Kristen McLeod was raised in Sanford, Maine, but has been living in Boston for the last few years, where she was employed as a case manager for a local welfare-to-work program. Kristen arrived on the frontier on July 4th, where she married Nate Brooks, her long-time fiance, in a lovely outdoor wedding. The reality of frontier life set in quickly after the wedding. Sanitation was primitive and cooking was frustrating. "Nate had to teach me how to cook over an open fire," she says. "This was particularly tough on my ego." She also had to deal with strange foods -- things like raw elk or venison, and the subtle difference between baking powder and baking soda. It took a month or two before she was successfully baking breads, making goat cheese, and cooking all manner of meats. "It was also hard to have no place to escape," she says. Their cabin was very small, and the daily routine was monotonous, and she suffered greatly from isolation and lack of socializing. Back to Who's Who   [an error occurred while processing this directive]