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It was 1958 and twenty below zero outside. On Monday, Mom’s day off from her job at the library, 11 a.m. was too early for television. I think programs started around 2 p.m. back then. TV was recent. We had three channels and, even with our wobbly rabbit ears on the roof, there was a lot of static. Secret Storm danced around so much on the screen, the title was ironic. That left us with reading, writing letters (mom), sewing (me), painting (dad) and storytelling.

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The Chugach Mountains

While not as iconic as its counterparts farther north, the Chugach Mountains offer more than a dozen peaks above the 10,000 feet mark and are home to approximately one third of Alaska’s glaciers. Measured base to summit, the range is Alaska’s second highest coastal range after the St. Elias Mountains to the east.

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Fall Fly Fishing on the Kenai

My boyfriend, Kory, and I have lived in Alaska for most of our lives. We both grew up fishing, but our love of the sport really took off when we started dating. Our schedule mainly consists of work, school, and fishing, so when we were given the opportunity to film a fall fishing episode for Alaska Photoventures with Dan Redfield, we couldn’t pass it up...

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Huna Ancestors House

When the citizens of Hoonah, Alaska, and surrounding Southeast communities arrived at Bartlett Cove in Glacier Bay National Park during the morning of August 25th, 2016, it was a homecoming over 250 years in the making. The powerful events of the day were the culmination of nearly two decades of collaboration between the Hoonah Indian Association and the National Park Service (NPS), helping to heal the past and prepare for the future.

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Juneau's Hidden History

There are only three ways into Juneau, boat, plane or birth canal—I arrived via the third route. My name is Brian Weed, I’m 34 years old and was born and raised in Juneau, Alaska.

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Alaska Gardening - Potatoes

Blisters, Blood, And Two Lucky Sheep

Our Perfect Christmas

Open Water

From Inglewood to the Yukon

An Alaskan Woman's Day at the Spa

Welcome to the New Magazine

It Feels Good to Be Back.

After some cleaning and hard work, we're happy to be back publishing the stories you love from Alaska's best lifestyle magazine.

Latest stories

Alaska Gardening - Potatoes

At a recent family lunch I enjoyed a conversation with my dad and uncle, Gil and Gary Hjellen, about what it was like for them growing up in Wasilla during the 1950s. I love family gatherings, especially when I get to hear new stories from the past. My Uncle Gary shared a story I never heard before from one September day in the early 1950s when he and my dad were picking potatoes at a farm near Wasilla Lake. They were busy harvesting when a pilot from Palmer started showing off his new plane by buzzing the field multiple times. My dad, probably around 11 or 12 at the time, became irritated at the man from Palmer so he threw a potato at the plane and hit his mark. The fancy pilot from Palmer did not buzz that field again. I guess my dad was an early participant in the rivalry between Wasilla and Palmer that continues on to this day.

Blisters, Blood, And Two Lucky Sheep

Father-son memories are never more poignant than those that stem from alone time in the wilderness. When extreme conditions and a near death experience enter that equation, those memories are intensified exponentially … seared into the brain’s deepest storage center.

Our Perfect Christmas

Our first couple of winters living in the bush were a bit hard, no question about that. While we have done without on more than one occasion, we’ve found that by shifting, modifying, or simply making do, we have never suffered living here. It’s been an adjustment but we’ve never done without to the point of physical pain of any kind. Oh, smashed fingers, cuts here and there, disappointments, the mental stress of nature caused by things like 80 mph winds and drifting snow for days on end, rotten thin ice when we need thick solid ice to fly out on. But things have always worked out. We learned quickly to work with what nature gives us, to use what we have at hand, and make the best of it. Winter always has added challenges, most of which many people never think about, but when we do it right and with a bit of luck, the rewards are well worth the effort. Simple things can have large rewards.

Open Water

Late last August I joined a dozen new students, faculty, staff, and the president of Alaska Pacific University on Expedition Alaska. For ten days I rafted the Yukon River from Eagle to Circle. On this trip I saw grizzly bears, camped in remote places, and endured record low temperatures while camping in the Yukon-Charley National Preserve.

An Alaskan Woman's Day at the Spa

Coming from the land of nail salons on every corner, day spas, and standing appointments with your “stylist,” it was quite an adjustment moving to bush Alaska. In my former life I had my hair cut, highlighted and styled every six weeks to the day. I would leave my appointment with Wayne feeling like a million bucks.

Kepler Park

Jesse “Kep” Kepler and his wife, Harriet, lived through a lot of firsts and new beginnings during the pioneering and colony days in the Matanuska Valley. They moved from Illinois in 1925, and spent time living in Anchorage when it was still a tent city; when the parkstrip was the main airport instead of the long expanse of grass, tennis courts, and softball fields it is today. After Jesse moved his family from Anchorage to the railroad town of Matanuska, he spent approximately three years driving the first school bus in the Matanuska Valley. Those were the days when the hardship of transportation was not the rush of commuter traffic making its way to and from Anchorage, or the inconvenience of a delayed flight. People used to spend days and even weeks travelling to and from Alaska, and commuting on a day to day basis from the Matanuska Valley to Anchorage would have been inconceivable. When Jesse’s “school bus” (a Ford Model A) arrived on the shores of Knik, it got stuck in the mud, so a team of horses had to rescue it. Those were the hardships of settling an area off the beaten path during a time when every step required forethought, preparation, and a lot of hard work.