Original subtitles

NARRATOR: On this episode of Life Below Zero,

the path to survival is filled with danger.

-GLENN: There's one right there. -(GUNSHOT)

NARRATOR: The Hailstones embark on a treacherous journey.

AGNES: Miles in ice and tundra.

NARRATOR: Andy and Kate are trapped by the frozen Yukon.

ANDY: The ice broke off, and is just not safe right now.

NARRATOR: And a mountain of snow threatens to bury Sue.

SUE: That thing can cave any minute.

Ah!

(WOLF HOWLING)

GLENN: I just woke up,

and I heard wolves howling off in the distance.

I'm gonna go outside and see what's going on.

I'm not hunting for a particular animal

most of the time when I go out.

All I do is take advantage of opportunities that come up.

(HOWLING CONTINUES)

(SOFTLY) There's a wolf.

At least one wolf not very far from here at all right now.

If I howl, and the wolves are out,

they'll howl back to me.

(HOWLING)

(WOLF HOWLING)

I just heard the wolf howl just a couple 100 yards away.

I've got a trail that goes up that direction.

He might be walking on my trail.

(GROWLING)

I feel a kinship with the wolves.

The wolves are out here hunting to get food.

I'm out here hunting to get food,

and the wolves are living

pretty basic existence.

I'm living a pretty basic existence.

So I do feel close to them.

-(HOWLING) -We're not really friends.

We're not buddies, but we're not enemies either.

Seven years ago,

I come across this track of a caribou that had been wounded.

One wolf chasing it.

So immediately I take off following this caribou

and this wolf up the mountain.

We head in a direction where it's headed

right towards some cliffs,

and the tracks go right over the top of the cliff.

The caribou got chased right off of this cliff

down into this deep ravine.

And I get down into that ravine,

I find the caribou, I start butchering the caribou.

Decided to make a backpack out of its rib cage,

and I was stuffing the legs in there, and the head,

as much as I could fit,

everything went inside the rib cage.

And lugging it down out of that ravine

it was all brush and deep snow...

(CHUCKLES) But I had that meat,

and that was really something.

That was one of the most memorable days

of my life I would say.

Here's something. This is a moose track.

A moose crossed this trail very recently.

So the wolves also could be after the moose.

They hunt moose and caribou.

They're all excited about the trail here.

Running up and down my trail,

turned around right here, stopped.

It didn't keep going.

This moose chose to follow my trail

'cause it was easier walking.

Something urinated over there,

and there's some scat in the snow I'm gonna take a peek at.

This is where a moose was bedded down.

It was laying right here.

That's moose scat.

In the winter that's what it looks like.

This is a wolf track right here.

Look here.

That's where the wolves crossed the trail right here.

Look, they urinated right here in the snow.

(SNIFFS)

You can smell that wolf urine.

(SNIFFS)

Wolf just peed there this morning.

Look at this.

This wolf is walking right in this moose's tracks.

It's following the moose tracks.

SUE: If you want to test yourself,

no matter what your personality,

you can certainly find an area of Alaska that will do it.

You never know up here from one minute to the next what you're gonna do.

NARRATOR: Years in the bush have taught Sue Aikens to tackle problems head on.

SUE: All right. This is my freezer room.

This is where I keep all my food,

and this is 17, 18 foot of drift in front of it.

I have a storm system that's coming in.

I've got several low fronts, a few high fronts.

It's all coming together, it's colliding,

and it's a recipe for disaster.

It's supposed to be 70 below tonight and the next few days

while this storm comes in.

Brings moisture.

Moisture at those temperatures is snow.

The wind with it, it's gonna crush my building.

It's gonna be deeper than my lines.

So what I've gotta do is take a little weight off this line

so it's not drooping so much.

While I have a 17-foot drift and I can reach this,

this is normally 22 foot in the air.

I've got my entire business,

a $20,000 building with $8,000 in supplies.

So I've gotta get on my snow removal.

As the sun is getting ready to go down,

you can feel that temperature change.

I'm gonna be working into the night to get this shit done.

I'm just beginning to move that snow.

It's not just that big 17-foot mound.

I've gotta move the other stuff

that's been building up too.

I started to make my little flat path

out to where I need to dump it.

When you're doing snow removal,

I can't just go and fling it over my shoulder

because in a couple of months, it's gonna melt.

It's gotta melt away from the camp, not flood the camp.

I have to move it far enough away, that's not my issue.

