Original subtitles

SUE: There's the Kavik airstrip.

All right, there's home.

SUE: Roughly four months since the date of the injury.

Boneheaded myself on the snow machine.

Broke the collarbone, bad.

I've had some surgeries,

I'm still carrying a bunch of stitches,

but the doctor said, "If you behave yourself,

"I will trust you to go home."

SUE: It all looks uh, slightly different than when I left.

It looks like it might be,

might not be quite as nice out at Kavik.

PILOT: Why don't we just go down here?

SUE: Yeah.

This has been almost four months

since anybody has set foot in Kavik.

I don't know what I'm walking into.

(THEME MUSIC PLAYING)

NARRATOR: Sue Aikens has spent the past four months

in Fairbanks recovering from surgery.

As Kavik River Camp's sole proprietor,

her absence has left the sight uninhabited and unprotected.

SUE: I have to visually check everything.

Behind any corner, any trailer,

it's the things you don't see that bite ya in the ass.

I got injured, in the winter,

and it was very cold and very snowy in winter.

I've been down through the flooding.

Four months have thawed out.

It has gone through the awakening of the bears.

There's 83 bears tagged within so many miles of camp

that can walk through.

I can't go in unarmed in case

something decides to take me out of the equation.

You got a scratch here.

That's been torn.

How do you know it's new? Well it's a different colour.

It's bright yellow.

All the other wood is weathered,

this is yellowish.

Can't say if it's a bear, can't say what it is.

It's just that...

I don't see where the building isn't,

it has been, uh,

the integrity has not been compromised on the building.

But you can see something pushed.

Okay, I don't see any breaks in the material.

Time to go in the Twinkie.

Dark in here, man.

The door back here is still shut.

So that's good.

All's I'm looking for, did something open a door?

Is there a problem?

I don't care if the bears come scratch, scratch, scratch.

I care about open, open, open.

So, everything's looking pretty good.

And uh, (GIGGLES) silly as it seems,

this right here,

coffee grounds that I spread everywhere.

What it does, a bear's nose is so sensitive,

that mild acidic scent is just like an outhouse.

They don't like it.

It is a miracle that I was able to be gone

and no bears came in.

They scratched and they didn't destroy it.

Um, that is,

it's pretty amazing. I feel proud of myself for that.

I'm one lucky bitch in camp. Nothing ate it.

But I got a lotta clean up to do.

CHIP: To us, this is living rich.

This is adventure and time with my family.

Ain't no amount of money can ever get to hold that.

My name is Agnes Hailstone.

I am married to Edward Hailstone.

We call him Chip.

I'm Edward Hailstone. I'm a subsistence hunter.

I'm a subsistence gatherer, fisherman.

I'm married to Agnes, and I have five daughters.

I try to get 'em all involved in everything from caribou,

to seals in the ocean, to fish in the river,

to birds flying overhead,

to digging stuff out of the ground.

We gotta be kind of nomadic,

and change our camps, and go where the animals are.

Or we have to go where the fish are,

or we have to go where the plants

are blooming, or the berries.

And sometimes we have to go where the weather tells us to.

So, we're spending the spring here in the Kiwalik

'cause this, to us, is the place to be.

-Hi, Dad. -Hello, Bun.

NARRATOR: Warm temperatures and long days

allow the Hailstones to live off the land in Kiwalik.

They'll spend the summer harvesting

the area's vast resources,

in order to survive the harsh winter ahead.

CHIP: We've got some important things to do.

We're gonna have to set up the tents,

we're gonna have to set up our kitchen.

Gonna have to go get some

willows and grasses to make our beds.

Just generally set things up the way we like 'em

in the summertime and be here till August.

AGNES: Okay, we got to start moving before the weather come.

Towards evening it's gonna get cold

and start getting moist.

CHIP: One, two three, let's go.

All together.

-Should I push? -Uh, up to you.

-I need like, uh... -You need, you could...

CHIP: Yep, hold onto a rope babe,

that's all you gotta do.

CHIP: Yep. It's bulky is what it is, okay?

Okay, stop you guys.

-Oh wait, dad you see that? -Oh, those are caribou!

Look at that. We missed 'em!

CHIP: It's a pretty tough sell.

I think we probably should just stick with the job

we're doing and hope they come a little closer.

Let's keep going, one, two, three, go.

CHIP: If I wanted to go after caribou,

that would be a considerable effort

and a considerable amount of time.

To go up there, to run something down,

carry it back here would be exhausting.

And then to have to put up the tepee and the tent, that'd be even worse.

