Original subtitles

SUE: So my goal for the day,

I want to keep my eye out for overflow

or pressure ridges in an area that may, you know,

that I might be able to harvest some water.

This might be not a bad little section for getting water.

You know, there's always some water flowing in a river,

no matter how much ice is on it.

Warmer temperatures come, more water flows,

it has to go somewhere.

So it finds the weakest link and that's where it flows.

Sometimes there's a big pressure ridge,

you see a bubble up here, seeping out.

For me, this is a little too dangerous,

I don't, I don't wanna cross here.

What I wanna do is just kind of follow along,

see if there's a safe area for me to go across,

maybe I'll bust open a water lead.

It doesn't have to be deep. It just has to be active.

This, potentially deep and active,

there's just too much danger involved.

But if I can take the machine and skate, skate,

I might bust open a little hole

and then I'll go back, get my little black sled,

my totes, and get some fresh water.

That's a heck of a prize.

(ENGINE REVVING)

(THEME MUSIC PLAYING)

SUE: I tried to come across this little section

of the overflow.

I thought that I could just gun it and get through

and break through the water.

Unfortunately, this intersection is much more solid than I thought.

Once the full snow machine got on the ice

and didn't break through, then it went into a, you know, just side spin.

There's no recovery from that, given the velocity.

When I did hit, I remember hitting the shoulder hard.

It's not an opportune time

to have made such a stupid mistake.

Now I need to get home and get,

just get warm and then take another look at what's going on with my body.

Such a stupid mistake.

I acted like a pork chop.

I might be a pork chop.

CHIP: Maybe the fish will eat me off the bottom of the river

or the ravens will clear my bones off on the tundra.

We're part of the system. We're part of all this.

We just happen to be lucky enough to be the top predators.

CHIP: I'm gonna go check the traps. I'll be back.

AGNES: Love you. CHIP: Love you, too.

NARRATOR: In Kiwalik,

warming temperatures signal the end of the Hailstones' winter harvest.

Before they return to Noorvik,

they have one last chance at trapping fur

and hunting meat for the spring.

The weather is so bad up on top of the mountains, lately,

that we've been forced to stay down low.

And down low here, there's usually a lot of lynx.

So we set lynx traps.

(CHIP SHOUTING)

(CHIP SPEAKING)

Fuck!

Eh, I think it's fucking locked up.

My clutch don't want to move.

It's either the rings or the crank.

Either the crank is out of sync

or I've got no piston pieces that are holding it together.

I'll tell you what could really be worse,

is that I could have been up in the mountains

or I could have been ten miles.

I'm just around the corner. (CHUCKLES)

I'll just call it lucky today, whatever luck this is.

What I really don't want to do is be broken down when the caribou get here.

Because that's when all the fur arrives,

that's when all the meat is here.

It's one of our most productive times in the spring.

And if we lose out on that,

then we have to buy food at the store

for an exorbitant amount of money.

CHIP: What's up?

AGNES: What did you do? Gee whiz!

Did you crash like me?

CHIP: No!

AGNES: How come you're walking?

CHIP: I think it's my crank. Maybe a piston skirt.

Maybe the rings. Maybe another crank.

Man, that sucks.

-Well... -I'm gonna make two into one.

That's my plan.

NARRATOR: After a recent crash...

Minor field repairs were made to Agnes' snow machine.

But with one machine down,

they must now get the other in full working condition.

CHIP: So what's the shorter cut?

My gas tank on your ride, or your engine in my ride?

-Which one would be easier? -Your gas tank.

Exactly. So...

I've been thinking about this since I've been walking.

I got nothing else to think about.

Since my machine's burned up and hers has a good engine

and will run,

I'm gonna go straighten out her handlebar

and I'm gonna take her machine and go drag my machine back here.

One or the other, I'm gonna end up with a working ride.

You know, this is how we live.

We've been doing this for 25 years.

When things break down, we try to keep the ball rolling.

We know our alternatives and we try to switch those alternatives.

-So this is where it stopped? -Yep.

This is junk at the moment, cause it doesn't run.

It makes yours look beautiful.

Okay.

(AGNES SPEAKING)

Yep.

Are you ready?

AGNES: Yay!

GLENN: I just feel really well living out in nature.

And this is a place where I can do it.

There aren't that many places left in the world

where you can still live this way.