It's not what's out here today that's gonna nail me in the booty.

It's what might happen tomorrow.

You gotta move as much as you can,

so you have as much time before you do it again.

Every storm that comes through,

it doesn't even have to carry snow with it,

because here there's nothing to stop it.

The wind comes barrelling through,

blows it until it hits the first thing taller than ground.

My little paws are getting cold.

The temperature is definitely dropping.

The sun is down, the moon is out.

So I'm gonna be working this through the dark.

I gotta protect all of, you know, my little fingers.

Warm up.

Opposable thumbs are only good if you have them.

ANDY: I go by my, uh, rule of P's I call it.

Proper planning prevents piss-poor performance.

The five P's.

Oh, my God.

God damn it.

A huge piece of ice like several stadiums.

It looked like that kind of a size,

has broken away from the shore

where our trail goes right through.

NARRATOR: Breaking river ice could destroy Andy and Kate's path

to their nearest point of civilisation

for weeks to come.

ANDY: Wow, that sucks.

KATE: Oh, my. We didn't even hear that?

ANDY: Holy mackerel.

KATE: Oh, God, can it get any worse?

ANDY: This has been an unusual winter.

Climate change is really affecting

the way we live out here.

All the seasons are shifting later,

and there's not much we can do about it

except for adapt to it

and change the timing of the way we do things.

It looks like this whole big piece just went out,

fanned out like this and then jammed up there.

KATE: Yup.

-It looks like it's open water up by the island. -KATE: Yup.

So all we have is that sloped ice now to get up river on.

I have quite a bit up in Eagle

that needs to get freighted down.

If I don't get that down, a lot of my springtime projects

are not going to be able to happen.

And now I've got a major ice floe that has broken off

and changed where my trail

that I've been using all winter is.

I'm going to go get my ice chisel

and just go check out this area here

to see whether I'm going to be able to get up on that or not,

just checking out some of these places around here

so I know what I'm up against.

KATE: I think you're a fool for going out there.

I really do.

ANDY: You got to be pretty vigilant all the time

when you're out on this ice.

It only takes a split second to make the wrong move

or have the wrong thing happen.

Things can get ugly really quick.

It looks like the only option is to come down here

and burn some calories

and try and cut a trail out right here,

flatten this out a little bit.

(THUD)

If it's warm temperatures, it's going to take a long time

for this to freeze up thick enough

for me to feel comfortable on it.

It would have been a bad thing to be out

on that ice when it started moving.

'Cause, uh, from the looks of it, I would have had open water

and no way to get to the shoreline.

So my plan right now is to head on back, uh,

get a shovel, and level out that track

so that I don't go into the water on that thin ice.

I think I'll be sticking a little closer

to the bank from now on.

CHIP: We have to think ahead.

Folks up here for 10,000 years have been planning ahead.

You live for the day,

but you gotta remember there's gonna be a next year too.

This is light winter.

This is, uh, cold, but, uh, we got long days.

And this is the time of year when we hunt female caribou.

And along with the female caribou

where the caribou are gathered up,

there's usually lots of fur.

I usually get quite a few wolves.

Wolverine if I can trap them.

Something that we usually don't do

is leave our kids behind,

but this year we're leaving the kids behind.

There's no real particular reason to it.

I guess maybe my kids wanna do something different

for their spring break,

but, um, what will be different for me and the wife

is having some time alone to ourselves.

AGNES: This is pretty much our sleeping stuff.

Our tent, our food, our cooking stove,

and our light, and our change of clothes, and socks.

(DOGS BARKING)

CHIP: It's a long journey,

and there's a lot of things that can happen.

We're going across the ocean. There's thousands of dangers.

It's gonna be miles and miles, and we could get lost. (CHUCKLES)

But we're always on top of the world,

so we know where we're at all the time.

Since we're going so far away, we take along a tent,

and we make ourselves a base camp.

And we work out of a base camp.

Make ourselves about a twenty mile loop,

set traps, and hunt the loop.

There it is!

And we have what we call our trail.

And we take this trail and this route,

and we work it for a couple weeks,

and we work our traps that have been set in between,

and as we go check the traps every day,

when we see an animal off to one side or the other,

we take off after the animal if we want it.

AGNES: So that's pretty much our load,

tent, sleeping bag, tent poles, gas.

(ENGINE STARTING)

-Looks good to me. -Yup.

AGNES: It's gonna be pretty much a whole day travelling

to get down there.

