By WILLIAM YARDLEY
Published: May 23, 2010
WASILLA, Alaska — Stepping quickly toward his big black Dodge Ram truck, Todd Palin offered a few highlights of the weekend ahead.
An enormous structure rising beside the Palins’ house on Lucile Lake has people talking. Speculation has it including a television studio, among other features.
His youngest daughter, Piper, had a dance rehearsal. His oldest son, Track, would be helping out on the sprawling new addition to the family property on Lucile Lake. The toddlers, his son Trig and his grandson Tripp, would keep everyone on their feet. And his wife would be home for the weekend.
“Everybody,” said Mr. Palin, smiling, the late Alaska light washing over him. “All together.”
Sarah Palin’s big new life is remarkable for its smallness. She is as remote as she is overexposed. Even as she travels the country stirring up Tea Party apostles, poking at opponents and building a robust bank account through speaking fees, book royalties and television contracts, she comes home to one of the more unlikely launching pads in politics — and she apparently will not be pulling up stakes anytime soon.
“Where else would we go?” Mr. Palin said. “Alaska is our home.”
Things have changed, of course. Ms. Palin is often away, sometimes joined by her husband and some combination of their five children. Her father, Chuck Heath, who lives in town, said in a recent interview that he had not seen her in a month. While people say that Piper might turn up at Wasilla Bible Church with a cousin and that her parents attend community basketball games, sightings are far less frequent than they were when Ms. Palin was governor and friends from high school bumped into her at the Wal-Mart Supercenter.
But few people press.
“We don’t want her to feel like we want something from her,” said Adele Morgan, a longtime friend who said she had not seen Ms. Palin since public picnics the governor hosted as she left office last July.
When Senator John McCain chose Ms. Palin to be his running mate on the Republican presidential ticket in August 2008, scrutiny of her also meant scrutiny of Wasilla, from city finances when Ms. Palin was mayor to the city’s strip-mall aesthetic. Places like the Mocha Moose espresso stand or Chimo Guns became props for quickly turned theses on what the Palins and Wasilla said about America. Now, on clear days, the surrounding mountains might seem to swallow Wasilla up again, restoring a measure of obscurity, and something like normalcy.
“The world came to Wasilla,” said Janet Kincaid, a friend of Ms. Palin’s parents, “but Wasilla didn’t change. We’re still what we were.”
Not everyone sees it that way.
“Normal isn’t the same now as it was,” said Craig Pell, who works at Chimo. “Wasilla kind of lost its innocence.”
People who once shared intimate details about the Palins have long since learned to be quiet. Some grumble privately about how the governor they voted for resigned and appears to have become a multimillionaire in short order.
Lyda Green, a former State Senate president from Wasilla and a reliable Palin critic, said: “I don’t hear a lot of favorable comment. I don’t usually bring it up.”
Ms. Palin’s inner circle has contracted in recent months, with some of her closest longtime Alaska aides — including Meghan Stapleton, a spokeswoman, and Ivy Frye, who helped research her book, “Going Rogue” — departing. Rumors of family discord still rumble across the Internet. Reports have tried to pin down Ms. Palin’s accumulation of wealth ($12 million?) since she resigned as governor. Yet virtually no one who might know the truth appears willing to talk publicly. Family members are certainly wary.
“Are you the guy who’s been writing all that crap about us?” Mr. Palin barked at an approaching reporter.
A few moments later, less testy, he seemed amused at the soap opera of it all, grinning, eyes wide, as he feigned curiosity. “Have you talked to Levi?” He lingered on the long vowels in the first name of Levi Johnston, his grandson’s father, whose relations with the family have been strained.
Even the most concrete new development in the Palin family, an enormous structure rising beside their existing 3,400-square-foot house on Lucile Lake, is something of a mystery. Based on the limited evidence in the planning department at Wasilla City Hall (the city does not require building permits), the building’s footprint alone is 6,000 square feet, but much of it is two stories. Various sources have said the project includes a television studio (Fox News, Mr. Heath said), apartments for Mr. Palin or the Palins’ older children (Bristol Palin, 19, has said, however, that she is living on her own with Tripp and paying her own bills with the help of handsome speaking fees) and a well-appointed office for Ms. Palin.
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