When Chugiak musher, author and artist Jim Welch came to Alaska to work, he thought he'd stay for a couple years. That was 1978.

"When it snowed, that's when I knew I was there," he said of his first Alaska year.

Welch grew up in California, and in 1972 earned his master's degree in studio art from Stanford University. He later worked a season as a fire lookout in northern California, during which time he described himself as a starving artist. He said the isolation as a fire lookout caused him to have to learn the art of conversation all over again.

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