September. Boots, raingear, gloves, old clothes. We’re ready. Four women. Trish, the arborist, is our leader. She’s already dug shallow holes for planting. Small pots with spruce and birch samplings wait in the bed of
Seven women climb up a trail in the Chugach Mountains on a sunny April afternoon. Temperature in the forties. Trail conditions: slush, ice, occasional patches of mud. On our feet, each person wears a different
Black ice bergs flow with the tide in Cook Inlet while Sleeping Lady still rests beneath a thick blanket of snow. Forty degrees by day, twenty-seven by night. Wind, rain, mud, thawing dog poop, filthy
Freeze, thaw, snow, rain, repeat. March weather in Southcentral Alaska is predictably unpredictable. Today, I trek with my hiking group along Campbell Creek, a wild corridor within Anchorage’s city limits. We’re looking for ravens. Not
The sky clears. Five women squeeze into one dusty red sedan and head for the Butte, a destination delayed too many times by bad weather. It’s late August, the rainiest month in Southcentral Alaska. We
Lincoln leans back in his chair staring past the Reflecting Pool at the Washington Monument. I don’t know how it was possible to capture so much pain, sorrow, and strength in one block of white
Eagle River Valley. Southcentral Alaska. The river is ours. We are the only humans traveling this brilliant white highway on a clear March morning. Our voices and the hollow crunch of heavy boots are the
The project took all winter. Drawing plans, scavenging lumber and stained glass, gluing, nailing sanding, staining. A way for my husband Jim to chase away the winter blues. I didn’t tell him I thought no
To celebrate thirty-one years of marriage my husband and I sort trash. Not your average clean-out-the-garage trash, but marine debris. Unimaginable junk tossed or lost at sea. Most couples wouldn’t think of celebrating their anniversary
Ten of us gather around Verna Pratt on a clear sunny day in May in the mountains above Anchorage, Alaska. Verna wrote the books on Alaskan wildflower identification—two of them. Anyone who is curious about
Spring arrived early in Alaska this year. Leaves pop out in mid-April instead of early May. Cranes, geese, and grebes are back already. Is the Kachemak Bay Shorebird Festival too late this year—May 12-15? Will
