Greg

Lauri's been in Alaska for about 30 years. The first time I went to see her I had just graduated from Arizona State University and my graduation gift was a plane ticket to Anchorage. Woohoo ! I spent two months up there -- hitch-hiking around, driving a forklift on the boat dock, helping Lauri build her cabin, taking loads of photographs (slide film back then, whew! that cost a small fortune). Lauri's neighbor wasn't using her cabin and said I could stay there, so I had this cute little A-frame to myself. It didn't have plumbing, but once I learned how to keep the mosquitoes off my butt, going outside was no problem.

The second time I visited it was because Lauri was getting married. I was her wedding photographer. Unfortunately I didn't experience the wedding -- you can't really enjoy or participate when you're busy recording it all for posterity.

The third time I went to Lauri's, it was because I was having a personal crisis and needed to hang out someplace far away from my home in San Diego. Lauri took good care of me and let me spend entire days driving around in her car with her wonderful dog Scupper. He's the only dog I've ever liked.

Lauri divorced that first guy and has been with Greg now 17 years. He is amazing. He is the man who knows how to do everything and does it all well. One time, when my husband and I went to Napa (where Lauri's parents lived) to see Lauri and Greg, he was working on a quilt. It was beautiful. And he builds things and makes sausage and flies a plane. He's quite special.

I need to get up there again soon. It's been a really long time since I've seen my lovely friend and her little corner of paradise.

Where in the world is Lauri?

I just realized you might not have any idea at all where Lauri is. Of course not, how could you? I haven't shown you where she lives. Let's rectify that right now:


This is a map of the Kenai Peninsula and the Cook Inlet (click the map, it gets bigger). Lauri lives in Kasilof, Alaska. See the little black box? That's Kasilof. At the top of this map is Anchorage. Lots of people have heard of Anchorage, not many have heard of Kasilof. Perhaps you've heard of Homer, Alaska? It's below Kasilof.





So, that's where Lauri built her house. It started as a one room cabin and over the years became a three bedroom house, with an attached greenhouse (naturally -- how else would she be able to grow 4 kinds of tomatoes for her sauces and salads?) and garage. There used to be a gigantic workshop in the yard. I slept there when I visited in the summer of 1991, my third trip to Alaska.






This is the view from Lauri's living room and from her bedroom. Wouldn't you love to watch the sun set behind Mt. Redoubt every evening? Of course it doesn't look quite like this in the winter months. That mountain is across the Cook Inlet from Kasilof. It's a very, very, very long way away.



These pictures remind me of how connected to nature I felt while I was there -- and how disconnected from nature I feel in my life now. I'm sure there are beautiful, natural settings and critters I could see if I went far enough from my house. But in Alaska you have to go a long way to NOT see beautiful, natural settings.

Yum!

Lauri can bake. Well, bake and cook and make pasta and smoke salmon and put up the summer harvest. It's in her DNA. She can make your mouth water from 3 miles away. Her upbringing was very much about food and its correct arrangement. What she doesn't know, isn't worth knowing. I've eaten the best meals ever in her kitchen. The first year she lived in Alaska, I went up for the summer to help build her house. She was living in a trailer the size of my laundry room next to the building site on her 5 acres. The pilings were already done when I got there and the floor joists were hung. The trees that made the walls of the cabin came from Lauri's land and some she bought. I sat for days scraping the bark off the logs. It was incredible to watch this construction. In Alaska, construction can only be done for about 3 months -- after the summer, forget about it, it's simply not going to happen. Needless to say, her cabin site was a flurry of activity. But there was always, always, always a fabulous dinner. It didn't hurt that there was so much fresh salmon and halibut around. And she didn't have this great kitchen, the evening meal was done on a barbecue or in her wok. I remember one time she stir fried some pork that had been marinading in beer and then, at the very end, she added fresh peaches. Yum!