Just as the Alaska spawning salmon swim upstream, so did this single woman swim against the current of a society that expected her to fit the mold of wife and mother. When this rite of passage eluded Anna Bortel, she did not bemoan her singlehood. Instead, in 1954, this young school teacher drove up the Alaska-Canada Highway from Ohio to Valdez, where snow was measured in feet and an Easter Egg hunt unheard of event. Her curiosity wasn't quelled. She pushed further north to an isolated Athabascan village along the Yukon River. Teaching and living in drafty Quonset huts with freezing oil lines at 50 below zero added to her teaching rigors. Discouraged? Yes. Daunted? No.