My family is originally from Siddga, Alaska. I'm the third oldest to five children with

three brothers and one sister. When I was 15, my dad decided to take a better job in

the lower 48, so we moved to Bluet, Washington. We brought our two pet dogs with us, a

border collie named Aunny, and chance our golden retriever. This was the first time in my

life I would call another place home. We moved into a two-story house, deep in the woods

on top of a slight hill, on the side of a spur of the East Cascade Mountains near Wanachi

National Forest. It was originally built by a mountaineer who came there with some friends

to mine the golden silver. It was notched into a clear space that was 30 feet in diameter

and was surrounded by a dense wall of trees. In addition to these, there were fruit trees

and maples planted by a former tenant. The property also contained a chicken coop and a pin,

again built by the former occupant. Our closest neighbor was a co-manager of a logging company

from Estonia. He was a reserved polite man who was approaching middle age. He spent half

the year living alone in Bluet and the other half in Switzerland. Several times he came

over to cut down dead or dying trees that my parents were concerned might fall on their

children or stove in their house, and in return my parents invited him to supper and gave him

homemade jams. My brothers and sisters and I were excited to move into our new home in its

surrounding. There was even a hot tub and a swing on the porch that ran along the northeast side

of the house. Aside from visits over the holidays to family and friends in the deep south,

I had never visited much less lived anywhere outside of Sitka. Most people hear about the state

of Alaska and they think wilderness. Despite Sitka being situated between the mountains in the sea,

we weren't the kind of family who got out into nature. We did take the occasional hike and we

had our share of camping and fishing trips, but it wasn't until we moved to Bluet that we started

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