He was a California boy who had spent twelve years in Alaska before finding his spiritual home in Asia. He still had contacts in Anchorage, where friends were trying to get things started - principally funding - so he could continue his work. "We wanna get a kinda circulation going between here and 'Laska," he told me confidently, before admitting that little was happening across the waters and he was pretty much on his own.

He obviously adored his girlfriend. She was, he said, bright and peppy with plenty of ideas and eager to get ahead. He had been dating her for three months and hadn't laid a hand on her. "I know the score," he told me with a firm shake of his head. Instead, he went to dinner with her family three nights a week and took pains to present himself as a serious suitor, not some seedy tourist on the make. I liked him for his earnest naiveté and thought, even if his project fails he will have convinced at least one family that not every foreigner scours the streets, looking for a casual screw. I wished there were more like him.