We’ve been fishing for chum salmon with a 50 foot buoy net for 11 years now. You’d think we might have evolved to expert level, but we haven’t. This year we repeated an old mistake out of desperation during the slowest run we’ve ever seen in our time out in the woods. Fishing is serious business to us. We wouldn’t be running our trapline with a dog team if it weren’t for this important local food source. It would be cheaper for us to fly in fuel for a machine than buy and fly the amount of dog kibble we would need for the dogs without the fish for the dogs.

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Tyler, Sydney and I are back in town. Back to driving cars, spending money at the grocery store, having both wonderful and miserable encounters with our fellow human beings and instead of focusing on harvesting fur as we’ve done all winter we are focused on how to get rid of it. read more…

Oh boy, it’s that time of year again. Time to get our stuff together and leave for the trap line soon. We have been heading out mid August these last few years but it’s looking like mid September this year. We are swamped by finishing up what we started here in ”town” this summer. This month has been a rush. I turned 34 on July 31st and the next day Tyler flew out to our trap line for the second time this summer to finish work on one of our ‘line cabins’ with one of our good friends. read more…

Tyler likes to call summer the season of regret. There is so much to do and little time to do it. Before you know it your planning for the fall and half your list of summer work looks like it will be neglected for one more year. The days go by too fast! I feel like the day has just begun when Sydney wakes up from her late afternoon nap. read more…

If you happened to drive past our driveway last night around 1am you may have seen a lady trying to get comfortable enough to sleep in the front of a single cab pickup, trying to wiggle and scrunch between the door and a babies car seat. She probably looked like an overtired, hairy legged hobo. That was me. read more…

Here it comes, finally. Summertime in Alaska. A mad frenzy of visiting and soaking up the sun. Tyler’s been busy hammering away at  construction projects and I’m busy being a homemaker, Momma, and gardener. Spring has been beautiful so far. Lots of sun and signs of life springing from every nook and cranny of the earth. read more…

I’m working on a few  pieces that require quite a bit of thought and tact, which is a time consuming process for my monkey brain. In desperation to offer something interesting to read while I work on the more difficult pieces I finally came up with an idea. read more…

Danger is part of life. People ask me all the time if I get scared “out there”. People want to hear harrowing stories of how I almost got swallowed by the river or eaten by a bear I suppose. Both situations have come up in varying degrees read more…