You sure learn to work when you grow up in a place like a farm or like a homestead.

Well, I first came here when I was eight years old with my grandmother to pick berries.

And I pretty much have spent most of the summers of my life here.

Here is Yukon Island in Katchemak Bay, right across from Homer, 225 miles by road from Anchorage South and it's at the end of the Kenai Peninsula.

And then Yukon Island's about six miles across the bay from there via boat.

when you live on an island, you need to own a boat.

Well, the homesteading part itself was in the late 50s, early 60s.

My parents came here with five kids and not much money.

Not a very good boat and not a very good motor.

All that stuff was way harder.

And so why am I thankful for those kinds of things?

decent chainsaw, wood splitter.

those things that make, life much easier now.

There's something also about the simplicity.

You know, I have lovely outhouses and not fancy flush toilets.

It doesn't take a lot of fancy stuff.

I seem to have, rich and interesting life.

Well, sometimes we're rooted in a spot with a great sense of place.

When I pick berries, I think about the fact that this place you can't island had people living here 1500 BC, and I think, wow, I am picking berries in the way that people who lived before me here pick those same plants and berries and things.

And there's something about knowing that I'm just part of that sequence of people that were here.

It's kind of fun.

You kind of carry yourself as if you're kind of nebulous age forever.

I think.

Well, I celebrated 80, which is amazing to me.

There are things when you age that you know that I'm a little harder to climb up those steps or whatever.

On the other hand, you think, oh, I can still do that, or I still feel like I'm 50 or something.

Now I come with my great grandson six generations later.

That's that's some long pieces there.

And that's a great treasure.

You know, it makes my daughter nervous for me to be talking about all the things after I'm here.

But that's all part of it.

And I don't have any qualms about that.

Getting used to sort of the reality that we're not all going to be here forever.

I taught 35 years at the university.

First, I taught junior high math and science for five years, and I had a dream to want to host educational things here.

Well this today is a writing retreat, a very powerful weekend of women sharing their experiences.

So gathering people together in a peaceful nature place.

I think there's great, solace now, especially in this sort of confusing world and frantic world.

So it's a work in progress.

Sometimes our dreams take 30 years or more, and that's okay.