So the whole idea is that once we got the tepee and the tent up,

then I can run off.

I can go get firewood, I can go chase caribou. I can go do all that stuff.

-Keep it going forward, love. -Oh, it's far away.

Be careful, it's deep over here on this side.

-(SHRIEKS) Ah! -I warned ya.

CHIP: Getting our tents up is the number one thing.

If we have our tents up, then we're able to operate, stay dry.

Without a good place to stay, ain't no fun.

There we go, right there.

Okay.

(SIGHS) Well, it's gonna rain, you guys.

Let's get this up and let's make a place to cover our stuffs.

Pull towards Mom.

CHIP: I know, we gotta, we gotta fix em.

CHIP: It's important to have shelter,

as fast as you can. We've got rain coming.

And we have tons of work to do.

But what we do is we cover our bases first

so that if anything happens, we got a home.

(CHIPPING)

AGNES: Pretty good job, girls.

Look like you all be, secure.

It's gonna hold for the rest of the summer.

So we're gonna just uh, knock off for the night

and we'll start out in the morning and see what we come up with.

JESSIE: I can't live this lifestyle if I don't work my butt off

to make it possible.

My name is Jessie Holmes.

When I was young, things just weren't working for me.

I was a real rambler. I couldn't stay still, I couldn't stay in one town.

I got myself into a lot of trouble,

and I realised I needed to turn that around quick

and go back to the genuine thing in me, that was just like calling

for like quiet, peace, and wilderness.

So, like, I directed my life,

to correcting that and going back to what I knew I needed and wanted.

And you know, now, I just strive to live

a simple lifestyle here on the Nenana River.

Running my dogs, trapping, hunting, fishing.

Doing whatever it takes to maintain this lifestyle.

I'm a lucky man to live the way I do,

and I thank God for it every day.

JESSIE: Polar Bear.

You ready for me to cook for you?

I'm gonna cook up some dog food for my dogs.

I'm gonna add a bunch of meat in here.

Now, I'll throw a couple of these fish in here,

just to give that good fish flavour.

This is the last of the dry fish that I had.

This was put away last fall.

Running out and, uh,

it's time to start catching some more fish.

NARRATOR: For Jessie Holmes,

getting his fish wheel in the water

for the chum salmon run is crucial.

If he's not able to catch fish,

he won't be able to feed his dog team.

JESSIE: It's really critical that I do this,

because I can't afford to, like,

feed these dogs through the winter.

I have almost, close to 40 dogs.

If you were feeding them a dry commercial kibble,

it'd be, like, you know, $45, $50 a day.

I'm gonna close this lid tight.

It'll all steam and cook together

and make a nice meal for the dogs.

(DOGS BARKING)

Getting my protein, and my fat, and my water.

How you doing, Doggy?

Sled dogs are probably what

held me to the land in Alaska.

I usually do about four to five races a year

with the dogs, and, uh,

that's one of the ways that I subsist

up here with my dog team.

Try to see my dogs make me as much money back

that I spend and put into them as they possibly can.

That's just to help me maintain this.

Tates, what you doing, huh?

Hey, yeah. You hungry?

Oh, yeah, look at that.

I try to kill two birds with one stone with everything I do.

So when I'm feeding my dogs, I want to give them that positive attention.

Let 'em know I care about each one of 'em.

I don't want to just do it like it's a job, you know?

It's like going to work and not getting

an honest day in. You know?

Like, if I'm here, I want em to know that it's for them.

Good boy, Copper.

If I'm having a bad day, I come out here and feed these dogs in the evening

and whenever it's done, I feel like I just went to therapy.

I love seeing my dogs and I love feeding them

the best food that I possibly can.

I think when you got this many dogs,

your life needs to revolve around them.

They need constant care and attention, and they deserve it.

Labour of love, that's what this is.

GLENN: Different experience of time, different experience of space.

It's a very different consciousness living out here than it is living in town.

My name's Glenn Villeneuve. I've always enjoyed living out in the wilderness,

so I moved up to Alaska 15 years ago to live out in the Brooks Range.

I was looking all over the world for a place to live close to nature like this,

and I ended up, up here.

What a beautiful day. Springtime.

Lake's already starting to thaw out.

I hear all the little songbirds out there singing this morning.

Heard some ducks quacking.

Birds flying into the valley.

The leaves are coming out,

what a great time of year it is out here.

A lot of the animals aren't available to me.

The caribou have headed further north.

I probably won't see any more caribou this year.

The only caribou meat I have, I had to dry.

So I'm just eating dry caribou meat

because I can't keep it frozen any more.

