Original subtitles

SUE: With the storm that's come in, my visibility is going down.

I'm not just camping out here, I mean, I have a job to do.

This is a functioning outpost. I am a weather station,

a refuelling station

a search and rescue station.

There are so many things that I have to do.

I can't just shut down.

I've got to keep this place going.

That means I have to clear drifts, check generators,

anything that hits the tent, I've got to fix it.

You cannot just close this down

and come back and hope it's okay.

I need to stay here and make sure it's okay.

This time of year,

the window of available light is minimal.

The problem with a storm like this is you can't see.

I have a runway,

from there it comes in,

I've got a little pad with a fuel shed.

My dining hall, which is where I live.

Three rows of trailers, storage facilities for fuel,

generator shed, outhouses back here.

From here to this source of fuel is about 50 yards.

What I have to do today is lay lines for my safety.

I will tie a rope from one building to the next

or a length of rope that I can follow.

In conditions where you can't see this far

in front of your face,

all's I got between me and the coast

is snow, ice, cold and eventual death.

These are my lifelines.

You got to take baby steps

'cause I can't see where I'm going.

That building right there is about 30, 40 feet away

and the wind is blowing so hard you can't see it.

I'm out of breath,

I'm tired from the wind and the cold

and the pelting snow.

It just sucks every ounce of energy you have.

But you got to keep moving

or else you'll freeze right in place.

In storms like these,

you really have to want to go out.

Mother fucker.

Even going that little bit.

(BREATHING HEAVILY) I mean, I'm 30 feet from my door,

40 feet my door, but I'm tired.

But now I've caught my breath,

I'll try to make the last push.

Right now it's 450 feet of whiteout,

the visibility is so poor you can't see where you're going.

I'm going to be using,

it's approximately 50 feet of rope.

I just need it to be enough

so I can find my way here and back.

You fuckin' bitch.

All right, one rope down, one more to go.

These ropes save my life.

I have to have these or I'm dead.

I'd be one of them out there out in the tundra

becoming a Sue-sicle.

I have to have my ropes

to know where I'm going when my eyes can't do the job.

Your brain may think you're going north,

south, east or west. You won't know.

It's white. The ground is white.

The air is white. You are white.

The wind whips so hard you can't keep your eyes open.

You have to have something you can hang onto,

that says I can make it from point A to point B.

(WIND HOWLING)

Every single day that I wake up,

I may go out there and get lost in a snowstorm,

it might be my last.

You know, you have to be willing

and be very at peace with the fact

that you're playing with a real final edge.

You know every search and rescue guide has a family.

Has kids and has a life.

I don't want them to sacrifice theirs

just because I was a dip-shit.

ERIK: Up here in the Arctic,

you know, everything is about efficiency.

You don't really put in any extra effort

or use any resources unless you have to.

Filled up my coffee pot before I went to bed

with the last of my water.

So today's going to have to be a water day.

Drinking water I haul from the river, from the...

In these jugs for, for drinking.

(RATTLES HOLLOWLY)

Without water, there's no coffee,

without coffee nothing happens.

I was out trapping the other day.

I rather unexpectedly

came across a open lead in the river.

It was kind of a problem while I was trapping

but it's a godsend now that we're needing some water.

So I'm going to head back to the same spot on the river

where there's an open area,

hopefully it'll still be open.

It's no good right now.

We get all of our water out of this river here.

It's pure clean, mountain water.

But right now this ice isn't safe to go out onto the edge

and it's not thick enough to cut a hole through it

to get the water out.

Consequences of going on that are too severe, not worth it.

Here in rural Alaska

and especially in the Arctic of Alaska,

come winter, there's virtually zero daylight.

But you don't need daylight to get water.

You know, I am a pretty nocturnal guy here,

working on my own clock,

so, I get water at night-time a lot.

Last water jug is empty.

Make a run down to the river here and get some water.

A little bit different than getting water

anywhere else you know,

can't just flip on the faucet.

