Leif Stacey was raised in a cabin in the middle of the Alaskan wilderness with no electricity, plumbing or TV. His family hauled the water they drank and used kerosene lamps for light. When he went to the outhouse as a five year-old boy, he carried a twelve-gauge shotgun under his arm to protect himself from bears. And not growing up around many other children left him painfully shy. "In Junior High School," he tells me, "I was the only kid sitting by myself at a table in a lunchroom full of 2,000 students. I was always looking at the popular kid's table thinking 'how can I get over there?'"

Today, Leif Stacey is the 6'1", 21 year-old Gemini with shaggy, light-blond hair gracing the cover of A&F's 2002 Christmas catalogue, right next to supermodel Heidi Klum. He is also the face representing Ralph Lauren's Polo, Blue Label, Polo Jeans and Eyewear lines. And that's just his first season.

So let's just start at the beginning, Leif. Where were you born?

In Indian, Alaska.

How did you end up there of all places?

Well, my parents were true granola-eating, Birkenstock-wearing hippies. Especially my Mom, who arrived in Alaska for a backpacking trip and never left. And my dad came from a mining family, so he moved to Alaska to try gold-mining up on the Plasser River. Then one day he and his partner heard about some beautiful cooks at another mine fifty miles away, so they jumped on their four-wheelers and rode up there to see for themselves. When they finally arrived though, all dusty and grimy from the journey, and asked my mom for coffee, all she saw were two dirty, disgusting miners that hadn't showered or shaved in months, so she told them to help themselves and ignored them.

A month later though, my mom was injured in a helicopter crash and my dad was the only EMT (Emergency Medical Technician) in the area. So my dad was called in, got her safely out of the helicopter, stabilized her condition and then got her onto another helicopter to the hospital. That must have been when mom fell for him, because as she was going into shock, kind of in and out of consciousness, she asked him if he enjoyed outdoor activities and when he said "yes," she told him she'd marry him. (laughs)

Just like that?

Just like that. And they just celebrated their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. After they married though, they moved to Indian, Alaska, which is about an hour and a half south of Anchorage. (Leif pulls out a map.) See here? It's right by Cook Inlet which has the second-highest tides in the world — 32 feet high. It's a beautiful area. Just gorgeous. The inlet is fed by glaciers on one end and drains into the ocean at the other and it's one of the most beautiful areas I've ever seen. They built a little two-story cabin in the woods, just sixteen by twenty, with a little bridge across a river and an outhouse about fifty yards away from the house. Even at the age of five I went to the outhouse with a twelve-gauge shotgun because we had bears all around us. It was a very, very cool experience.

Your parents sound like extraordinary people.

My parents really are the most amazing people I've ever met. I can count on one hand the number of times I've ever seen them fight. My dad worked a lot; he worked so hard; six, seven days a week, ten hours a day. But he never complained and he always had time for us kids, and he would never say 'No, I'm tired, just let me sit here.' He always came home and read to us or played with us. Weekends he'd take us fishing or go out hunting. And my mom was a tireless supporter of all of us.

So was the cabin in Cook Inlet near your dad's gold mine?

No, the goldmine was up in Coldfoot, Alaska, an eight-hundred mile drive north from Indian, and about 200 miles north of Fairbanks. Summers were spent at the mine and winters we'd spend down at the cabin in the woods — we had to haul water from a brook and everything was candlelit — no running water, heat or electricity. So I didn't grow up with TV. We were too young even to conceptualize what TV was, although we'd heard about it. But we had what dad called 'Duck TV.' Our table looked out over the pond, and in the morning all the ducks were there and they always made us laugh. That was our morning show.

You mentioned earlier that you were always getting into trouble when you were little ...

Yes. Up at the mine, they put me in this playpen that had four foot walls on all sides, but no matter what they did I always managed to escape. They used to call me the Little Houdini. I'd crawl up the river a few hundred yards until I found a berry patch and Mom says she often found me eating berries right next to the bears.