It's gonna be miles, and miles and ice,

rivers, tundra.

CHIP: Between March and the end of September we're kind of semi-nomadic.

We kind of just live out at the tent,

and right now for us, this is where everything starts out.

This is the hunting, you're just beginning,

and we're just getting kicked in.

(ENGINE POWERING DOWN)

CHIP: There's the good and the bad out here.

Being stuck is the bad.

We're well versed in watching for things that happen,

but sometimes things catch up on you.

(ENGINE REVVING)

My machine just decided to just sit there, and you don't see it coming.

Our best bet with dealing with anything

is to deal with it correctly

or suffer the consequence.

We're not into suffering.

I'd say we got one, two, three, four hours of light.

And look like about 15 more miles to go.

We're gonna keep cruising through here and

hopefully we don't get stuck in this jumbled-up junk.

We'll just keep probing it.

We'll go along these edges until we find a clear spot.

It'll come. It's out there.

(ENGINE STARTING)

CHIP: At least it's not white out.

We're not crashing into this shit.

GLENN: People depend on the accumulated knowledge of generations.

If I just came out here and tried to learn all this on my own,

I never would've survived out here.

Here's another track.

Right there, that's a wolf track.

This is extremely fresh.

These wolves were just here.

I haven't seen a single caribou track around here.

Unfortunately, I saw lots of moose sign,

but no caribou sign.

In winter I hunt caribou,

but the legal moose season is only in the fall.

I'm gonna walk through the forest to the southeast

breaking a new trail.

In that forest I may encounter small game like grouse,

porcupine, ptarmigan, snowshoe hare.

So I'm just gonna head through the forest,

breaking trail to the southeast

for the first time this winter.

Sometimes the snow gets so deep

that you literally can't walk.

But I'm building a trail that I can use

for the rest of the winter.

ANDY: You have to be adaptable enough to react

to what's working and what's not working,

and if you can do that, you can live successfully.

If you can't adapt well, you don't do very well out here.

(DOGS WHINING)

If I'm not back by tonight

then it just means that the ice broke off

and I'm heading toward the Bering Sea.

(CHUCKLES)

All right. See you.

All right. Don't be a hero.

Yeehaw!

There he goes, guys. He's going on a mission.

I'll keep a watch out.

ANDY: Then we had a large piece of the river ice go away.

It broke off, it pivoted,

came down river about a quarter mile,

and jammed into the bank.

So, it kind of screwed up where I normally use

for a trail to go up to Eagle.

I've got some steel up in Eagle I've gotta bring down.

I've gotta haul fuel down here,

and I've gotta get dog food down here.

If I miss this opportunity I'm pretty much screwed

for all my springtime projects.

A lot of times you wait another year

until you can do it again.

NARRATOR: To get to town,

Andy will have to create a path across the unstable ice.

All I'm trying to do here

is create a little bit of a trench.

So if the sled starts sliding down,

it's got something to come up against and stop right here.

I definitely don't wanna be falling off down there.

So, I just create a trench here to go through,

and if I can go slow enough I should be okay here.

ANDY: I've never seen a big piece of ice like this

break off like it did this year.

(CHUCKLES) I'm kind of nervous about going out there.

I mean, I don't think it would let go,

but I didn't think this was gonna let go either.

So, the last thing I wanna do is come down on some ice

that's gonna break free and start floating

when I got a thousand pounds of gear behind me.

It's kind of like a little luge run right now.

So as long as I'm in that,

I'm not worried about sliding out and onto that thin ice.

NARRATOR: With his bypass complete,

Andy sets out for Eagle

to collect the building supplies

needed for his spring projects.

I was trying to get this gear, all these supplies loaded up,

load some fuel, get some propane, load that up.

The biggest problem is this metal is really slippery.

It's hard to lash it down,

and keep it from sliding off the sled,

so, I'm a little concerned about that.

Believe that'll keep it from sliding out the back.

Got about 800 pounds of steel in the back sled.

Probably about 600 pounds

of fuel and propane in the front sled.

We'll see. Every day is an adventure on the Yukon.

I'm gonna be hauling back

probably about 1000 pounds

of material and fuel,

so it's finding a good trail on the way home

that's gonna be the issue today.

We're running out of good trail.

With a load you don't have a lot of control over it.

It starts sloughing back and forth

and it can drag the back of the machine around.

Ah, shit.

Shit, shit, shit, shit! Ah!