Just hop on my snow machine

and go maybe a half a mile over

to a particular spot on the river

that I that I do well with the water at.

The river conditions,

just like the weather conditions here in the Arctic,

they control everything.

Sometimes it's real easy to get water

and other times it's very difficult.

Sometimes, it's kind of, it's kind of dangerous

depending on the ice condition.

Getting water from a river that is partially

or completely frozen, you need to always think about

shelf ice and thin ice.

It's no fun to take a, take a dip.

Standing on a little bit of shelf ice here.

The water level is actually lower

than the bottom of the ice,

so there's air between the water and the ice.

There's always the danger

of it breaking the whole shelf.

(ICE CRACKLING)

A lot of people make a lot of fuss

about the way I live

and they think that is so hard and all.

If I didn't like it, I wouldn't do this.

This doesn't bother me.

I like being outside, it's a nice life.

I think it's about 1:30 a.m. right now.

I'll probably go home and work on things

for another two or three hours.

Time is kind of insignificant here.

ANDY: When you live out here, we don't have roads.

In Alaska, most of the rivers are the highways

and we live along an interstate, you know?

What do you guys think?

Tea, you want to go to Eagle today?

Hey, Tea. Hey, girl.

(DOG WHINING)

You want to go to Eagle? Hey, Ram, you guarding her?

Every year when the river freezes, the ice packs in

and blocks our path to town.

Whoa! God.

The main problem with getting to Eagle

is jumble ice and thin ice.

Look at that.

That ice is only about two inches thick or so right there.

We're definitely not going out on the ice around here.

It's just not safe.

I think with the snow,

I think I'm going to go up to Eagle.

I think I'll get through that jumble ice.

I got a report from town that it's good once I get up there.

Okay.

I got to get plastic, got to get mail.

Take your time and don't go beating up no sleds

-on that ice. -Yeah.

All right, that sounds like a plan then.

Okay, Burny boy. Ready to go up to Eagle, huh?

You look so excited.

Yay, yay.

Yay, Cougar.

We're going up to Eagle today.

Let's go!

Hup, hup.

That-a boy, straight ahead.

(DOGS HOWLING)

Gee, gee, gee. That-a boy!

All right, let's go. Let's go, on by. That-a boys.

That-a boys, straight ahead now.

Little gee, little gee.

Good, perfect!

All right. Hup, hup.

You gonna go... Haw! Iceberg, Tiara.

Haw, haw! Haw, haw! Haw, haw! Whoa. Haw.

Right there. Okay, everybody stay here. Everybody stay.

So right after freeze up, I tried coming up river

and right at this point here,

the river ice had packed up right into the willows

and it cut me off,

basically created a barrier of pretty big jumble ice

so I couldn't get by.

So today, I decided I'm going to cut my way around it

and hoping to have a pretty good trail to Eagle

but I don't know what's ahead of me right now.

Time to make some trail, you guys.

CHIP: I'd never live in the lower 48 again.

Because a man can always hunt

and a man can always fish

and a man can always go get wood.

Caribou over here on my rack running thin,

and I think what needs to happen is

we need to go get some fresh meats.

There is a lot meats close by.

Um, we plan on going in much further to go get fresh meat.

But, um, luck and the caribou are with us

and we don't have far to go

and our chances at success are almost 100%.

What's been stopping us lately from hunting caribou

is the river needing to freeze.

We're looking at open water in that refroze,

open water that's refreezing.

I can see some thin ice over here that I wouldn't go on,

I'm not going to go on.

The caribou are stuck on their side of the river

-and we're stuck on ours. -(SIGHING)

But now that the river is frozen,

everybody can cross,

us and the caribou.

I really enjoy working with Agnes

because she is very professional about it,

she knows exactly what she's doing,

she's been raised this way

and our kids are old enough that we can leave them behind

and they can go to school

and I can enjoy my time with my wife.

AGNES: I really enjoy hunting with Chip

because it's a rare time we can spend alone together.

