Shelski: Shelly & Heather's big adventure

Click HERE to order the 2016 Alaska Huntress Calendar. Thank you!

The Alaska Huntress Calendar project was started in 2007 by Shelly, as a tribute to her female hunting friends in Alaska. It was her hope that the calendar, designed to help promote women in hunting, would live on. The purchase of each calendar includes a donation to The Shelly Szepanski Memorial Flight Scholarship (a scholarship originally created from the sale of Shelly's airplane) to assist a new female pilot in pursuing her private, commercial, instrument, or float ratings. If you know someone who might be a good candidate for this scholarship, please let us know!

If you are interested in submitting a photo for future calendars or have suggestions, please email me at lynn.bill@yahoo.com with the subject 'AK Huntress Calendar' and I'll forward your info to Heather or you can contact her directly.

Calendar photo specifications:
Please keep the following in mind (per Shelly's past instructions):
1) High resolution, horizontal/landscape (rather than vertical) shots work best
2) No: to fishing photos
3) Yes: to photos of you on the hunt or trap-line, even without an animal (e.g., hiking-in, flying out, glassing, etc.), and we always need more snow/cold-season pictures and nice, seasonal landscape backgrounds!
4) Super YES: to first hunts, Alaska hunts, and photos showing you with your animal or parts (meat, antlers, etc.), moms and their children hunting together, and airplane hunts!

5) Photos do not have to be from hunts this year, especially if you've never been in the calendar before.

6) The more landscape with you and your animal, the better!

7) Please include a brief description of the hunt; (a) very general location and/or game management unit, (b) first names of all in photo, (c) ages of kids, (d) anything special about the hunt, e.g., first caribou, all ladies float trip, father-daughter hunt, etc.

Looking forward to seeing your adventures throughout 2016 and compiling your new ones!

Big THANKS to Heather for her continuuing work on this calendar and to the women who contribute their photos. ~Lynn

(Revised 12/2015)

__________________________

Sleeping in the Forest - by Mary Oliver

I thought the earth remembered me,
she took me back so tenderly,
arranging her dark skirts, her pockets
full of lichens and seeds.
I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed,
nothing between me and the white fire of the stars
but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths
among the branches of the perfect trees.
All night I heard the small kingdoms
breathing around me, the insects,
and the birds who do their work in the darkness.
All night I rose and fell, as if in water,
grappling with a luminous doom. By morning
I had vanished at least a dozen times
into something better.