When I flew into the first village visited in my new job I felt as if I?d bee spirited into totally different world. It was a crisp autumn day, and I was in a twin-engine airplane with only the pilot and one other passenger. This was my first experience in the bush. In my new job of providing health care to a number of villages in rural Alaska. I was 60 years old, and only four years before I had returned to school to obtain my postgraduate degree in public health. After teaching nursing for three years, I had come to Alaska to take this new job. It proved to be exciting and challenging, and the stories in this book relate many experiences I encountered, as well as tales of special friendships I made with the Native people of Alaska. I learned to love them, and they in turn became my very good friends.