Many a green isle needs must be
In the deep wide sea of Misery,
Or the mariner, worn and wan,
Never thus could voyage on--
Day and night, and night and day,
Drifting on his dreary way,
With the solid darkness black
Closing round his vessel's track;
Whilst above the sunless sky,
Big with clouds, hangs heavily,
And behind the tempest fleet
Hurries on with lightening feet,
Riving sail, and cord, and plank,
Till the ship has almost drank
Death from the o'er-brimming deep;
And sinks down, down, like that sleep
When the dreamer seems to be
Weltering through eternity;
And the dim low line before
Of a dark and distant shore
Still recedes, as ever still
Longing with divided will,
But no power to seek or shun,
He is ever drifted on
O'er the unreposing wave
To the haven of the grave....

I was born in Juneau, Alaska, and raised at the edge of the Taku River.  My mother, Kathy (Gilbreth) Maas, arrived in Juneau from Flagstaff, Arizona to teach elementary school at the age of 20; my father, Ron Maas, was  raised in Watertown, Wisconsin and moved to Alaska in 1960.  Both musicians, they met in the Juneau Symphony.  By a lucky chance, the Taku Lodge fell into my dad's hands in 1972 when the bank asked Maas Realty to sell it after the previous owners had gone bankrupt.  My parents were married at the lodge and opened it in 1979 as a cruise ship attraction; tourists flew in over the Juneau Icefield and then landed at the lodge for a homemade salmon bake dinner and a stroll around the picturesque property.  I was two when the lodge opened and spent every summer there until I was fifteen and the lodge was sold into other hands.

My summers at the lodge were...well, quite indescribable in my state of nostalgia.  A thousand tourists told me how lucky I was to live there, but of course I did not understand that until my last few years there, and then not fully until it was gone.  I was happy, raising Canada geese, getting to know black bears, feeding squirrels, exploring the woods, sitting in endless contemplation on the riverbank, watching the world go by from the branches of the cottonwood tree, canoeing through the sloughs behind the lodge, picking strawberries and blueberries for my shredded wheat in the morning, (when I didn't eat fresh oatmeal raisin cookies), flying onto remote mountain lakes where I swam in cold, clear water, fishing on Johnson Creek, reading by the wood stove at night while the mice scampered across the floor.  All nostalgia aside, I was happy, if somewhat melancholy, with few exceptions.  In the fall, my family moved back to our house in Juneau so my brother Michael and I could attend school.  The transition from living in the wilderness without my peers to school life was always difficult and I felt the same confusion in reverse each spring.  As I aged, the fall transition became easier and the spring transitions harder (though I was always grateful in time).

In the winter, my family often took a month to travel.  When I was in fourth grade we visited Southeast Asia, in fifth grade we rented a motor home and traveled up and down the East Coast to visit historic sites (I was on correspondence that year), in sixth grade we spend a month in Mexico in part exploring ruins, and in seventh grade we traveled to Kenya, Tanzania, and Egypt. Then it became difficult to take so much time off as my brother was in high school.  After I started my sophomore year, my parents sold the lodge and built a cabin on their new property at Bullard's Landing three miles south of the lodge.  I spent much of the next summer there, but less and less so each year after as my desire to be with my friends overpowered my desire to be on the river.  Trumpet playing became a passion and I began taking private lessons half way through my junior year; honor bands, music fest, basketball tournaments, and French class allowed me to travel around Southeast Alaska and to Anchorage.

After graduating from Juneau-Douglas High School in 1995 I was lucky enough to be accepted into the Oberlin Conservatory of Music.  I moved to Oberlin, Ohio where I spent two semesters suffering daily humiliation from my musical ignorance and lack of skill and reveling in my immersion into classical music.  The land was fascinating and horrific--flat, muggy beyond endurance, deafening with cicadas, bursting with strange new animals dead on the sides of the roads, and dotted with weeping willows old enough to know the land before Euopeans arrived.  I was miserable most of the time.  During winter break I worked in the collections room at the Alaska State Museum where I fondled harpoon heads and Inupiaq boots and gazed at all the Yupik masks and Tlingit baskets; I also became romantically involved with my former private trumpet teacher, Larry McBride.  I spent the following fall semester at Oberlin, solidifying a few friendships and giving up the trumpet.  I finally realized that living in a city, or living outside of Alaska at all, was not worth anything, even playing the trumpet for a living.

I came back to Juneau, married Larry in the summer of 1997 at Bullard's Landing, and adopted my dog Nigel from the pound.  I proudly became a Douglasite for a few years before we built a house in the Highlands with our parents' help, moving in on January 3, 2000.  After working at a plant nursery in the summer and in respite care in the winter for a few years, I returned to school at the University of Alaska Southeast where I discovered that I needn't have left Juneau for brilliant, stimulating professors and life changing classes.  I graduated with a liberal arts degree in social science (emphasis in anthrolopogy)  in December of 2001.  Since returning from Ohio, I had reoriented on the wilderness and on tourism.  In 1998 I sought a tourist job during summer break and found myself working on boats narrating about history and wildlife for the next four summers, including short wildlife trips our of Auke Bay and day-long trips to Tracy Arm and Gustavus/Icy Strait.  The ocean became more and more important until I wound up with a sailboat, skiff, and a full set of SCUBA gear and I'm on or under the water as often as I'm able.  For many years my vacations were almost entirely taken up by diving.  After I graduated from UAS, I took a job with the State of Alaska where I still work, today with Department of Fish & Game.  In 2002 I began building an eco-tourism lodge in Port Snettisham with the hope of one day making a living sharing this place with visitors.  In 2006, Larry and I divorced; I kept the animals, the boat, and the house.