My four-year-old granddaughter wandered the Alaska beach edge just outside the lodge where her father worked as a caretaker. A soft breeze came over the water as the tide gently reached up beneath her tiny Alaska tennis shoes (boots) to wet the seams of her pink snowman pajamas. The world then was endless—listening to the distant call of seagulls while searching for the treasurers that washed ashore that day as we beachcombed the water’s edge. She was small, but her spirit was as vast as the wilderness that surrounded her.

Now a teenager, those memories feel like distant echoes, but the connection to that rugged, untamed place remains. Though she has outgrown those tiny boots, her footsteps in the Alaskan sand will always be a part of her story—proof that once, she belonged to a place where the wild met the waves, and adventures with Grandma waited just beyond the lodge doors.