How much do you know about Siberia?  Although the writings of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn about Stalin's Gulags have tended to create, for many of us, feelings of dread about the region, the land itself remains magnificent.  Remote, largely pristine, and perched on the edge of forest and tundra, an enduring gateway to the deepest Arctic, Siberia is a spectacular place.

    As I have been reading George Kennan's (yes, he is related to the twentieth century American diplomat) account of his journey through the region in the late nineteenth century, I have thought much about the irony of how sometimes places of the most remarkable beauty become places of the most chilling horror.  It's tragic.

    But redemption persists even in the darkest of darknesses.  As Solzhenitsyn observed after his release from the Gulag, “Bless you prison, bless you for being in my life. For there, lying upon the rotting prison straw, I came to realize that the object of life is not prosperity as we are made to believe, but the maturity of the human soul.”

    Well put.  What, really, is the most important thing?