CHIP: Right now, she's doing the shooting,

which is no pain in my butt,

because I like to take them apart.

Dissembling animals is fun.

We're going to stop over here. That's my idea,

that'll keep the wind off of us

and hopefully that'll keep the wind

blowing our noise away.

And then we can get up on the bank

-and take a shot or two. -Yeah.

Let's give it a try.

AGNES: Chip and I are a strange couple.

We do like to do things certain ways.

I always do the shooting because I'm a good shot

and I've been shooting since I was a little kid.

Probably since 12.

(WHISPERING) They are right in front of us.

(GUNSHOT FIRED)

They were right in front of her.

The wind took you off about one foot.

They're going to go right over the hill.

Let's just go back to the snow machines

-and go meet them on the other side of the hill. -Okay.

-The wind is too stiff for this kind of range. -Yeah.

But she's a good one. We'll pick her up.

-Grab your glove. Let's go. -Okay.

AGNES: Safety first. CHIP: Safety first.

The caribou have been spooked a bit

and what they like to do is run up hills.

We got a hill between us and them right now

that they're heading up,

we get around the hill

and let the caribou come down to us, real natural like.

What's at stake is our economy here.

If I go burning up gas and bringing home nothing,

then I'm wasting my time and my trip and my effort.

Caribou can live without us,

but we can't live without caribou.

(GUNSHOT FIRED)

(CHIP SPEAKING)

It's not got off to a very good start,

but the best way to get out of it is to work hard.

It's like anything in life. You got to work hard.

ANDY: I've come to realise when I'm mushing my dogs,

it's kind of a meditative state for me.

My dogs are my therapy.

(SIGHS) Son of a gun.

(PANTING)

This year the river ice jammed up right to the bank

and cut me off from getting to Eagle with a decent trail,

so we've had a lot of snow,

we've had a lot of wind

and I'm putting a trail into Eagle now

so I can haul supplies back.

I guess maybe I should have bought some snow shoes with me.

Now I got to figure out

how to get through that.

There's a lot of hollow ice here.

This is the stuff you've got to worry about with the dogs.

Right there. They fall into that

and that's when a shoulder gets blown out.

Here we go, this is what I'm talking about.

This hollow ice. Feels like another crack right there.

Jumble ice poses as a couple of different problems.

I can get through it

but it's very easy to hurt a dog

when you're going through rough jumble ice

and I'm really concerned about taking care of my dogs

'cause they're my work force.

They are, they are everything to me in the wintertime.

Making sure they don't get hurt

is critically important to me.

You can see right here there's a bunch of hollow ice under here

and I'm definitely going to have to get this broke down.

I don't mind doing the work if there's a payoff for it.

Just don't do anything stupid.

-(ANDY LAUGHING) -No, I'm serious.

ANDY: Whoa! God.

I hate doing work twice.

You know, you've always got to be the first person on the river,

when it's ice or water.

ANDY: I screwed up.

KATE: You live anywhere like this,

something can always go wrong.

Sometime I think Mother Nature is going to win.

All that work and I can still see home.

(LAUGHS)

Man, sometimes it feels endless out here.

I think the boys want to go.

We'll try and go nice and slow through this.

Everybody stay.

That-a boys, okay. Let's go to Eagle.

Come on, boys. Hup, hup. Here you go. Haw!

Iceberg, Tiara!

That-a boys. Pack it out.

Let's put a trail in, you guys.

That's my boys.

That's my boys.

This year the river ice jammed up and cut me off,

so I'm putting a trail into Eagle now

so I can haul supplies back.

Easy, easy, easy.

Watch the cracks, watch the cracks.

Up you go.

Nice and easy.

Easy. Easy.

That-a boys. Easy.

(TUTS) Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

That-a boys.

Okay, everybody, whoa.

Whoa. Good job! Yeah. Good boy.

You guys are trail-breaking machines.

I should have a pretty good trail.

