I dropped this blog from my website back in June, knowing I wouldn’t have the time to update it during our busy Alaskan summer, and sure enough, it has been only recently that I’ve written new posts for my Northern Light Media website, three or four already in the past week or so. That’s the difference between Alaskan summers and going into our long winters. Summer is the time to explore, to fish and pick berries and to travel around just taking in the glorious beauty of our magnificent state, and I did all of those in abundance.

Fall and winter, on the other hand, are times for slowing down, gathering in, and reflecting on many things. Our lives, living in Alaska, those who lived here before us…. I recently finished editing a new* book, “A Mighty Nice Place,” which explores the Matanuska Colony Project history, and how that affected the lives of 200 midwest families, and the pioneers who were here before they arrived, and the legacies both groups left to those living in the Matanuska Valley today, as my family does. It’s a story I find endlessly fascinating, and will probably revisit again and again.

[*Note: “A Mighty Nice Place” combines two earlier titles, ‘The 1935 Matanuska Colony Project’ and ‘The Matanuska Colony Album,’ into one volume.]