Welcome to The Living Alaska Project

Liv.ing A.las.ka [liv-ing uh-las-kuh] noun the act or condition of a person or thing that lives with the wild and exciting frontier mentality.

Hi.  We’re Tim and Diana.  We hunt.  We fish.  We explore.  We ski. (Tim skis.  I fall). We can see Russia from our backyard (I might have plagiarized that) We try to live Alaska to its fullest.  We do all the things you would expect Alaskans to do, but now we want to do it better. This is our re-discovery of living this Alaska life.

Tim and I moved to Alaska from New England almost 10 years ago.  Our beginnings in this great state were in Fairbanks in a one room cabin that we shared with our dog Reed.

Our Baby Girl, Reed, not being very lady-like and laying in a puddle.

We had an outhouse.  We had to use the outhouse at 40 below.   We now reside in Valdez, no longer with an outhouse.  I’m glad we no longer have an outhouse.

We spend a lot of time outdoors. We own 4 chest freezers, and right now they are full of salmon, halibut, ling cod, rockfish, spot prawns, tanner crab, ptarmigan, duck, goose, caribou, deer, mountain goat, and moose.  Needless to say we don’t shop for meat, and that’s the way we like it.  It’s our REAL organic, free range meat store.  (Take that Whole Foods) (Just Kidding, I love Whole Foods) (We don’t have a Whole Foods in Alaska, but we do have some nice farmers markets) (Too bad it’s winter nine months of the year) (Anyone sick of parentheses yet?) Anyway, Tim and I also do a little bit of foraging for mushrooms, berries, and intertidal goodies, but we want to do more.  I am on a mission to learn more.

So here we are, starting a blog.  Why a blog you may ask? Why, thank you for asking.  Our first reason for this blog is to share our adventures (or misadventures as they may be) as we try new activities and new techniques, and we hope we can get comments and insights from our friends, and our soon-to-be friends that may be a bit more knowledgeable. We love hunting and fishing and playing, but we’ve been doing things the same way for a while, and now we are ready to kick things up a notch.  We had a revelation a few months ago.  An awakening of sorts.  The clouds parted, rays of light glimmered down onto us, and an angelic whisper spoke to us through the wind telling us there was a better way.  Ok, maybe not.  Truth is I really had an awakening, but I had it while watching TV.  I’ve been watching a lot of TV lately, which leads me to reason #2.

Reason to write this blog #2:  Keep me motivated and accountable.  I am hoping that the mere act of having to write blog posts encourages me to get out and do more so that I have blog-worthy posts.  I’m hoping the next time I flop myself in front of the TV, I may feel guilty that I didn’t do anything worth blogging about. So if we don’t post, make sure you harass us.

Finally, and most importantly, our third reason to write a blog is to share our activities with our family and friends, who always request photographs and the harrowing tales that accompany them.  Hi mom.

We hope you enjoy our journey as much as we do.  Welcome to The Living Alaska Project.