My Thoughts Exactly

I loved your article on Homer, Alaska (“They Left the Light On,” Aug. 7). I liked what you did with your time--just what I would have done--and I liked your character sketches. It reminded me of “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil,” the best-selling, town-describing book about Savannah, Ga.

MELINDA HAHN

Santa Ana

As a college student studying geology in 1948, I got a summer job with the U.S. Geological Survey evaluating the coal deposits in the Homer area. We camped out and mapped the coal beds during the week, but on the weekends we caught king salmon, trout and halibut, hiked across glaciers, took pictures of hillsides covered with blue lupine and later with red fireweed, picked strawberries, dug clams, raced the 30-foot tides in our Jeeps, drank beer in the Salty Dawg Saloon and the Yah Sure Club, searched for the first Russian settlement built in Alaska at the head of Kachemak Bay and read about Capt. James Cook sailing northward through Cook Inlet to his “Anchorage” and “Turnagain Arm” as he searched for the Northwest Passage.

It was a summer I will never forget. Your article motivates me to head north again to Homer.

DONALD E. HIBBARD

Sherman Oaks