There's a connection out here that I don't feel elsewhere.

GLENN: This time of year, here in the Brooks Range,

it's late winter, early spring and it starts getting warmer.

Pretty soon the meat that I have frozen

will have to be dried in order to preserve it.

There's very limited space in this cabin,

so I need to make a better system for drying a larger quantity of meat.

I can build a large rack right out here in front of the window.

That way I can keep an eye on it.

You can get a lot of the things you need to live right here.

You just have to use a little imagination.

NARRATOR: Due to rising temperatures,

Glenn must process his winter meat supply from his cache.

But first, he will need to build a new system

that will allow the meat to dry, or risk losing it to spoilage.

I'm gonna find four really sturdy trees

that I'm gonna cut logs from.

As I'm walking through the forest,

I'm taking a good look at the trees, looking up at the tops.

I'm looking for just the right tree.

Most of the trees here are alive, they're healthy,

I wouldn't want to cut those.

That's what I'm looking for, right there.

Here it goes.

I'm gonna cut down another tree.

There it goes!

I got four now.

Four logs for four legs of the meat rack.

Plus I got a few other poles that I'll incorporate into it.

I'm just gonna get these back to camp.

It's about 400 yards from where I'm gonna build this rack.

I got a nice patch of ice uncovered here,

I'm gonna chisel some holes,

and I'm gonna put the poles in that are gonna be the legs on this meat drying rack.

I'm chiselling a hole here.

The idea is to secure this pole

so that it makes one leg for this meat drying rack.

I wanna be able to put four or five caribou up on here.

I want it nice and sturdy.

That should be about deep enough.

Beautiful.

Now I'm gonna grab some water out of my water hole here,

dump it around that post,

and freeze it into place.

That water's gonna freeze this pole in place.

It'll be good and solid.

It won't move an inch once it freezes up.

This rack will stand right here

until much later in the year when the lake breaks up.

Two up. Two to go.

It's looking good.

It's important that I can keep an eye one this.

Once I get the meat out here on the rack,

there are wolverines around, there are wolves around.

The bears are gonna be coming out of hibernation.

Oh, beautiful.

Just fill it in with ice chips, pour water in it, let it freeze.

I got the four legs to my meat rack right here.

In place.

Leave them overnight, they'll freeze tight,

and tomorrow I'm gonna build the framework to hang the meat off

and to protect the meat.

GLENN: You know, happiness is a odd thing.

And it's, it's not a tangible thing.

It's very difficult to, to know exactly how

to measure happiness and how to find happiness.

I'm loading up the sled

and we're gonna head up to

see if we can't make it out to Notellum Lake today

and do a little bit of ice fishing.

ERIK: We're here right at the end of winter, the beginning of spring,

so the Notellum River

is really known for having open water.

So it's, it's kind of a place you gotta, you gotta watch out for.

ERIK: The things that kills you in Alaska is water, bad ice, stuff like that.

It's the quiet, subtle deaths that aren't glorified that really get people.

It's about a 30-mile ride. Shouldn't be too hard.

The only thing we got to worry about, really,

is the condition of the ice on the river that we're taking.

Hopefully we'll make it there and come back with a trash bag full of fish.

We'll see.

(ENGINE REVVING)

Let's do it.

ERIK: This time of year the caribou are migrating through,

the birds are coming back, the light's back,

bitter temperatures are gone, and it's also the end

of the opportunity to travel with snow.

This time of year with some warmer temperatures,

it's a little bit of touch and go travelling to get there.

The Notellum River is known for a lot of overflow and open water,

you don't want to end up drowning the sled.

-MARTHA: Stop! -Oh, shit.

Look at all that overflow.

MARTHA: Dangerous.

ERIK: That's when accidents happen.

So we come up on the Notellum River here

on the way to go fishing

and there's a little bit of overflow.

It's a condition where there's water on top of the ice.

In the springtime, there's just open water places

and it's flowing over onto the ice.

When you go into that, you gotta be ready,

you gotta be holding on, and you gotta be ready to throttle through it.

These machines that have a little bit more power,

you can actually hydroplane across most of it.

But if you let up, you're in big trouble.

Are we gonna rally through this?

Yeah, just stand up with me and hold on.

(ENGINE REVVING)

ERIK: Woo!

All right!