But at this time of year,

I turn my attention to smaller animals.

Things that I can consume faster

so that preservation isn't such a problem.

And that's what I'm gonna be looking for today.

In the spring, when the lake starts to melt,

the first ice to go is around the edge.

A moat opens up.

That concentrates the ducks, 'cause the first ducks coming in

are gonna have to land in this narrow channel of water,

right along the edge of the lake.

That's where I'm gonna hunt today.

No ducks.

Just got to keep looking.

It's not uncommon for me to walk a couple miles and not see a duck.

So, it's nothing out of the ordinary.

It's the same with all the other game.

Way up here in the Arctic, there's less life that the land can support,

so you have to travel more country in order to get it.

(WHISPERING) There's some ducks right there.

I stay behind this spruce tree and they won't see me,

but there's several ducks right up here.

About 75 yards from the ducks right now.

I got to get closer to 'em in order to get a shot.

If I just go straight over this hill

I think they're gonna see me really quickly

and take off before I can get close enough.

(GUN SHOT FIRED)

That duck's been hit.

I just got to kill him and get him back.

My strategy is to keep a very close eye on that duck.

Try and recover it.

Trick now is gonna be not to lose sight of it.

(PANTING)

I got it!

Got the duck. That one almost got away.

Nothing like sitting out here beside the lake, plucking a duck.

It's more than just getting the ducks, it's just being out here

and enjoying this time of year.

Listen to all the new sounds.

Winter's very quiet.

The springtime, it gets noisier,

the birds come back,

the wind just rustling in the grass,

and the vegetation, that's different.

Everything's moving again.

Water's moving.

It's a different pace of life.

GLENN: Oh!

There's some more shovelers right up here.

(GUNSHOT FIRED)

Three shovelers just came in. I got one of the drakes right here.

It flew right in here in front of me.

Got another northern shoveler.

Turning out to be a good day of duck hunting out here.

SUE: You have an opportunity to say this will define me or I will overcome it.

NARRATOR: For Sue Aikens,

maintaining her food supply in Kavik

is critical to keeping her camp up and running.

Any loss of food stock or equipment

will cost thousands of dollars to replace and transport.

SUE: For me, I look around camp,

and it's mind blowing the amount of work I have to do.

I'm back after four months in town.

The land was frozen when I left.

It has gone through the thaw.

I have nine freezers, four refrigerators

that I should have been there running electricity as it got warmer

to keep it cold and frozen.

I wasn't.

Ugh. Fucking hell.

Yeah, this is gonna be the travesty.

Gone.

Gone.

Gone.

We got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight

freezers. Three of the fridges are bad.

It's rotten, I want that food out, away from camp.

What the state wants me to do,

take all the, um, biodegradable products.

Take it to the end of the airstrip,

cut it out of the packaging and dump it.

Get it in the water, it'll dilute the scent.

For now that I've opened it, I have to, I must, priority, keep going.

That scent is going to alert the animals in the area.

They can't help it, that's what they do. They're animals, and,

and this is a possible food source.

This is the personally, the most heart-breaking area.

This is the food that I hunt for.

The total revenue probably,

probably lost around $18,000 in food.

This is all my, all my hunting from last year.

I'm gonna get up on the roof and just do a visual,

I wanna know if something's coming at me or it isn't.

That's where the scent is being blown,

so that's where I really wanna see.

All right, I don't see any ominous threat.

AGNES: We've gone ahead, we think of the next season.

We think of the other opportunities that are heading our way.

AGNES: Ah...

Hey. Look like a good day eh?

Long as the wind stays up

and keeps the mosquitoes away, it's a good day.

We still got lots to do, eh?

We got to make this mess into a home.

NARRATOR: The Hailstones have arrived at their summer hunting grounds in Kiwalik.

It is imperative that the family secures meat for the days ahead.

We just got here yesterday and, um, there's a lot of action here.

There's caribous crossing the rivers, there's birds flying over.

So we just want to keep building up camp, try to get done.

Get all our wood and our water and everything set up here

so we can just go and do our hunt and go get some food.

Everybody's excited and wanting to hurry up and get done,

and just, go play.

Let's go. Help me go get water.

You too Mary. Grab that bucket over there.

We are getting water. We call it Imatauk.

We go get our water. Go get it from the river.

Here we don't have sinks, and a water system, and all that.

So this is our water system, it's this river.

We're gonna get water while it's early since we all just got up,

and then later on like when we're cooking,

or when we want to drink it later on, it'll all be settled,

and it'll all be crystal-clear.

That's enough water, let's go.

They're getting water. They're looking for firewood.

