It is the same plane, with the same pilot, that she has flown in almost every year of her childhood. The 50-minute flight will take her over a snowy mountain range, a volcano and an elaborate tundra of blueberries and mushrooms, tea leaves and caribou moss, wildflowers and spider webs. She is heading to her mother's childhood home and the place where she spends her summers - the remote Alaskan village of Iliamna. Without any roads connecting it to the outside world, this is her only way of going'home'. Iliamna, which is an Athabascan word meaning "big ice" or "big lake" sits on the shore of the lake that shares its name.