What do you think, honey? You want to give it a go here?

Is this a good spot? I guess we'll find out.

Let's start digging holes.

(MOTOR STARTS)

(WHIRRING)

(WHIRRING CONTINUES)

MARTHA: Is it good?

Four holes.

I'm just rigging up my tip ups here.

Take this bait, put it on the hook,

and I'm gonna go place my first tip ups.

NARRATOR: With spring on the horizon,

softer ice affords Erik and Martha

the opportunity to catch fish under the frozen river.

Flag, bend it over,

and just hook it on that.

That way when the fish starts taking the bait,

the flag goes up.

That means fish on.

MARTHA: Since I wasn't raised around tip ups,

it's something totally foreign to me.

I'd rather fish with sight or feel,

than just watching a flag go up.

I grew up in a fishing community.

We were always fishing.

Winter, summer, whenever you could.

This is what I love to do.

This is my favourite place to be.

ERIK: It's hard to be patient out here in the cold and sit still.

I hope there's some fish to catch after all of this.

It's either a slam-dunk or nothing.

We'll either do really well fishing

or for whatever reason we'll strike out.

See what the fishing gods have in store for us.

CHIP: You gotta think it through.

You gotta give it a try.

And if you screw it up or if you do it right,

either way you ought to learn something.

NARRATOR: It is crucial that the Hailstones

get one snow machine in safe working order,

not only to hunt caribou, but also to return home to Noorvik safely.

CHIP: It could be that crank was in half.

It could be a ring that's stuck.

Let's have a look.

Yeah, it's got metal all over it.

Look at it glisten. There you go.

I got metal on my spark plug. It's toasted.

So it's not gonna do me any good.

But I'll use it for spare parts for right now.

As long as we're diligent, and we get with it,

and we get our stuff on, my wife will have a good ride.

I'll scrap mine till summer

and then figure something else out.

We really can't live for tomorrow,

we gotta think of today, cause today's happening.

The cruel irony of it all,

the best weather has just suddenly arrived within the last few hours.

The weather we've been waiting for.

The weather that's kept us low in the river

and looking for lynx now has cleared up

and we'll certainly be able to get to the caribou,

and the wolves, and the wolverines.

Lucky woman got a quarter tank of gas now.

Mechanicals up here can be a long time fixing.

When one machine is down, we can continue on while we fix the other one.

That's how we've always done it

and that's the way we want it to always be.

My wife decided it was time to cook some dinner.

She gets a little frustrated with things like crashes and repairs.

And we're right on the verge of like excellent hunting

and look what's happened to us.

AGNES: Snow machines are very important to us up here.

They're just an all-around tool.

We use them to haul stuff, move things, gather things,

pretty much everything.

CHIP: You have no choice. You have no control over mechanical things.

We're not the kind of people that want broken machines, believe me.

We're the kind of people that want this shit working now.

Well, we're getting closer and the gas tank is going on.

We'll get all this stuff bolted back together,

and fire her up, and get the wife happy again.

There.

Okay.

I took two machines and made one.

There you go! Tested and proved.

We are back on the road

and now we have a pile of parts to choose from.

CHIP: You like it?

(AGNES SPEAKING)

CHIP: Now at least we got a machine going.

And we got no problems, no worries.

We'll sleep good tonight and tomorrow we hunt.

-This will work. -Yes, it will.

We're back in action.

(CHUCKLES) Yes, that's how it ought to be.

CHIP: Oh, nothing we can't always work through, huh?

SUE: It's a domino effect.

One part of the system goes down...

Boom, boom, boom, boom! So does the rest.

(CRYING)

Ah!

NARRATOR: With the pain in her shoulder worsening...

MAN: (ON COMPUTER) Yes?

NARRATOR: Sue called upon her friend and pilot, Bob Gill,

to fly her to Deadhorse for medical attention.

SUE: I can't see if my foot's gonna come off the stool.

BOB: You're doing it. You're good.

You finally touched my ass after how many years, Bob?

And I have to be in pain and I can't enjoy it.

SUE: I'm really grateful that Bob is here right now.

I can't relax my arm. I can't move.

I can't have any kind of force or torque on it

without feeling like I'm having a heart attack or something.

SUE: My life is absolutely dependent on my ability to get my chores done.

And done by myself.