I mean, I think I just went

through the worst of it right now

and I know that people up in Eagle

probably have some trail laid up there,

so soon as I connect up with their trail,

I should have a fairly decent trail into town.

One way or another, I'm going to make it.

That sun is starting to dip down

and I got to get going

'cause I don't want to be running through this crap at night in the dark.

So I'm burning daylight, I'm going to Eagle.

The boys are ready.

Everybody stay. Everybody stay.

Head out, let's go, boys.

Hup, hup! Yeah! Let's go.

ERIK: Everything I have to do, I have to do for myself

and build for myself and create for myself.

These coals stay hot for days and days.

I only light a few fires a year

because the fire just keeps going,

but today we're going to change the stove pipe out.

It's kind of beat down,

a wind storm damaged the old one

and I had to scab together these pieces here

out of some pipe I had just laying around to get through,

but it's a real fire hazard.

Could easily burn my house down.

This is going to be the piece that's right above the stove itself.

So we need to put a hole in the centre of the pipe

and it's essential that the hole is centred and straight

and that's where our flue is going to go, our damper,

and that's how you shut down the stove

so that you can control the temperature at which it burns.

My little way of putting that hole in is with .22 handgun.

Got to make sure it's perfectly straight.

We're going to centre it just right.

(METALLIC CLANKING)

And let's see how we did.

Pretty good! Let's go put it in.

Take the old pipe out.

Try not to make a mess.

(GROANS)

Make a mess.

We are north of the Arctic Circle

and it can get to 60 below zero here,

so staying warm and having a good wood stove

is really important.

Looks good. I'm happy with it.

Light the virgin fire here, appears to be drawing well.

Get back to doing some other things.

Some people think

I'm crazy to want to live out here in the cold,

but any day that I get to sit on the edge of a mountain

and look out over all this,

is a pretty successful day to me.

I don't need to shoot anything,

or put up any meat,

add any fur to my catch for the season

just get to walk around out here in the quiet

and be alone.

You know there's no interruptions or distractions

from my thoughts.

This is my church here,

I feel really, really blessed and really, really fortunate

to be able to live as close to nature as I do.

If you didn't have a clock or anything right now

and you looked around,

I don't think it would've looked a bit different 500 years ago

and that's what I really like.

SUE: The last person I see is the end of September

and the next is May or June so, nine months.

It's just me, totally alone.

The weather is poor enough outside that the risk of life

and limb is a little bit large.

It's keeping me from working on my runway and what not.

And this is the weather we're looking at right now.

This is the low front,

this is causing a lot of problems.

You know we're still going to be 40 below zero

and maybe 50 below zero, 60 below zero,

you know once you get that far below zero who really cares.

Useless for me to try

and get out there on a piece of equipment

and try and make any headway.

Even with the hand lines up,

it's far too dangerous to go out in this weather.

You've only got five, 10 minutes

and your skin is going to freeze,

you're gonna have frostbite.

You just can't do it.

I have no choice but to hole up

and hope that the camp survives

without a day of upkeep.

But, that's just what it is,

I mean, to make the decision to live here, you know,

you're deciding that your going to pit yourself against

some of the worst shit that Mother Nature has to give

and why do I do it? I mean, the jury's still out, really.

It's damn near impossible to try and keep track of

all the things that is trying to kill me out here.

You can put up your hand. You're gonna run out of fingers.

You've got the wind, you've got the cold,

you've the bears, you've got the polar bears,

you've got the wolverines, you've got the wolves,

if you get sick, the doctors aren't around,

you're 500 miles from...

I mean, you can just keep going with it.

There's more stuff that wants to eat me

then I want to be eaten by out here.

It's always a challenge. Staying alive, day-to-day.

Each one of these guns has a different home.

It likes it there and has a purpose in where it lives.

All my weapons are usually locked and loaded,

they only safety is, don't touch it.

This is a .45-70.

Locked, loaded, ready for action.

