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| Keith and Randi Iverson |
SADIE COVE, Alaska—Keith Iverson knew what he wanted but didn’t quite know how to get it when he left the Lower 48 for Alaska. So he learned by book and experience. And he produced, creating the Sadie Cove Wilderness Lodge.
Iverson sought a self-sustaining lifestyle in virgin territory he could make his own. He’s been living in Sadie Cove, a collection of cabins surrounded by Kachemak Bay State Park, for 38 years. For the past 15, he’s shared life with wife Randi, whom he met in a bar in Homer, a small city across the bay.
Sadie Cove is eight dwellings that rent for US$450 a night. You might stay in a cabin Keith built from beachwood he found on site or in a boat he rejiggered after snatching it on its way to the trash heap. He is so green you’d swear chlorophyll coursed through his veins.
The Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, native grew up in Portland, Oregon, and earned a degree in marketing from the University of Oregon. When he left northern California in 1972, he worked for Kaiser Cement and Gypsum Corporation, advising architects on which company products to use. He wore a suit and tie and had a crew cut, but another life beckoned. After earning good money for five years, Keith sold his houseboat, bought a Volkswagen camper and left with US$15,000 in cash.
“I didn’t want to get to the age I am now, which is 68, and say that I never looked for what I really wanted to do,” he said during a telephone interview. He could have worked on the pipeline, but “when I left the city, I vowed I wouldn’t work at a job I didn’t want to do.”
Discovering Alaska
When he reached Homer, “the end of the road” some 125 miles south of Anchorage on the Kenai Peninsula, Iverson looked across the bay at “mountains and glaciers and fjords and I said I want to live over there and I want to be self-sufficient.” Iverson bought three-and-a-half acres from the state for US$3,250. Homer’s population was about 2,000 then; now it’s about 5,000, he said.
Keith read construction books. First he built an outhouse, but the first actual dwelling was a sauna (“I’m Norwegian by ancestry, and we always build saunas”) that doubled as home. That took six weeks and in September 1973, two weeks after he finished, he was on the porch drinking a cup of coffee and it started snowing.
“I sat there and thought to myself: Here I am, by myself, in Alaska, living in a cabin that I built myself … The pride that I had of being able to do this out here in the extreme wilderness was very important to me. It was just a great feeling sitting on that porch going, ‘Come on, winter.’”
The next summer he erected a 90-foot wharf, took a small boat across the bay to Homer to transport wood from a 30-year-old barn he’d torn down, and built his first true home, 10 feet by 32 feet with a 10-by-10-foot second story. Neighbors helped.
“We got to be pioneers in the 20th century, and there aren’t many places in the world where you can do that. For a person who wanted to make it a lifestyle, they’d have to have money now, because the land here is very valuable.” A friend soon built a sawmill nearby.
The lodge
Keith constructed the Sadie Cove lodge and opened it in 1981. Sadie Cove lodging is wildly diverse—and green, as is the utility system.
Recycling is critical.
“To give you an example of how we reuse everything, in Homer, they were going to burn this boat, so we got it, we fixed it up enough in Homer, towed it to Sadie Cove, and cranked it up on the beach,” he said.
It’s now a guest cabin: 45 feet long, it’s been around the world twice. What got Keith was its beautiful lines “and inside was all mahogany and teak and brass. I just rebuilt the whole thing and plugged the hole so we could pull it over here.”
In 1989, Keith became the only Alaskan supervisor at the Gulf of Alaska, overseeing cleanup of the Exxon Valdez oil spill. The money was so good it afforded him the opportunity to craft a Pelton wheel-based hydroelectric system at Sadie Cove. He built a dam up the mountain and ran a two-inch hose down to the lodge. The water bursts out a nozzle and hits a tiny water wheel that “spins so fast the alternator makes electricity,” he said. “I’d say we probably use 90% less fossil fuels than most Americans.”
All the food at the lodge comes from Homer. Keith and Randi serve it. They sometimes hire another person or two. Maximum capacity is eight. During the high season of June through August, the daily guest average is five to six.
A life change
Fifteen years ago, Keith was working hard. He would go into Homer every two weeks or so and raise hell.
“Somewhere, I stepped over the line and became an alcoholic,” he said. He met his wife-to-be in Alice’s Champagne Palace. “I had not quit, and she hadn’t quit. Then she quit and I finally hit my bottom and went to AA and quit and one year later we were married.”
That transition year, Keith leased Sadie Cove and “somebody else ran it,” but the Iversons took it back once they became a couple and have been running it ever since.
“I take care of Keith,” Randi said. “I do all the cooking. I manage the housekeeping staff and see to guests needs.”
The Manhattan native first visited Alaska in 1982 with her first husband. They got work at a fly and fishing lodge in Bristol Bay, site of the largest salmon run in the world. Randi loves Alaska.
“Once I got past the border of the Yukon, on the Alaska Highway, I turned to my husband and said, ‘I’ve traveled a lot but I’ve never felt at home and the farther north we go, the more I feel at home’ … It felt like this was where I was supposed to be and I’d never had that feeling anywhere else.”
The Sadie Cove experience covers cabin, sauna, a plunging pool, access to kayaks, fishing gear, hiking equipment, and meals. There’s a hiking trail exclusively for guests that begins at the lodge and goes into the park.
“So many times when I go on a hike there are so many other people,” Randi said. “Here you get to go into the wilderness on our own. Most people are looking for that. Some people would rather we go with them. In that case, we do.”
“I’m getting older, and son of a bitch, I’m shrinking,” Keith Iverson said. “This body of mine puts out a tremendous amount of work and that’s the only thing that concerns me about it.” He stands 5 feet 8 and weighs 150 pounds, “all muscle.”
“I’m old school, man. I know what I do, and I do it well. The reason I don’t go outside is it’s a world I don’t know anymore and there’s a lot of rude people and I don’t like rudeness and if somebody were to insult my wife …” he pauses. “I’d rather kick a bear in the ass than drive on one of your freeways.”