How a High Rise Couple Ended up Living in an Alaskan Log Cabin - The Purchase

(I welcome your comments and questions through the "comments" option below any entry. --Laura)

In 2002, my husband and I took the Inside Passage cruise where he fell in love with Alaska.  Soon he was reading blogs about the state, and engaging in conversation any folks who had lived there.  He even invested in a business near Juneau.  I bought him a subscription to Alaska Magazine so he could coo over its gorgeous photos.  Soon, he started reviewing real estate listings for remote properties, none of which looked particularly realistic to me, given that we lived in a high-rise in Houston, TX and lacked the funds for the attractive or even the ramshackle log cabins featured in the listings. Still, if he was enjoying internet real estate “porn” instead of other websites, it seemed like a harmless enough diversion. 

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Before

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Four years later, when he was particularly missing the state, he decided to return to Alaska with his dad for some fishing and good father/son time.  I immediately called my dear father-in-law and prevailed upon him to ensure that Bryan would NOT buy any property without my seeing it first.  This was an ironic request since this is exactly what my father-in-law had done to my incensed mother-in-law decades before, when he returned to their suburban Chicago home after a weekend of hunting with the announcement that he had just bought a 140 acre tree farm in the middle of Wisconsin!  After their fishing trip, Bryan was ecstatic.  He regaled me with delightful stories of their flying into a different fishing camp every day or so, of the lovely scenery they had seen, and the down-to-earth people they had met.  He returned with the thrill of the hunt to his remote real estate websites, trying to entice serious enthusiasm from me for what I still regarded as his version of a fantasy football game.  

What Do You DOOOO All Day?

(I welcome your comments and questions through the "comments" option below any entry. --Laura)

Over the past four years of transitioning from a high rise Southern lifestyle to a bush Alaskan one, we have received quite a number of quizzical looks and questions.  Virtually all of my relatives and close friends have said, at one point or another, "Laura - I never thought you would do this" and I certainly don't disagree.

Some of the questions can be divided by gender.  For example, from male friends, Bryan heard two opposite ones:  1) "How on earth did you get your wife to go up there with you?" and 2) "Why on earth would you want your wife up there with you?"  I'm not sure whether the sentiments say more about the questioner or about their impression of me, but I can say that I have never had any women ask me those questions about my husband!

The questions from women fall into two camps, too.  One group is interested in how we do things.  I think of these as the Laura Ingalls Wilder questions.  The other group is made up of individuals, who, for the most part, have no interest in words like "kayak" or "bonfire."  I think of these as fish-out-of-water questioners, like Eva Gabor in "Green Acres" because that is how I first felt! They ask, with a disbelieving shake of the head, "What on earth do you do all day?" Each one finds some particular aspect of our life appalling. 

Fire (including starting one at 10 below)

(I welcome your comments and questions through the "comments" option below any entry. --Laura)

We think about fire all the time, all year long.  Heat, cooking, light, bug deterrent, danger.  Thank goodness for Prometheus!  

Living in a log cabin in the woods, off road and plumbing system, means that we need to be particularly careful about fires. There is no such thing as home insurance in such a situation!  Alaska wildfires ANNUALLY burn about one MILLION acres.  Last year, there were 495 wildfires in the state.  Most of these are in the interior, near Fairbanks, started by lightning or humans and fueled by high winds. 

Below are examples of our fire prevention, fire as bug deterrent, and starting a fire at -10 below F.

Hope for the Promised Land

What does the word, hope, mean to you?  We bandy the word about, hear it in passages like “faith, hope, and charity” but how do those first two words differ, for instance?   I realized recently that I had never really defined it for myself.  Have you?  I think that is a good project for January, particularly in an election year, when we’ll probably hear a lot about it!  Let me share some of my thoughts on the etymology of the word and its use in the Bible – a book that’s all about hope -  in order to encourage you to determine your own definition and to think about what other people may mean when they use the word.

 In my mind, hope is weaker than faith or belief.  Like the story of Pandora’s box, hope arises as a positive antidote to the impediments of life.  Children, for example just want, they don’t hope, because they don’t yet sense the possibility of “no.”   If I express a sentiment like, “I hope that Mom will get better” that is vaguer than “I believe she will” or “I have faith or confidence that she will.”  You can see that my impression of the word is rather lame and floppy, so political rhetoric about “hope and change” or “hope and progress” make me roll my eyes.  They seem like easy platitudes to trot out with Uncle Sam and apple pie.    

 However, I realize that people use the word in different ways than I do and I wondered if that was true historically, too.  If so, that might change my interpretation of significant documents.

The etymology of the English word, hope, is unknown, but it seems to be from a North European, Germanic source that may have something to do with the English word, hop.  I love that connection.  It suggests that hope does not mean something I can reach from where I stand; rather I have to take a little leap toward the object of hope in order to reach it or perhaps even to see it.   

What about in the Bible?  That book is full of hope for the Promised Land in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) and for Salvation in the New Testament.  Were the word choices in the Hebrew of the Old Testament and the Greek of the New Testament as loosey goosey as my understanding or something stronger?  ln Biblical Greek straight through to modern Greek, the word for hope is elpida.  It is often used as a girl’s name. The word is more assertive than in my definition.  It encompasses a sense of expectation.  When you hope for something, you do not have it in hand but you expect to get it.

Financial Transitioning from One Lifestyle to Another of Your Choosing

(I welcome your comments and questions through the "comments" option below any entry. --Laura)

To most people who have asked how on earth we have managed to move from a city life in the South to a bush cabin in Alaska, my quip has been “my husband’s mid-life crisis.”   Some nod sagely, as though they KNEW it had to be something like that, and then turn to other subjects. Others, though, don’t let us off the hook so easily.  They lean in and inquire, “No, really, how?”  I sense a plaintiveness in the question:  Maybe it means: “I once wanted to do something like that.  Maybe it means:  “How does one let go?”    My impression is that the subtext of these questions is how do you shed a lifestyle loaded with heavy financial and time commitments, like mortgages, car loans, tuition payments, business and social obligations, and all the things we think we are “supposed to buy and do.”  

We did not transition quickly.  It took many years, starting before Alaska was even considered.  While other blog entries describe our life off the beaten path, this entry attempts to reconstruct concrete changes we made that anyone might implement, in advance, in the city, on the job, in order to enable lifestyle changes of their choosing.

I think of the process like brushing a dog.  You’ll be surprised by the amount of light weight dead hair you remove from a dog.  Afterward, s/he looks exactly the same (or better) and you don't miss the dead hair. 

My three pieces of advice follow, with examples for each:

1)    Shed expenses you don’t value

2)    Shed commitments that cost more in time and money than you value 

3)    By doing 1 and 2, you will become more intentional.  You will create a “values map” that makes either/or choices clearer, enabling you to free up dollars and hours you can allocate in different ways more to your liking.