These sleds don't like going on side hills.

They'll just slide to the bottom, and when they do,

whatever is in the load really shifts hard

and it wants to slide out.

It's time to get rolling again.

When the sleds are running sideways

after sloughing back and forth,

if they come up and they hit a chunk of ice,

it really slams the sled hard.

And that's when stuff breaks.

One of the last obstacles is the side hilling

right by where the new ice is.

If I go off the edge right there,

I'm gonna lose 800 pounds

right into a deep part of the river.

If I drop the sleds over there,

there's no getting them out,

and I'm gonna have to be really cautious

going through that last little part.

CHIP: We don't wanna miss any shots.

We don't wanna miss the caribou.

We don't wanna miss any wolves.

(GUNSHOT)

We don't wanna miss any seals.

We don't wanna miss anything we see on the way.

We're going to a place where we go every year.

Actually out of the Arctic, but it's no warmer

'cause we're not going that far out.

We're hoping to get there before the daylight gets down.

NARRATOR: As semi-nomadic hunters,

Chip and Agnes seek out every opportunity to find meat.

Today they've travelled 85 miles across frozen terrain

for a chance to provide for their family.

All right.

Look like it's gonna get windy later, ah?

Yeah. It's supposed to go to 45.

45 mile an hour winds are not fun to play out in.

I'm just gonna untie. I'm gonna get this set up.

Can you get some coffee when you get a chance?

CHIP: It takes about 10 minutes to set up our camp.

We just have to unhitch the sled,

untie the poles, we take the tent,

we slip it over the top of the poles.

AGNES: And come over here.

We spread the poles.

(CHIP SPEAKING)

AGNES: I'm under here. Don't let go, Chip.

GLENN: Something I picked up

from people whose ancestors lived out here

for thousands of years,

is not to worry too much about the future.

You never know what the future is gonna bring.

So why the hell spend so much time planning for it?

I'm not looking for a particular animal most of the time.

I'm just looking for food.

Wolves led me up to the ridge.

There's no sign of caribou,

so what I'm hoping is that I might get some small game.

First time through on snowshoes is always a lot of work.

Once I get a trail it's no problem travelling it,

but the first time through takes a lot of effort.

Takes a lot of patience hunting up here in the Arctic.

It's hungry country.

I just walk through the forest slowly

usually when I'm looking for small game.

If you're a spruce grouse you fly around,

you land in spruce trees, and you eat spruce needles

and it's sprucey.

I like to know what all of this stuff tastes like.

The willows, the aspens, the spruce.

They all have different flavours.

Life has meaning out here

because everything I do every day

is somehow connected to my survival.

That's why I don't believe in vacations.

Like I don't need it because it's...

It's so enjoyable, just the actual work.

I don't differentiate

between recreation and survival actually.

It's all the same thing.

There's a spruce grouse right in that tree

feeding on the needles.

Where there's one spruce grouse there are often others.

Before I start shooting I gotta look around.

If there are more I don't want to scare them away.

There's one right there.

There's another one on that branch just frozen.

I'm gonna try and get all three of those.

(GUNSHOT)

(COCKS GUN)

Yeah, well, she's still there.

(GUNSHOT)

Nice.

That's that male that was feeding on the spruce needles.

The other one was right over this way.

Sometimes finding them is the hardest part.

Yeah. There it is.

I definitely hit all three of them.

Oh, there she is over there.

There, got all three of them.

That'll make a nice meal.

Maybe even two.

I got three spruce grouse,

and I'm headed home to cook them.

A lot of times you don't get all of them.

They're together when you shoot the first time,

a couple others will fly away.

But today I got all three that were here.

(BIRDS CHIRPING)

Birds are singing, squirrels are barking,

it's just like paradise out here today.

Wolves led me up to, uh, the ridge.

Looked around, I could see the moose tracks

that the wolves were following.

One thing turned into the next.

I come home with three grouse.

I mean, I feel like I'm just another hunter like the wolves.

It's just a very basic, primal way of getting food.

That feels good.

I mean, I feel lucky just being able to go out there

and walk around in the woods all day to get my food,

rather than sitting in an office or doing something

that I wouldn't enjoy as much.

SUE: You know, I'm just a fat chick

trying to make a business on the tundra.

I started attacking my snow because my meat shed,

where I had stored all of my food and my frozen meat,

that's already under a 17-foot drift.