Safety's off.

When I'm in bed and laying here

first thing my hand does is grab the pistol,

the next thing the other hand does

is grab the gun, you know.

So, this is where they live.

Had an incident years ago,

bear came right through the wall over here,

I used to lay with my head here

and (GROWLS)... Came right through

at 2:00 in the morning,

got hung up on the bars,

but I was able to lift my head put my feet right in my boots,

grab the rifle and run.

Stark naked, ran up to the perch

and as I threw my rifle up and pulled myself up,

you know, she took her claws

and got right in between the sole of my rubber boot

and my foot yanking me down.

I have fat calves and just went...

And the boot came off,

I scrambled out, shot, she went (GROWLING), ran off.

And I never did find my boot,

but in the morning here's an ear with a tag.

So I never sleep naked any more

and I never sleep with my head towards the wall.

I changed it, I got my head up here,

my pistol here,

the rifle's always stayed there.

You know, it's what I... I may never need it again,

but I thank God I had it when I needed it.

You point a gun when you mean it.

Something big is chasing me, a predator at close range.

Boom.

You're dead.

10 below, 13 below. Thursday is 25 below.

Well, when you have a bad hunt,

you've wasted resources, gas, good weather, time.

But that's just the way it goes,

you have to accept it.

Clear enough, just going to be a little funny to see, that's all.

Overcast will turn...

The weather is everything.

We go with the weather,

it doesn't go with us.

Weather is looking like it's going to get colder

and hopefully clear up.

Right now, we got a lot of overcast

and it makes it very difficult

to see the snow that you're driving over.

If it's an unbroken trail, you can get into some troubles.

Back past Melagivik Lakes

over toward the base of the mountain

all along this area,

there're supposed to be lots of caribou.

Maybe 1,000 of them down there.

We've been hearing caribou are a little south of here,

not very far away, so

our best bet is to have a look

over down at these lakes in an area called Melagivik.

-Sound good to you? -Yes, sounds good.

CHIP: My wife has the most experience

with hunting in this house.

Her family were a family of hunter gatherers as well.

AGNES: Chip and my dad sat and visited for a long time

with maps in front of them

and my father passed on

a lot of traditions to my husband.

My wife's family is probably responsible for 90%

of my knowledge about this region around here,

and if it wasn't for her father,

I'd probably still wouldn't be doing things right.

ANDY: The more independent you are,

the more freedom you have

and that's what I want in my life.

I want freedom.

Straight ahead. Good boy.

All right. You guys got us to Eagle now,

good job, you guys. All right, straight ahead.

It took a little longer than I expected to get to Eagle

but I finally got a good trail in,

that makes me feel good.

Now I can get my supplies and head home.

I'm going to go to my school bus first

to get my dog food.

This is an old school bus converted into a storage unit.

I go to Fairbanks to buy dog food and stuff.

I can't bring it all down the river,

so I got to have a place in Eagle

where I can store things.

Hup, let's go, that-a boys.

I'm going to head over to the post office,

pick up my beer supplies.

Hi, Andy, are you making beer?

-Oh, yeah. -All right, well, there you go.

-All right. -Enjoy making beer.

Hey, man, you know what? How many times have I ordered stuff

and it's taken like, three weeks to get here...

-Yeah. -I order this on Monday.

-Isn't that amazing? -Yeah.

The final trip is to pick up

my plastic to build some new sleds.

Hey, Linda, I'm going to pick up my freight

out of the pool hall, okay?

All right, thank you.

There's nothing like the north.

Every time you freight something,

it's a new challenge on how it get it home.

Ah, we'll make it work.

Whoa, whoa.

You going to go haw. You going to go haw.

That-a boys, haw, haw. Good boys.

ERIK: What gets people is in their mind

and either you have it

or you don't have it to live in Alaska.

When the temperature's extremely cold,

I might fill my wood box three or four times a day.

Mid-winter here, I'm running low,

I've been burning a lot of wood, I'm getting pretty low.

