Share This week in my life I…. Staked out my home site where we will begin to build our new home… Wished I could see this boat in it’s prime… Visited Homer Harbor… Saw a mama eagle and her baby (right) Watched my kids work together… Taught Robin to love the weed whacker…and to wear pants next time!
Share Written summer, 2010…warning…this piece is long…but worth the read (or at least look at the photographs of true Alaska wilderness.) We were eighteen steps down the trail when Anthony announced he had to go to the bathroom. And not the easy one. Blood pressure rising so early in the day, Dan unclipped the boys backpack and sent him back to the parking lot outhouse. With thirty-one miles left to go, it was not a good sign. Resurrection Trail runs between Cooper Landing, Alaska and Hope, Alaska with a separate trail that intersects it via Devils Pass, a ten mile [READ MORE]
Share When Mya was younger, she went through a phase where if it wasn’t nailed down, she’d shove it in her pocket and claim it as her own. Not in stores, but within our house. She stole candy, food, toys…and then she moved onto the big one. Cold, hard cash. She started out small. A piece of Almond Roca. A Hershey bar. Change left on the bathroom counter….dollar bills stuck in the dryer trap. No big deal, in the grand scheme of things. But a nickel off the floor is kind of like the ‘gateway drug’ of thievery. And then [READ MORE]
Share When I was fifteen, I stood by my mother in the kitchen and she said, “Do you have any questions for me about sex?” “No,” I answered, rolling my eyes. “Okay, then… there’s a book on the shelf if you need it.” I imagine the relief she felt was great when I said, “no”. And I also imagine she re-thought that conversation a billion times over when I was pregnant a year later. Teen Sex. It’s out there. You can ignore it if that makes you feel more comfortable. It’s still out there. And if your kids aren’t hearing [READ MORE]
Share “It’s odd,” I said to Destini this morning, “to watch your kids grow up and move on with their lives…I rarely hear from Heather anymore.” “Well,” she said, “I probably won’t call every day when I move out either.” “WHAT?????!!!” “Uhm….I mean….I’m sure I’ll live at home until you die of old age and there will be no need to call…” she corrected. It’s such a transformation, this aging of our children. Watching them become individuals, grown-ups, real-life-people. I know we plan for this their whole lives. We raise them with all the hope that they will be able [READ MORE]
Share Billy just walked through the door looking like death and smelling even worse after four days at sea on a salmon boat. This picture doesn’t do him justice…his hair is disgusting and the rest of him aint so peachy either. I wish you could smell him. I wish I couldn’t. “We only had one day worth of actual meals,” he says. “But they kept giving us openers, so we just kept fishing and eating snacks. I was so hungry…” Apparently food is important to a sixteen year old boy. But in Alaska, when the fish are hot…you just keep [READ MORE]
Share This week in my life I….. Hung out on the river with my bff… Dip netted some salmon…lots of salmon… Explored the beach and wondered how boats get on land… Wondered why clams are so attractive to so many… Visited the boat launch during a wind storm… Learned the small boy can do standing back tucks… Wondered who had more fun with the visqueen slip-n-slide… And then saw their little faces…. And knew the answer… Proved how crazy Alaska boys are… And wondered what these kids would be doing…anywhere else… Saw a boat take on too much fish…and [READ MORE]
Share On July 7, 1988, I found myself traveling across Phoenix, Arizona in an un-air-conditioned 67 Gallaxy with red leather seats sticking to the backs of my thighs. Windows rolled down, pony tail flying in the wind, I looked out at the city rolling by…so far from Alaska, so far from home…and wondered how I’d come to be there. I laid one hand across my swollen middle, tugged at the sweaty white satin of my wedding dress as it clung to every curve in the 120 degree sun and tried to imagine a different dream. One where I wasn’t [READ MORE]
Share Ignore the cheesy grin…I’m much better behind the camera! I’ve spent the last two days at the mouth of the Kenai River dip netting Sockey (Red) Salmon from a boat. It’s my version of “I’m broke so I gotta get food somewhere” and besides, I LOVE to dip net. If you’ve no idea what I’m talking about…let me fill you in. Pretty empty out there today…I’ve seen it thick like flies. In Alaska, we have a huge subsistence lifestyle. Many, many people live off the land, hunt and grow their own food and sustain their families with their own [READ MORE]
Share It’s just after midnight and if you’d driven by my house a few moments ago, you’d have seen me in my pajamas, blood up to my elbows, chasing a salmon head around the grass in the dark. Even as I sit and type, scales are still attached to my forearms and two bandaids stop the flow of blood where I punctured my finger tips with vertebrae. Such is the life…of the mother of an Alaskan fishermen. Billy started his day at 4 a.m. and just walked in, twenty hours later, proudly displaying six giant Sockeye Salmon he’d brought for [READ MORE]
