Julia Galila is sitting at the bus stop, feeling the sun on her face.

She writes poems about it, she says. She writes poems about the seasons, people and the things she feels. 

“I like writing,” she said. “I grew up with it.”

One day, she’ll write a book about Alaska. Her father was a hunter and a fisherman from Goodnews Bay, a place where the sky reflects the water. It’s so beautiful there, she raises her arms and sings a Yup’ik Eskimo song at the bus stop to describe it.

“It’s really blue at nighttime, sometimes it turns navy, like God’s looking upon me,” she said. “I get really happy.”

She says she’ll write about that in her book. But when she writes her book, this is the first thing she’ll tell people about Alaska: It’s terrifying.