I'm down to about nothing.

Well, there are two types of firewood that

we cut here in the Arctic.

One is dead-standing spruce.

The other is green birch.

Good to go.

It's about zero this morning, so we're good to go.

It's a nice temperature for cutting wood

and go get it done.

A little different than other places

where you just flip a switch for heat.

Go cut trees down and buck them up

and chop them up

and bring them back to wood stove.

This is a glacier creek.

Basically turned into an ice waterfall

or an ice fall.

There is wood up here that's not available to me

any other time of year

and, you know, when I cut in the fall or spring,

there's no snow and ice to get up this creek.

We'll get these home and...

(MOTOR STARTING)

Keep moving.

(ENGINE REVVING)

It's fucked.

Mother fucker.

Anytime you're up on something that's a precipice like this,

it's a bad situation.

Here in Alaska, you know,

I, I hop on my sled

and I go find some wood and cut it down

and drag it home.

A lot of time a lot of energy just to do some tasks here.

You sleep when you're tired, you eat when you're hungry,

you work when there's work to be done.

Got plenty of water.

Got some firewood,

now I'm going to split a few pieces up real small,

spark my sauna up

and take a nice relaxing steam

and get a bath.

I rarely know what day of the week it is.

I usually don't know what time it is and I don't care.

Had a successful day cutting wood.

Got some good high-quality dead-standing spruce here.

Chop a little bit up.

Nothing I rather be doing.

If there was something I'd rather be doing,

I'd be out doing it,

I do whatever I want, literally.

I enjoy living here very much

and I wouldn't trade this life for anything.

My day can be made just by seeing a moose

and watching him walk across the river.

I don't know, maybe I'm simple-minded.

ANDY: What I find really satisfying

is building a life you want for yourself

and then living that life.

Straight ahead. Up we go.

(CLICKING TONGUE)

Hup, hup, that-a boys.

I just picked up my supplies in Eagle

and it feels good to be headed home, away from civilisation.

The world is becoming too homogenized for my taste.

Everything you do outside of where we live costs you money.

Park a car, costs you money, got to have home insurance,

got to have car insurance, got to have health insurance.

We don't have to worry about that out here.

I figure if I got sick, it's up to me to deal with it,

if I get hurt, it's up to me to deal with it.

Kate and I both agree that quality of life is measured

by how much free time you have to do what you want to do

and if that's the measure of life's quality

then we have an extremely high quality of life.

That-a boys!

Let's go. Hup, hup.

Hup, hup, let's go. Let's go. Hup, hup. That-a boys.

Hup, hup.

Cold?

Ah, here, why don't you wear that for a minute?

Nice hat, buddy!

Oh, yeah!

-You look like the long shoreman. -(DOG BURPS)

Oh, my God, he burps like one too.

Can you swear like a sailor?

Huh?

We got some mail,

some supplies,

and most importantly,

we got our beer malts.

Got to have beer malts here.

So I'm going to brew up a batch of beer tonight.

I don't know if you're going to get your beer tonight, babe.

KATE: What do you mean?

I think the root cellar's freezing up down below

'cause I got a little bit of frozen beer

in this tube here, so...

KATE: Can't you just open it up?

-Dip it out? -Yeah.

-No. -Why?

No, it would be all over the place.

It's wanting to.

It's like there's ice in there or something.

KATE: Go on.

ANDY: Ice-brewed Yukon beer, look at that! Oh, it's going.

-KATE: Yay! -(ANDY LAUGHS)

This beer tastes way better

than anything I've ever bought.

Tell you the truth... I mean, honest to God,

this is the best beer that I've ever had,

and I think it's because I can brew it myself

and it cost about half as much to make

and it's better than what I can buy.

Look at that.

KATE: That's the way a beer should look.

ANDY: Perfect carbonation.

You da man.

All right, there's your break up brew.

Cheers, babe.

CHIP: Getting animals for food,

you start to appreciate that animal much, much, more.

