In 1969, Natalie Kusz and her family abandoned the city, packed up the car, and headed to Alaska. They ended up a hundred miles from Fairbanks in a dilapidated house surrounded by 258 acres of spruce, birch and willow-and no road. When the first winter came-with Mr. Kusz working in Prudhoe Bay, money running out, and temperatures 60 below-the Kusz family was living so close to disaster that the question was not when it would strike but whom.