In 1984, when I was a mere 3 years old, my parents decided it was time to embark on a new and exciting adventure. To move to Alaska. Alaska is a beautiful and wild place now, twenty-five years ago, it was even more so. In the last Homesteading Act of the United States, my family drove into the wilderness, plotted out five acres of land, and built a house. I'm sure the journey up to Alaska from Washington was quite an adventure, everything we owned was in a Ford car, I was so little, and not even completely potty trained, but according to Mum, I became potty trained really quick!! As a parent myself, I can't imagine trying to potty train a little girl in a place with no toilet. What a brave woman my mum is!! I have brief snapshots of this time of travel, playing in the back seat of that crowded car, eating in restaurants...and sleeping in a tent for a month while Dad fashioned what would be our home. No one could have prepared us for the years to come...no electricity, no running water, no phone, this was of course, the days before computers and Internet. I loved running in the trees, and playing with bugs (which is soooo gross to me now that I HATE bugs), and fashioning igloos in the winter.

One of my most vivid memories is of our dog, who slept with us in the tent. He was a husky mix of some sort. After suggesting a few names, my Dad, not agreeing with any of them, suggested we name his Somethin' Else. And so we did. Somethin' Else was my best friend, it was lucky for us that the day we discovered he was also not completely potty trained, in the tent, was the day we were able to move into our new home. It was also the official first day of winter, as the snow began to fall....

So, with great excitement, my Mum hung up curtains, and my dad fashioned a couch out of plywood. They bought a propane cook stove and a wood burning stove to heat our house. Our refrigerator was a hole dug into a permafrost ground lined with plastic and covered with a piece of wood, and our bathroom was a toilet built of wood over a bucket. Seriously, how many of you have experienced that!! I'm always just been so happy that I was a little girl and cleaning the "honey bucket" wasn't my job. I much rather preferred heating up water to wash our few mix matched dishes. Then again, dishes have never been my strong point, and I am sure my Dad always rewashed them. Where did we get our water for all of this, you ask...stay tuned for my next chapter, and you'll find out about the creek that never froze....