So far we've blown a couple chances

of getting caribou,

and it looks like we've got one more chance

before the sun goes down.

I'd say the females are at the back.

AGNES: Yeah, that was the very first one,

just standing there.

There is a shot I think.

CHIP: Usually we try to shoot them in the head or the neck

but we're usually much closer

and being as we're close to a village

and these animals have... This herd has been hunted,

they're what we call educated.

So the distance of shooting is much greater.

(GUNSHOT FIRED)

CHIP: Yep, she's limping. She'll go down.

She's been hit all right.

Just got to give her a chance to calm down and settle in.

She'll lay down and we'll go get her.

Me and my wife, we do this quite a bit together.

Right now it's my turn to do the work, she's done her work.

It's a division of labour.

In this society that we live in,

woman hunters are just as viable as man hunters.

'Cause what matters is there's meat on the table.

Killing things isn't so pretty.

We came up here and finished it off by cutting its throat

'cause it wasn't going anywhere.

That's just the way we do things.

A lot of people don't like the way it happens,

but they can always pay the butcher to do it.

No different.

We're not trophy hunting.

Our trophy is the meat. The fat meat.

The females are starting to put on a lot of fat

from all the grazing they've done in the dark.

They haven't run it off, she's a perfect cow.

This is what we call the mess of success.

When we're cold sometimes

we have a little bit of the kidney,

kidney warms real good.

Liver.

We have a bite of the liver.

If you're cold and hungry.

SUE: Nature does not want you to succeed.

If I went somewhere and it were all easy,

I'd be on Xanax and, you know,

in la-la land in a heartbeat.

I would not be happy.

The blizzard is over

and I can finally go outside safely.

It's, uh, nice and calm.

I mean, it's 35, 40 below, it's not bad weather.

Being holed up for too long

is not how you script it,

but I'm my own master. I tell the ship which way to sail.

But, you know, you get a nice day

and, yeah, you just bounce around,

you want to be outside.

You go check all your drifts.

I took the snow off one side of the building

'cause it was getting too heavy.

But, I mean,

who else has an office

this nice, you know?

Nobody I know of.

My foot has been aching since the surgery

and so one of the first things I want to do now

is go out and get some willow bark.

Willow has a component to it called salic acid.

The salic acid in willow helps

eases your aches and pains

and I'll take it and boil it up in some water

and make a tea,

and it helps me sleep a little better at night.

Every year I have the concern,

how adept am I at my own survival?

The mind says, boo-yah, 18. 10'-tall and bulletproof.

But the body says, (CHUCKLING)

gravity happens. I'm a poster child, you know.

Even though they did surgery on the paw

and it's feeling all right,

it is now a liability.

It's been cut on,

it will develop scar tissue, it will develop arthritis.

I mean, every year it's something.

I did try to live in town

and slowly but surely, it was killing me.

I don't understand

where people want to be mean to each other,

I don't understand where gossip

and you're not fitting into the mould

and why is there a need to

tear apart the fabric of society

instead of making it so strong

that we all support each other.

And I don't get that.

I'm no good at the social games

that the rest of the world plays,

I don't understand it, I don't get it,

I'd rather have a very honest relationship

with something that wants to eat me.

This I understand, bears want to eat me

and I don't want them to.

It's real simple, it's logical.

The environment itself says get the fuck out

and it's my nature to say, make me.

ANDY: There's pretty much no place left on Earth

except for interior Alaska

where you still have the freedom to pursue

this kind of a lifestyle

the way we do.

You guys ready for your fish?

All right, get some whole fish for the boys tonight.

Today was a really great day.

I just got back from Eagle,

the dogs did really well.

Now they deserve a really good treat.

There you go, let me see that fish.

There you go, buddy.

After a long, hard day,

I like to sit back in a nice, hot sauna.

There's no better way to relax at the end of the day.

Yeah, buddy, look at the northern lights. Whoo!