel car. I read once that the winter of ‘52-‘53 had dumped eighty-one feet of
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SARAH

PALIN

snow in the area. I picrured that while I sought familiar landmatks ahead in the dark distance. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that I was on the right road now, but it was a tough road to barrel down in the dark. I’d finally decided ro toSS my hat in the ring to replace Frank Murkowski as governor, and I was having a ball working long, intense days. Road trips became our campaign
MO
since we didn’t have funds to fly, especially when I wanted to take the kids to a campaign event. One-day round-trippers like rhis one weren’t ideal, but they were necessary and usually a lot of fun as I worked to cover the State during rhe yearlong gubernatorial campaign.

Now, with the dark ribbon of highway unfurling in the headlights, my thoughts drifted back to a question my friend Rick Halford had asked me that summer: “Do you remember the story of David and the five stones?”

A former State Senate president, Rick was the quintessential Alaskan: an outdoorsman and private pilot who flew between his home in Chugiak and the fishing village of Aleknagik. Quier and deeply thoughtful, he was a veteran public servant who I felt had served for the right reasons and had been smart enough to get out while the getting was good-about a term before corruption grew deep roots
in
Alaska’s State House. We first mer back
in
1992 at a Wasilla community forum, where he heard me speak about my
vision
of a fiscally conservative government as I was campaigning for ciry council. Rick had recently married one of Todd’s childhood friends from Dillingham. Over the summer of 2005, he had called a few times to share his concerns about the direction of the state.

“You have the five stones,” Rick said in one of those calls. “You have the right positions on
ethics,
on energy, on government’s approptiate role. It’s an out-of-the-box

and you won’t get the

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