***You may have noticed that my website got hacked for most of May into June. My website guy said there is no rhyme or reason for why I was targeted, but “they” (not a real person) installed a pretty vicious malware virus that kept self-replicating. Then the backups to the server were taking crazy long (could be the fact I’ve been blogging since 2008), so he had to do a bunch of individual file backups that were obviously time-consuming. He’s has been untangling that mess to restore all to working order & put in some new protections. Which is why I am Currently Thankful For my always available website expert, Brice! But also Currently Regretting not being able to blog this month; I truly missed it!! And also Currently Worried About getting my website hacked again. What a hassle that was.
Currently living/working: Justin is going into his 3rd year of guiding, and I into my 2nd. We’re excited to be back working outside in the playground of Denali, sharing the magic of where we live with visitors and fostering a connection for them to the natural world. Besides guiding, we have our yurt Airbnb yurt rental, which was booked up nearly everyday in May. I am still cleaning 1 other Airbnb (for now). As for writing, Justin has a few deadlines through the summer, but otherwise, writing and library presentations are on the back burner until fall/winter!
Current mood: My nervous system went from lowkey offline to using all bandwidth in May. Summer grind has slowly swept us up, and now we are definitely in overdrive. But here’s to the longer days of productivity and warmer weather. Is it 1pm? 1am? Is time running backward?

Currently excited for: Justin is getting his music fix this month at Telluride!! This will be his 4th time going (2002, 2010, 2013, 2023), and it’s the 50th Anniversary. There’s a whole group of friends going (including his sister), so he is pumped! As for me, we hosted our first visitors the first week in June (Justin’s other sister and kids! – blog post coming), and have more visitors coming this summer/fall. I love introducing Alaska our friends and family!
Current guilty pleasure: We spent tons of time outside in May, mostly for guide training. The weather had been decent (Very Alaskan: high of 70 turned into a low of 27 48 hours later, relentless wind and a few days of cold rain). In general, I’ve never been a spring lover, but Alaska puts me on the daily quest for signs of spring/summer. Between the wood frogs emerging from their cryo-preservation months spent as frozen amphibians and chirping from 5/8 until 6/1, the song birds arriving in droves and singing 19 hours/day, the green stubble poking through the dried up grasses that have been napping all winter, and the wildflowers adding splashes of color to the forest floor, every new day is full of dynamic spellbinding beauty.
Currently not excited about: Oh the woes of remote living. There are only a few options for Internet in these parts, and we opted to go with a Verizon hot spot for the yurt and our cabin. Well, an AT&T tower went out this winter, and now just shares a Verizon tower. Spring/summer means our population doubles (maybe triples), so our Internet has been painstakingly slow thanks to the congestion and overload. We’re still years away from getting 5G coverage, so I think this will be an ongoing problem. We may have to succumb to getting Starlink, although we are waiting for the verdict from others.
Currently proud of: We finally sold our trailer. We purchased it in 2021 to haul our stuff from storage up to Alaska, and thought we’d sell it right away after unloading it. Two years later, we still were relying on it for extra storage, but we finally pared down enough to send it off with a new owner.

Currently amazed by: The inefficiency of our health care system. I can’t believe how much time we spend in life making phone calls to service providers, billing, insurance, etc, because of silly mistakes on their part.
Current confession: We miss Ted (our temporary cat we were cat sitting for the past 6 months). She left June 1. But honestly, we’re so busy and not home very often during the long summer days, so she would be lonely. Plus, her owners were ecstatic to have her back after 6 months apart!!!! Good thing she is only a few miles away and I have visitation rights.

Currently reading: I read 2 books in May.
I finally read Alone in the Wilderness, the very popular book about Dick Proenneke, who decided to build a cabin in remote Alaska in 1967 for his retirement. I saw the movie years ago (made from Dick’s personal footage), but didn’t appreciate it back then, and never read the book. As per usual whenever I read something from these pioneering Alaskans, I am utterly amazed by their fortitude and inventive ways … I mean the man made hinges (and so many other things) out of a gas can tin.
I also read The Sunset Route: Freight Trains, Forgiveness, and Freedom on the Rails in the American West by Carrot Quinn. I’ve been a multi-year fan of Carrot’s writing via her first book about thru hiking, her blog, newsletter and other social media. This memoir dives into Carrot’s background, and—if I’m being completely honest—I’m almost sorry I asked. It’s a crushing story about an incredibly hardscrabble life growing up in Anchorage, AK, which gives insight about some of Carrot’s questionable life choices. This book jumps timelines, but mainly focuses on her impoverished childhood with a mentally ill mom and illegally riding freight trains around the country in her later teen years.
Currently watching on Netflix/Hulu/HBO Max/Starz/AMC: Neither our Internet range, nor our schedule, has allowed for much streaming. We sneak in an episode of Below Deck once in awhile, but it’s mostly okay to be spending less time with mindless streaming.
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Ron Jr. gave us Dick Proenneke’s DVDs a while back. We are in awe of him and what he accomplished all by himself! One of our favorite go-to DVDs. I truly believe Uncle Ron and I were Alaskans in another life!