Rural Alaska

Photos: Hyder, Alaska: Life on the border

HYDER -- It was love that brought Carly Staehlin to Hyder. Love at first sight, to be more precise. A Texan, Carly was visiting the small town of Pemberton, British Columbia, near Whistler, when she wandered into a restaurant, the Pony Espresso. The chef there had a distinctive jawline, salt and pepper hair, a quick laugh and a mischievous smile. And he was smiling at her.

Carly had just quit her high-tech job in the video game industry, sold or given away everything that couldn't fit in her car and headed west. "I was searching for my own Walden, if you know what I mean," she said. A friend, an ER doctor in Seattle, had a vacation home in Pemberton and told her to go and get away from things for a while. So she went, met Shawn and fell in love. And that's when their troubles began.

As an American, Carly couldn't stay in Canada more than 180 days a year. She couldn't be with the man she loved for half of every year. And Shawn, a Canadian, couldn't work in the U.S.

To avoid running up against the 180-day rule, Carly had to keep a journal of her trips to see Shawn. Seven days in Canada with Shawn. Seven days back in the U.S. Repeat. And every time she crossed the border, she had to go through customs.

"I have some anxiety around authority, so every time I would cross it would ring all their biometric warning bells and I'd end up getting my car searched and it would be a three-hour ordeal," she said. "I told Shawn that I couldn't keep doing that, so we started looking for a closer, quieter place on the border to move."

They considered Point Roberts, an exclave in Washington near Vancouver, but it was too crowded and too expensive. Then they found Hyder, Alaska.

Read more: Hyder, Alaska: Life on the border

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