So if that storm comes in pummelling me,

it's gonna crush my building.

I warmed up my pinkies.

I put on some serious warmer gear.

I got a long ways to go, and now I gotta hit it again.

There's nothing that quite prepares you

for spending a couple of weeks

alone in Kavik in the winter.

You know, any number of things can happen.

There's always something else I can learn.

There's always something else I can do.

There's always room for improvement in any lifestyle.

Mine happens to be such that

I must rely on myself in the end.

When I'm the only one that I count on

in the winter to get my chores done,

you know, the only ass that gets kicked

for not completing the job is my own.

They're saying 50 to 70 below for tonight.

I definitely believe it.

I'm not sure where I'm sitting right now,

I really don't care. All's I know is it's cold and getting colder,

so I gotta get my job done.

Making some head way.

I'm keeping this kind of cleared

to move it way away from camp.

So it drains away from camp when it melts.

I don't know exactly when it's gonna hit.

I just know it's all coming together for the perfect storm

and I gotta be ready.

If not, I've lost my food.

I've lost my ability to get to the food.

I've lost the building.

I can't absorb a 40, 50 thousand dollar hit.

When you're driving that Bobcat

you're being jammed and slammed.

There's no suspension in it.

I gotta be careful with the Bobcat.

Getting too close to it now.

I mean, that thing can cave any minute.

I gotta use a gentle touch.

This is the part where I've gotta pay attention.

I've gotta get the weight off

without pushing on that building any more.

You put the bucket down, and you've gotta scrape.

You know, that piece of machinery,

if I tell it to come down, it's gonna come down.

If I'm too close, I'm gonna be the problem.

God damn it.

Ah!

You have got to be fucking kidding me.

(COUGHS)

Well, I got the snow away from the building,

but, um, I can see just the snow from that one storm,

heavy enough, dense enough, it bent my building.

And you can see how it's bowed.

I'll take a look at it from the inside,

but, uh, that's gonna be a son of a bitch.

(COUGHS) What I got going on here, you can see right here, man,

it is bowed out.

I mean, it's...

'Cause this whole building is built to shift

when the wind hits.

Shift, you know, so if I put a two by four down and brace it,

all's that's gonna happen

is this thing is gonna rock and roll

in the next big windstorm, and I'm gonna puncture this.

So, that's not an option,

but, you know, in here I got food for Kavik,

uh, like in the business as well as myself.

My game meat.

I've got caribou meat, you know, bear,

and, uh, if this building does come down,

I mean, this is my meat. These are all freezers.

You got 10, 20 grand wrapped up in the building.

Probably five to eight grand in food.

Toss another few grand on the freezers to replace,

and, uh, I don't know, $5,000 a round trip

for every 2,000 pounds I fly in.

I mean, this'll rack up quick.

So, this little building,

if it makes it through this winter, I'll tear it apart.

Then that's the time in the summer,

I'll kick on the heat on it, re-bend those pipes

till they're the right shape.

Get it all put back together.

Probably spot-weld it a little bit,

but get it into a home where it doesn't have to worry

about the drifting so much.

I've done damn near all I can do with the bucket.

I've got a hell of a lot done.

I feel real good.

I truly believe if I hadn't gotten to it tonight,

I would not have it.

One more inch of snow with a little bit of wind,

and I would've lost that building.

CHIP: We're opportunists.

Hunting comes with opportunity.

When these things present themselves

we have a tendency of breaking off from one idea or plan

and basically making a whole new one.

If your eyes are wide open

and something comes out in front of you, you go after it.

One.

We're pretty much setting up a home away from home.

We're gonna be staying in this tent of ours

for the next couple few weeks.

Ow!

Watch out!

There's another one gonna come down on me.

Fuck, I'm gonna have a broken lip.

CHIP: Oh, just knock it off!

AGNES: How could I? It just hit my lip.

Full force. See that one just missed you.

CHIP: I understand, but that doesn't mean a second one's

-gonna get you right now. -Oh, it just missed you.

I know. I'm sitting here

holding the stick back.

-I don't care what you say. -You're safe.

That's all I'm trying to tell you. You're safe. Just relax.

I know I'm safe. It just fucking hurts.

Oh, I bet it does,

but just, there's not gonna be another one

-coming down on you. -(AGNES EXHALES)

I can't smile pretty no more.

-CHIP: Sure you can. -(CHUCKLES)

You're always pretty.

That fucking hurt.

Oh, I bet it did.

