Cheryl grew up next door to us in West Seattle. She is a special person with a wonderful gift of self expression as she tells about her life that she lives with gusto in Alaska.

I have saved many of her emails that describe the new home that she and her partner Stewart have built with materials that had to be brought to a remote location at Sterling, Alaska.

Just recently she told me about her venturing into rural life by raising chickens with Gallo Grande ruling the roost. She lovingly cares for her flock, assuring her lone rooster that he will never have competition as he struts about the yard.

Raising chickens and a garden were all a part of this new adventure in moving out of Anchorage where she had lived for more than 20 years. The building period took a little longer as they had to hide indoors when bears were coming by in their migration pattern. But moose provide winter meat along with fish in abundance.

Stewart spent a very long day hunting for moose only to return to find a female moose and her young staking out a place in their yard. Of course females are not fair game and so the winter moose meat would have to wait.

Even in Anchorage, Cheryl had dealings with a moose that decided to lie down in their driveway forcing her to wait it out as she couldn’t drive to work that day. It is illegal to disturb a moose in any way. Almost like the sacred cows in India that my husband and I saw blocking traffic there.

As many a home builder knows, the pressure of constructing one’s own home takes its toll on the nerves. While Stewart was finishing up, Cheryl went back to their home in Anchorage for a time out.

But it all turned out well as they both spruced up their Anchorage home for sale and took time to recreate at the local Ninilchik Fair.

Cheryl describes it as nothing so grand as the Puyallup Fair but it is homey and intimate. Well, not so intimate in the display of its phenomenal vegetables which surpass any produce display in the world with its prize cabbage weighing in at 125.57 pounds and zucchinis growing to three feet in length.

And get a look at radishes larger than golf balls.

Oh, and there is broccoli weighing 35 pounds and one carrot 20 pounds and even an onion grew to five pounds.

Special entertainment is provided by native Alaskan dancers in the Dance and Song of the Seagulls, which Cheryl describes as pure and untouched like the songs of angels must be. Coming down to earth again one must taste reindeer sausage and salmon pie and fresh oysters eaten in a booth with straw on the floor to soak up spilt beer.

The opening and closing of this fair is announced with a fireworks display without the crowds faced in the more populous areas of Puget Sound.

With the local fair excitement fading away, Cheryl now has time to concentrate on managing her sister Charlene’s wedding which will end with a potluck barbecue on the lawn before the Alaska winter settles in around them.

I really admire this former city dweller’s reveling in the great Alaska wilderness and making it her own.

Georgie Bright Kunkel is a freelance writer who can be reached at gnkunkel@comcast.net or 206-935-8663.