If I can't maintain my body

and I can't get my body to work,

then the whole thing, the whole structure of my life

is gonna fall apart at the seams.

Where to now?

-It's over here. -Okay.

SUE: So here I am in Deadhorse.

I just got done seeing, getting seen at the clinic.

And the x-rays show that

what I've done is, you have a bone called the clavicle

or the collarbone.

And under the right circumstances, you can break that.

What apparently happened when I hit,

the pressure broke it and then drove it all the way up.

SUE: They are thinking possibly surgical intervention,

so they are now referring me to go down to Fairbanks

and I have to see the emergency room there, an orthopaedic surgeon.

I need to know the extent of the injuries.

I need to know what the resolution is.

I've got to find some way to handle camp

and shut it down if I can't be there.

Any one of these things takes too long, and I've lost my camp.

And I don't even know what to say about that.

Getting better has to be a priority

but if I take all the time necessary to get better,

I won't have anything to get better for.

Yay!

Day two comes to a close.

GLENN: I'm just a person that doesn't really like

to have the future all planned out and nailed down.

I like the way nature goes.

There's certain cycles and rhythms, but it's different every year.

NARRATOR: To preserve his food supply,

Glenn is building a drying rack

that will protect the caribou meat from spoilage

as temperatures rise in the Brooks Range.

GLENN: I've got the four legs to the meat rack here

frozen into the ice.

Now I need to build a framework

between them on the top in order to support the roof.

I've got enough caribou meat to last me right through the summer this year.

Just a matter of preserving it.

And the only way I have to preserve it is to dry it.

It's nice and sturdy.

I should be able to hang four or five caribou on this if I want to.

No problem at all.

GLENN: Now I'm gonna put a couple more horizontal poles

perpendicular to these first two.

That's all to put the roof on top of.

I'm gonna cover it with a tarp just to keep precipitation off of it.

Snow, I don't want snow all over the meat.

I've got this square now built on top of the four legs

and the next step is to put a ridge pole

across the middle of it that's gonna support the ridge of the roof.

I've got this log that would work beautifully.

But it's heavy.

The question is whether or not I can lift it up there.

I'm not sure If I can just lift it into place or not,

it's a heavy log.

Not where I want it.

There.

Next I'm gonna lash the ridge pole

to the horizontal poles it's sitting on

so it doesn't roll out of place.

When you're building things simply,

like just working out here in the bush in general,

tying things up is a skill that comes in handy.

I froze the poles in place with ice.

Just notched them together and tied them up with a little bit of rope.

It's simple technology, but it's very functional.

GLENN: Of course you can accomplish more.

You can build things bigger and faster,

if you use power tools.

But then I'd have to have fuel out here.

I'd have to have everything on a larger scale.

A considerable amount of work goes into making the meat drying rack,

but I'll be able to use this again.

After this year I'll be able to take it down, save the parts,

and put it back up another year.

The sun just set so I'm gonna call it a day.

I'm gonna go in, have a bite to eat, go to sleep, get up tomorrow,

and finish building this rack and get some meat hanging up on it.

Looks pretty good.

AGNES: We have a very different way of life here.

We have a very different way of doing things.

We're cache and carry people.

We like to do things ourselves.

We like to carry our own loads.

CHIP: You got some spare ammo in your pockets?

My wife toasted her machine. My machine burned up.

We made two into one. And we can hunt some more.

NARRATOR: For the Hailstones,

weeks of fog and low visibility

have prevented caribou hunting in Kiwalik.

But a break in the weather has given them one last chance

at harvesting red meat before the trip home.

AGNES: Caribou, they can see the snow machine coming from a long ways.

In the wide open country like this

it's a little hard to get close to them.

They're walking that way so we're just gonna go this direction.

It's gonna be closer.

CHIP: It's not easy, it's never easy to shoot in the wind.

And then of course caribou don't hang around, they're usually moving.

So when you have a moving target

and you have a wind moving with it or wind moving against it,

the variables can stack up.

And thinking through that shot can be quite a challenge.

CHIP: Go ahead.

Aim at the nose and pull the trigger.

(GUN FIRES)

CHIP: They're coming to us right here.

Stand up!

There you go! Right there!

Keep the barrel swinging.

There you go! Right there!

AGNES: Come on, Mr Caribou.

(GUN FIRES)

(AGNES CHEERS)

Good shot, Agnes.

