I HAVE CAST MORE NETS in the water to feed my dog sled team, my husband, my children, and myself than I have ever cast a line with a fishing pole.
FOR daily life in Homer, Alaska, is not only outside the continental US but outside the box, too. A surfer girl from southern California who grew up "under the umbrella of Hollywood," she moved to Alaska to teach swimming on a glacier lake. Later she married, did historical and archaeological research in the bush—hunting, gathering, and trapping animals for food, in the way of the Athabaskan Indians. Ms. Thompson became a rural teacher, raised two sons, and eventually became a single parent. Thirteen years ago she climbed into a two-engine Twin Otter, flew out of the bush, and has been "enjoying the miracle of roads ever since."
When the Journal caught up with her, she had just returned home from the Special Olympic Winter Games, where she coached a snow-shoeing team of young adults. Thompson spoke with us about the Bible parable that has sustained her through much of "Love's divine adventure" (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 158).
