 Standing in the crawlspace  Trying to get an idea of the view from the front door  Frame work for the basement stairway  Enjoying having Joe around PTA for a while & his help building the house  CJ & Joe chatting in the kitchen/dining area  Basement & crawlspace framing  Window frame in our unfinished basement (soon to be workout area)  Happy Fall from our fierce guard dog!  An excellent week with Mike & Pam!  Spending Papa Mike's birthday in Talkeetna, AK.  Watching our second DC-6 house load land  Tricky unloading of the septic tank  That's right, all our building materials arrive via aircraft.  Our first DC-6 charter arrived last night full of treated wood for our foundation & basement.  Brush cleared & house corners staked out  Daylight basement & foundation ground work has begun  Driveway course chosen & marked with spray paint  Driveway created with gravel harvested from our house dirt work We are in the thick of designing a house & realized every cozy home needs a name. After much deliberation & not much contest, ours will be affectionately called Tundra Turnaround. There are many reasons for this name, one of the more obvious being that the land is covered with lush tundra, including blueberries & lowbush cranberries. The mosquitos are horrid, so some tundra must go to maintain sanity & allow for the actual construction of the house. Not all will be lost however, because I love the soft tundra & so does Teco. Our property is connected to the Wilder/Natwick runway via a gravel road wide enough to taxi an aircraft down. That being said, we plan on clearing a tie down area in the yard for visiting aircraft & maybe one day a plane of our own. A very our- house-appropriate definition of the word "turnaround": the process of or time needed for loading, unloading, and servicing an aircraft until the next trip. This summer we committed to the unthinkable. We purchased an acre of raw land in the remote, air access only village of Port Alsworth, AK. Even more incredible, CJ & I mentally established ourselves somewhere for longer than one year! After what seemed to be a huge & difficult decision - to buy or not to buy - we are totally relieved & overjoyed to have a small plot of dirt & trees of our very own. Most evenings we take Teco on walks to our acre to dream & plan & pick berries & breathe the fresh air. Our prayer is that this beautiful little section of land would be a blessing to many people.   CJ with Amanda on her wedding day  Autumn with Christy on her first horse ride  Wild Alaskan salmon swim up Lake Clark practically into our backyard - What a treat! After one full year of Alaska residency we fall into the subsistence fishing rules & we were eligible for a free subsistence salmon fishing permit. In layman terms, this means free all you can eat salmon! We canned salmon with the Walsh's this year & Amanda helped orient me to the pressure cooker process. Luke & Eliza delivered nine large salmon straight from the gill net to our door last Friday, so CJ & I had a Friday night date filleting them for the freezer. Salmon is such an interesting culture here. Everyone has been busy with fish preparation for the winter. Some neighbors can, some freeze, some dehydrate, some smoke, some smoke then can, some smoke for 10 days making jerky, or a combination of all. I have enjoyed learning the salmon preservation culture this year & am excited to build on it in the years to come.  |  I lift my eyes to the hills - where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven & earth.
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