Sometimes the weather, sometimes the wind,

sometimes just...

You don't know why they're not connecting.

But just gotta keep trying.

Hey! There it is!

Ah!

CHIP: I'm gonna work this animal.

Agnes will walk up and go get the snow machine.

(CHUCKLES) Fat!

-Really? -Chubby!

That makes my whole day better.

Success generally does.

AGNES: Nothing like fat caribou.

My wife shot this caribou and I'm pretty freaking happy.

I mean, we had a few set ups today

and where we live, the ranges are far, and wide, and long.

You know, we don't have trees filling in here.

So, so we have to be persistent.

Just keep after it and keep after it.

This is the game of life and death.

We have to catch caribou if we wanna live.

To us, the efficiency of getting the food and doing more with less

has got a lot to do with respecting the animals,

using them to their fullest, and not depleting them.

So if you go out and you catch them

and you honour the animal,

and I don't mean the individual animal,

but the animal itself, such as a caribou.

And you treat them with respect in the way that you go about using them,

and the way that you go about treating them,

and the way you go about hunting them,

and not in a wasteful manner,

then you've treated them with respect

and everything is good.

AGNES: I'm happy with today's outcome.

It took a lot of time.

We walked a few miles, we stood there

and waited patiently, and we were successful.

-(AGNES SPEAKING) -Yeah, it is.

CHIP: Look at that, even got menses fat.

(AGNES SPEAKING)

Yeah. You picked a good one to shoot.

When you're shooting straight downhill,

you take out all that range and all that ballistic curve.

It becomes very straight.

And once she had that figured out,

she was zeroed in and we had caribou.

AGNES: Wait, wait. CHIP: Okay.

(AGNES SPEAKING)

-One, two, three. -Two, three, go!

Even though I had to keep reloading

and keep shooting, the effort turned out wonderful.

We have good, fat meat and a choice cow.

You have to try to pick,

especially when you go the long distances you go,

you don't want to just get any old caribou, a sick one or a skinny one.

You wanna try to pick one that's fat and gonna be worth all the effort.

So we're happy today.

CHIP: All right!

CHIP: To me, the meat is the trophy. The health is the trophy.

The adventure is the trophy.

SUE: As I get older, I'm finding that I break instead of bend.

As we get older, we fracture.

At 50 there's only so many times I can break

before I can't, I can't spring back up.

NARRATOR: Sue has travelled to Fairbanks to consult with a surgeon.

And the future of her way of life in Kavik depends on the diagnosis.

I did notice today that the tingling went down

into my fingers on the right hand side.

And it feels very, it's just nerve stuff.

I'm not feeling happy about it.

I'm finally getting in to see the orthopaedic surgeon.

My goal today is hopefully find out if and when we're gonna do the surgery.

In the back of my mind, camp is still sitting there.

This injury definitely is going to impact my future at Kavik.

I just simply don't know how much.

There is no doubt that it will.

And I had said, I get hurt one more good time, I may be done.

And here we go.

Today is gonna prepare me for the rest of my life.

The biggest thing is your collarbone took the brunt.

Yeah, the shoulder and collarbone,

it hurts like for me to sit here

you're gonna notice in a minute or two I gotta get up and walk around.

-You gotta stand. -Yeah.

Here's the thing, there is some findings on that X-Ray

that are a little bit concerning.

Your clavicle is overlapped almost five centimetres.

Uh-huh.

So what I gotta do is get these to kind of key back in.

The risks of the surgery are minimal

compared to the benefits in this particular case.

Any questions?

Nope. When do we do it?

-Tomorrow. -When?

-It will be in the afternoon. -Okay.

I don't know exactly the time.

So can I eat or drink water today?

Yes, up until midnight.

How long do you think I am going to be in Fairbanks?

For me I definitely want you here for at least two weeks.

Because if you're gonna have any postoperative complications

it usually happens within the first 14 days.

-I'll see you tomorrow. -All right. Thank you.

Oh, careful. (GROANS)

SUE: If I don't get surgery I can't use my right arm.

If I have the surgery, again, I don't know.

They said minimum six weeks recovery time.

I am not quite sure what that does for my future.

But if I have to shut Kavik down will I be able to open?

If I can't open, I have to sell.

