Currently: April

Currently living/working: What are we doing for work this summer? Fair question! For summer 2026, my main focus will be working (3rd year!) for the education department of Alaska Geographic, one of the nonprofit partners to Denali National Park. Justin’s main focus will be working at Premier Alaska Tour’s Otto Lake property as a naturalist (giving presentations & hikes) for his 2nd year. We’ll split the cleaning of our yurt & the other property we manage/clean for someone who doesn’t live here. There will certainly still be scheduling olympics, but here’s hoping it’s not too chaotic of a summer! 

Current mood: I feel a bit frazzled during this transition period. There’s always this push of hurry up & get ready for a busy summer after the chill vibes of winter (literally & figuratively).

Currently excited for: We finally started digging out our two yurts this month. It’s been no easy endeavor, and we are still moving snow to mitigate some flooding. We don’t have our first renters until mid-May for Yurt #1. Meanwhile, Yurt #2 is a mess of things that we purchased bit by bit this year. That was another intentional motive for having fewer jobs this summer, as getting Yurt #2 up and ready to rent will be a sizable—yet rewarding—undertaking.

Current confession: Anyone who reads this blog regularly knows I have a grudge against November in Alaska, but I think I might need to also express my disdain for April in Alaska. Sure there’s 16+ hours of daylight, but any leftover snow is like weeks-old mashed potatoes with black gravel gravy mixed in. There’s flooding. There’s mud. There’s wind. Meanwhile, in the middle of all this mess, everyone is going full speed to prep for the tourism season. 

Currently amazed by: I cross-country skied 60 miles this winter, which definitely was a record for me, and sort of shocking up against the coldest winter on record. It helped that there was a 3-mile groomed ski track less than a mile from my cabin, so I literally had no excuse not to get out there for 45 minutes of activity as often as possible. Since I bought new skis this winter, I wanted to prove their worth. I am also lucky I have 2 neighbors who are always up for a ski no matter the conditions, so they kept me accountable! 

Currently not excited for: Justin’s immune system keeps him in a constant battle with something, but I used to be that person that rarely got sick! Now it seems that I pick up every random bug circulating. Justin had bronchitis earlier in the month, and a lesser version of it moved into my system. Then I picked up some other mystery illness while at our Wilderness First Responder training. Not exactly ideal when you are trying to juggle 1000 things and feel like absolute garbage! I remember getting sick 3 times last summer, so I am sure these are not the last germs that will take up residence in my body. 

Current guilty pleasure: I like to joke that Justin works so he can gamble & go to concerts, and frankly, he found the perfect combination of that when the Sphere opened in Vegas. He enjoyed his 6th, 7th & 8th show at the Sphere for Phish! 

Currently proud of: I have finished one year of Alaska Magazine Interviews!  You might remember I scored this anchor gig last spring, and 5 of my interviews have come out in print (I’ve actually completed 10, but that’s how print works … my deadlines are way in advance of the issues). Anyway, it’s been a pleasure to conduct these interviews! 

Currently thankful for: I often say I am a forever student of Alaska, and working at the park as a “pretend ranger” these last 2 months has taught me so much about the park operations. I also participated in some of the Interp department’s training, which I think makes me a better educator!

Currently worried about: Given that this is my 3rd summer working at Alaska Geographic, my role has me facilitating some of the training for the newbies. This is exciting! But a tiny bit of panic when I realize I actually have 10 different presentations I need to give in May! 

Currently regretting: Among the list of things we hope work out, our cabin outhouse is FULL, like nearly at the spillover point (gross, I know). We likely won’t be able to get it pumped until June since the ground is still frozen.  

Currently reading:

I’ve been wanting to read When You Find My Body by D. Dauphinee since it was published in 2019, and finally took advantage of our library’s inter-library loan program, which borrowed it from a library in Seattle. The book is about the disappearance of Geraldine “Inchworm” Largay on the Appalachian Trail in Maine in the summer of 2013. She went off the trail to use the bathroom like a good Leave No Trace steward, but got turned around in the woods. Her husband was set to meet her at the next trailhead, so the search kicked off immediately. Spoiler alert—they didn’t find her body until 2 years later in Oct 2015 (by accident by surveyors). The massive search-and-rescue mission came very close (1/2 mile) to where she was camped waiting and hoping for 26 days that someone would find her before she succumbed to starvation. The book was obviously a lot of speculation, so not riveting storytelling in my opinion, but I think the interesting things I noted were how suspicious the public was of the husband (he was completely innocent) and how many psychics swore she had fallen & injured herself (not true—so many of the leads the investigators received were futile). It definitely brought back fond memories of the AT, which was a nice bonus! 

In keeping with the Maine theme, my friend gifted me We Took to the Woods by Louise Dickinson Rich, which is a semi-memoir about living deep in the woods of Maine back in the 1900s. I found so much of what she wrote on to resonate with my life in modern-day Interior Alaska. “When we get up in the morning, we dress with the idea that we will be outside. We can’t dress for a day in the house because we use the outdoors continuously.” Yep, that’s my life! Louise references the idea of having multiple jobs, including as a writer. I definitely enjoyed her writing, and apparently she’s written a dozen books, so I might have to keep reading her others. 

Justin loves to pick up freebie books for me at the dump, and Mr. Alaska: The Chuck West Story: 60 Years of Alaskan Tourism Bush Pilot to Patriarch by Charles West was his latest find. At first, I thought it was really cool to hear the ingenuity and history of Alaskan tourism from one of the original innovators in the late 1940s through the 1970s. But halfway through the book, I realized this was a play-by-play on all the scrambling he had to do with his multiple business endeavors, and also kind of airing his grievances with trying to outdo bigger players like Holland America.

Currently watching on Netflix/Peacock: We watched 3 short series on Netflix this month! We finished The Serpent on Netflix, which we have been telling everyone who will listen to watch because it’s so well done! Based on true events, the 8-part limited series follows the fascinating story about a serial killer trio targeting hippies in Southeast Asia during the late 1970s!!! We also watched the limited series Run Away. It’s based on a book by Harlan Coben, and Coben’s collections are suspenseful with twists, so I knew it had potential. It delivered just that (although I still like Serpent better). Then we watched Big Mistakes produced by and starring Dan Levy, and it really was hilarious as any of the Levy productions are.