Our Retreat Lodge

Raised in a family of gardeners and foragers, working to put food on the table was never far from mind. This desire to understand my food and utilize simple, fresh ingredients to bring out the best of the flavors this fresh food had to offer only grew with me through time. In my youth, I employed myself in a wide variety of kitchen work graduating from dishwasher to line cook to managing kitchens in the resort towns of Colorado. I fell in love with feeding people. In the end, I chose fatherhood over becoming a chef- teaching school instead of long hours and late nights, and have never regretted that decision. My passion for food fresh from the land was a driving force to my arrival in Hoonah, Alaska. I knew that the Tongass Forest is considered the richest ecosystem on the planet by volume. The seas here, and the forests in these lands offer a year long bounty. I have spent the last 5 years catching crab and salmon, halibut and cod, hunting deer and collecting mushrooms. I have learned to harvest a wide variety of the breathtaking array of berries that grow here, and I have learned to harvest the beach greens that flourish on the pure, untouched shorelines around Hoonah. The Tlingit people who live here let us all harvest from their traditional lands. We are ever grateful for their grace and goodwill. Their culture practices such care in the way the land is used, and they practice a spirit of wealth through giving that should be the envy of every American. Walking in the shadow of those before me here, I have only just begun to know the lands I live in. We eat well here, and of this, I am happy to share what I have and what I know.