GLENN: It's not all adventure and excitement,

it's, a lot of times, really quiet out here.

That's what I really enjoy about it,

is the peace and quiet and meditative aspect of it.

This is the last group of poles I am gonna need for the meat drying rack.

These are the poles that the meat's actually going to hang off of.

NARRATOR: Using only his surrounding resources,

Glenn is in the final stages of building a drying rack,

which will preserve his meat supply for the months ahead.

GLENN: Since the meat's going to be hanging off of these,

I am going to clean them up a little bit.

Otherwise, the part of the meat touching the poles is going to be all dirty.

I've built things with power tools in the past, of course.

But I really prefer working with hand tools.

It's a slower pace and just allows me to take my time,

listen to what's going on around me.

It's very meditative working with hand tools

and doing most of the jobs out here are very meditative for me.

I got a dozen poles, plenty of space to dry meat here.

Just need to throw a tarp over it

and start hanging some meat on this rack.

GLENN: Dried meat is very light and very portable.

It's good food when you're travelling. It's a staple of my diet.

It takes time.

I'll leave the meat out here for weeks.

But then it will be completely dry and well preserved.

I'll be able to keep it as long as I want.

It will last for years.

I got my roof on.

Got my rack here.

It's looking nice.

All I need is my meat.

This is a back leg of a caribou

with the hide on it, just to protect the meat.

I'm going to skin it now and I am going to cut it up

and hang it on my drying rack.

And then that meat,

which wouldn't have lasted more than a few more weeks,

can last me well into summer.

In order to dry it, it has to be cut into thin pieces.

The trick is to cut it pretty thin,

but you want it still to be strong.

I don't want it falling off my meat rack.

So I just took that one thick muscle,

and I just cut it into a thinner piece that'll freeze-dry.

First piece of meat on the rack.

Nice.

Sun's back now.

Special time of the year, a lot of birds are gonna be coming back soon.

It's been a really good time out here this year.

Got a moose in the fall.

I really enjoy interacting with all the animals,

the wildlife, being part of the cycles, the cycle of the seasons.

You just get more and more in tune to what's happening,

what's going on, understanding the way nature works.

And understanding how to live in it.

I live out here because I really enjoy this lifestyle.

I enjoy the autonomy it affords,

I enjoy the competence it demands.

I like the connection to nature I feel

when I live the way I do here.

It's one of the most special places

that I've ever been to in the world,

and it's the place I consider home.

ERIK: I don't know really all the answers in life.

I'm only 31.

I'm learning not knowing, as they say,

but there's a lot to be said

for kinda kicking back on the porch

and drinking a cup coffee and looking at the hills.

There's all kinds of critters running around here in the springtime.

You never know what you're going to see,

always good to keep a look out and be aware.

MARTHA: No sign of fish yet.

Erik got anxious to do something and he wandered off,

I don't know if he spotted something or what.

NARRATOR: The Salitans have set bait under the river ice in hopes of catching fish.

While they wait, Erik scours the area

for any alternative food sources that cross his path.

Martha is over there by the holes

and doing some jiggin',

I've just seen some ptarmigan over here

and got my .22 trapping pistol.

Let's see if we can't get a ptarmigan for supper.

We've been here a couple hours,

and haven't caught any fish yet, but still trying.

Still got hooks in the water.

ERIK: The flag goes up, I can run over there and attend to my line.

It's kind of like killing two birds with one stone.

Ha-ha.

There's a couple of ptarmigan right along these willows right here,

let's see if I can't shoot one or two of them.

(GUN FIRES)

I got one ptarmigan and I just shot another one over here.

That's one for Martha, one for me.

The fish may or may not be biting,

but no matter what, we're gonna have a good supper.

ERIK: Did you catch dinner?

MARTHA: No, I didn't catch dinner. What do you got there?

I caught dinner.

-Looks like some ptarmigan. -Yeah.

Let's go back to the house and eat some ptarmigan.

Yeah, we'll try another day, we'll come fish another day.

Went on a little hike.

Caught a couple of ptarmigan.

And we're gonna call it a day, and head back,

and clean up these ptarmigan, and eat some supper.

ERIK: You know, that's just kinda how it goes out in the bush.

Sometimes you head out, try to catch some fish,

and you end up coming home with some ptarmigan.

Sometimes you head out, and try to get some ptarmigan

and you come home with some fish.