Just wanted you to know you were safe where you stood.

I know I'm safe. I just had to tell you it hurt.

-CHIP: Yes, I heard you. -(AGNES CHUCKLES)

(SIGHS) Does that look about right to you?

AGNES: Yup, it does.

I should actually put some snow on that.

CHIP: Yeah, that would help.

AGNES: I'll go get some willows to lay down on the ground

before we put our stuff inside

so that all our stuff won't get wet from the snow

on the ground, so.

CHIP: I'm cutting these down to make a bed.

I need a mattress.

Ah, that's a resilient little bush.

(AGNES AND CHIP SPEAKING)

CHIP: Making a way to keep our mattress

perfectly off the ground without being lumpy.

Important is that we don't, uh, get wet from the snow below.

I'm just trying to smash it down.

Make sure I don't have any hard spots,

or places we'll roll off of.

Don't want my feet higher than my head,

but we got a lot of work to do ahead of us,

and this is just getting it started up.

ANDY: You know, the only way you live subsistence

is working off of renewable resources.

So far I haven't figured out how to get gasoline, and oil,

and all these other things as a renewable resource.

You gotta make cash to make it happen.

(DOGS BARKING)

Things are going for the most part pretty good.

The sleds were sloughing around a lot,

but I haven't lost anything yet. Thank God.

Now this don't look very good any more.

NARRATOR: With 800 pounds of supplies in tow,

Andy will have to keep careful control of his sled,

or risk losing everything to the river ice.

ANDY: I'm just gonna have to go really slow

on some of these side hills.

Whoa. Don't you dare go in there.

Oh, shit! You better not.

This could all go to hell really quick.

Oh, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. Oh!

Come on. Get in that track.

Come on, boy. Get in that track.

Attaboy. Stay in there.

All right. Yeehaw!

Whoa!

Whoo, boy.

That was a close call.

That's a good feeling.

That's a load off my mind right now.

I just came through that, um, I call it the luge,

the area I shovelled out, and it was pretty dicey.

That back sled almost went off two times.

I got it into the area I shovelled,

but one point the back end of it

was overhanging the ice there.

But the ice held, so heart was pounding a little bit,

and it was kind of like (LAUGHS) damn.

I'm this close to home.

I don't need this happening now.

That would be pretty ugly to go over on. (CHUCKLES)

But there's quite another big crack in the ice

right back here heading upriver.

You know, after seeing this big chunk of ice

break off the other day,

my eyes are tuned into these cracks in the ice

a whole lot more now than they were a week or so ago.

I now know what's possible.

I never would've thought that a big chunk of ice like that

could've come off and did what it had done.

Good learning lesson for me.

I really picked up a few new clues to look at the ice

and decide whether it's safe or not.

Every time you go out here you learn something new.

Good or bad, that's life on the Yukon, man. (CHUCKLES)

CHIP: I like the zero temperature.

It's a good working temperature

and we can stay outside.

Zero degrees isn't too cold, and it's not too hot.

I'm carving snow blocks with a shovel,

and I'm making a wind break.

Not only is it a wind break,

it's also some weight

on the edge of my, uh, tent.

It was kind of warm out, and then the wind picked up.

So I put on my leather,

and I go make sure that my tent isn't gonna go anywhere.

Especially if my wife's here and I'm not.

It'd be pretty tough keeping something like that down in the wind.

Like a big sail.

I got just a few more pieces to put here.

When I'm done with that I'm gonna go get some firewood.

This is an old broken down, uh, storage rack.

We used to keep, uh, meat and all kinds of stuff here.

But we purposely left firewood here just in case we came back

and happened to need firewood when we got here.

Time to take these over here and whack 'em up.

This is the Arctic, and heat is a big priority.

Getting wood is the way we heat.

So this is a very constant chore for me.

It's just as important of a job as keeping people fed.

Tomorrow we'll get more wood and build a big fire.

Man, I'll tell you what, my top half is tired.

My back is tired, my shoulder's tired,

my elbows are tired.

But that's what coffee's for!

Just getting here was an adventure all on its own, huh?

-It was fun. -Yeah, it was fun.

I've done this so many times the adventure part's gone.

But, um, you know what it's been replaced by?

Is I'm content.

I know where I'm going and I know what I'm doing.

And none of this is new.

This is all very comforting.

New stuff is exciting,

but doing this same stuff over is more comforting.

And I just feel terribly normal being here.