Riding the Wild Side of Denali: Alaska Adventures with Horses and Huskies

Miki grew up, with her identical twin sister, Julie Collins, in the vast, roadless wilderness north of Denali National Park in Alaska, spending their childhood in a community of roughly thirty people scattered around the shores of a large lake. After seven years of correspondence home schooling, the twin sisters attended high school and college in Fairbanks, studying biology and journalism at the University of Alaska. Then they returned to their family's homestead, where they continue to live a traditional Bush lifestyle, trapping for fur, hunting for meat, fishing, and growing their own produce. Miki once entered the Iditarod, and Julie ran the 1,000-mile Yukon Quest. The sisters bought their first Icelandic horse, Lilja, in 1986.