You never know what's going to happen.

It's all fun, it's all food, it's all just good living.

Open up the chest cavity.

That's where the good stuff is.

The heart and the gizzard.

The heart, the liver,

and the best of all, the gizzard.

MARTHA: This is why we live where we do.

You know, we can go out, we can go for something

like a lake trout or burbot,

and come back with something else.

We're pretty happy and with full bellies.

Despite this being kind of a poor fishing day, it turned out all right.

It was awful nice weather,

and we got some ptarmigan and...

We sure kept ourselves busy this winter.

MARTHA: Erik and I went on a fox hunt this season,

hauled in a nice fox, a good little red fox.

We had some fun out in the woods getting some firewood.

The lynx trapping was probably one of my favourite moments this winter.

We were lucky enough to come home with a nice lynx.

The smoke house build was definitely something different.

We were able to scrounge up some wood and put together a nice smoke house.

We were able to harvest three caribou,

which will set us good on the meat situation for a while.

As the winters go on, the seasons change,

things come a little bit easier.

All in all, it was a good winter.

I like getting out and travelling around this time of year.

It's a good, a good thing.

We're very blessed to live where we live

and to get to do the things that we do.

CHIP: It's not perfect days up here. Nothing is perfect.

You know, you take every little trick out of the book you can do.

This isn't a simple life. This is a slower life.

AGNES: You want the travel bag up here or...

Yeah, travel bag on my machine, please.

CHIP: We got all the bedding hung up.

We got the tepees squared away.

We got wood cut for our return.

We got some ice already chopped for our return.

Last night we basically prepared ourselves entirely

for going home this morning

'cause we wanted to beat the sun.

We didn't want to have the sun in our eyes.

All these cut up caribou that was skinned,

these can go right in the cache.

The one that has the skin on it,

we can save it for a while.

And the animals can't chew on it at home.

We had the intentions of going into the mountains

to go caribou hunting and go set wolverine traps,

but the weather just won't let us up there.

It's foggy, it's blowing, can't see a thing to hunt,

so we just did it all down here low.

And we lucked out because the caribou came to us this year.

CHIP: In the end, this is worth the adventure, ain't it?

Yep.

Every day we went out there. We tried our best.

CHIP: Winter started out, of course, with some good white fishing.

We had a heck of a great caribou hunt to start off our winter with.

I built a cache to store things in.

Who knows? Maybe the girls will use it when they're that age, or when I'm 100.

We built the girls a tepee and we made them a stove.

We made them a caribou skin sleeping bag.

And the thing is that later in life,

they have all the choices they want.

For now, they should see what we're doing.

So they don't think we leave and just magically come back

with a bunch of meat and stuff.

They also should be part of the adventure.

They should be part of the work.

They should be part of all this,

so that when they do it themselves,

it'll be easy, natural, and it won't be a problem.

I want them to experience this.

And that's pretty important to me, and my wife, and part of raising our kids.

SUE: This ecosystem, this part of the world,

things can happen in the blink of an eye.

It's controlled chaos out here.

NARRATOR: For Sue,

surgery on her collarbone means she must remain in town.

Every day she's away from Kavik,

her livelihood is at risk.

My next step is just getting back to my cubby,

having something to eat, taking my medicine, and relaxing.

Two weeks, I go see the doctor again

and they're going to check the incision, make sure it's good.

Even though it hurts,

there's not the damage,

random damage being done by things being in the wrong place,

or unattached, or floating around, and grinding.

So, every move prior was, it would jostle, it would move.

The bones would grind.

Um, that part is taken care of.

That part is one unit again.

But I thrive on the challenge,

I thrive on, "This is an obstacle, Sue,

"how the hell are you going to get around it?"

Part of the enjoyment is the times you get knocked down,

the times where you scrape your knees and you make mistakes.

Because you learn from it.

This has been a whole season of joys, disappointments,

and looking forward to learning the next.

You don't know what depths your strengths go to if they're never tested.

I'm a bull in a china shop.

I will get to the other side.

I don't know when.

Life's a circle, it's not a box.

It's a circular kind of thing, you just keep going.

I'm making plans for the future,

I just, you know, I can't get carried away with it.

I can't put the cart before the horse

and worry about what might happen,

worrying about what I have to do currently.

And that's just who I am.