Want to know the biggest draw for raising kids in the Chilkat Valley? We’ll give you a hint: it’s not the ease of modern amenities. We are raising our kids here because it is unlike any other place.
It’s a place where we can escape into nature with an infant or toddler on our backs, giving them the opportunity to witness a landscape that so many travel great distances to experience before they’re even old enough to walk. It’s a place where kids can spend their summers riding around town on their bicycles with their friends, and eventually work on a commercial fishing vessel or at one of our treasured local businesses. It’s the safety of knowing that our neighbors next door and across town are looking out for them, too.
It’s a place where they can learn to process moose for school lunches, and where they can harvest wild foods like salmon and berries that fill our chest freezers.
How many other places allow you to raise kids with access to fresh food from the land, clean waters for fishing, and endless opportunities for outdoor adventure?
A large-scale hardrock mine upstream from us will not draw in more families like ours, who want to make the Chilkat Valley home for the long run. In fact, it will drive them out. Please recognize the Chilkat Valley for the prolific place that it is and speak up to keep it that way for generations to come.
Sincerely, moms of Haines,
Lauren McPhun, Kayla Stevens, Jackie St Clair, Caroline Hankins, Alisa Beske, Alixanne Goodman, Rose Fudge