The girls are keeping their eyes open for

caribou, for any other game animals around,

and, um, we just keep the day chugging along.

Mom! Mom!

-See? Yeah there. -AGNES: Mud creek side?

They're... They're on the other side of,

right there.

They're like right where their backs

meet the willow line perfectly,

you could just see their backs.

CHIP: We're not shooting calves. We're not shooting cows.

But the one in the back is a young bull.

The young bull is on this side. But if you aim at him,

you'll have to aim mid-stomach,

so that the bullet drifts into his chest.

AGNES: Okay, goody.

CHIP: Just let out your breath and relax.

-Ooh! -CHIP: Just over.

Move aside.

Now?

-Down? -Down. Down lower.

-(SHRIEKS) -CHIP: Dang.

AGNES: I got it! This is a good first hunt.

We don't really have any meat in the camp right now so, um,

we'll be able to haul this back to camp

and have some good dinner.

Heart and tongue, and some other good stuff.

Tongue is the best part of...

Or one of the best pieces of a kid's choice piece,

as they call it.

Every day's a learning experience

for these girls. Even me.

I try to tell them even though I'm old,

I still learn something new every day.

See the ribs where I'm getting 'em on the knuckles?

-Yeah. -Then I can open the chest up.

I can get to the heart and stuff easier.

It hinges right open. See that?

CHIP: I want my kids to know how to take care of themselves.

It's more, and more, and more options actually for them,

through the education we give 'em.

It's all along the lines of not giving them the fish

but teaching them to fish.

I got to catch up the girls, looks like they're doing all the work.

You know, we've got our camp up, we've got our stuff out.

We're sorting through things, we're putting camp together

and making it a better place every day,

and this is part of it, is having fresh food on hand.

JESSIE: You pretty much just have to pay attention all the time,

'cause it's always the unforeseen that's gonna catch you off guard.

Just getting my morning started here with a cup of coffee.

Gonna get out here, start working on this boat.

I got some holes in it that I need to repair.

Gonna try to get it in the water here next couple days,

so I can get out, and build a new fish wheel.

So I can start putting away some fish for my dogs this fall.

I try to live very simple, that way I can afford

to put most of my money into my dogs

and racing sled dogs in the winter.

Hi Tobias. What you doing? Ready to go to work?

This is my boat, it's a 24-foot long,

four-foot wide, narrow riverboat.

If I don't get this boat fixed and in the water,

there's, like, no way that I'm gonna be able

to afford to have these sled dogs this winter.

The goal is to catch about 3,500 to 4,000 fish.

I'd have to like sell at least half of my dogs

if I had to just afford to do this without fish.

So I have a hole here and a hole in the side.

So I had to patch those holes,

get this thing ready to get on the river.

One thing that's important to me about living out here,

fixing my own boat and building my own boat

and my own sleds, it's just my belief system

and like being self-sufficient.

I learned carpentry skills when I came up to Alaska.

Just started taking every job I could and dove right into it.

Making progress.

I need to flip this boat up on the other side

so I can start working on patching my holes.

This is kind of a challenging thing,

'cause I don't have help

and I have to figure out how to do it by myself.

So, I'm really hoping this'll work pretty quick.

The main thing you want to do is not get hurt.

And the other main thing I want to do is not break my boat.

I mean, if I were to buy a boat that was built,

it'd be like $3,000, $4,000.

Built this one out of $1,000 worth of material.

It's a subsistence boat for me.

I use it to get logs, build fish wheels with it,

I fish for my dogs with it.

It's very important for me to be able to put away food

for the winter for my dogs and myself.

I don't necessarily know how to do this.

I don't necessarily know how to do a lot of things.

But I'll feel pretty proud of myself if it works out

and be pretty frustrated if it doesn't.

My idea is to just keep

tightening this up as I lift up,

so it can't come back down

too far on me and crush me.

Oh, shit.

I can't afford to get the materials

to build a new one, or to buy one.

Sometimes you're just against it

and you got to figure it out.

I'm just gonna have to pick this thing up.

I think I got it.

I hope this rope's gonna catch it so it doesn't go over.

(GROANS)

(GRUNTS)

Sometimes you just got to go for shit. Hope it works out.

Damn.

Holy Mother.

Oh.

It's holding, it seems like it's holding.

Oh, shit!

Yeah!

Worked!

Phew.

That was scary.

Now that I've got the boat flipped up on this side,

I'm gonna get to patching these holes.

Just gonna be in the water soon, I hope.

NARRATOR: Jessie relies on the returns from his fish wheel

to feed his team of sled dogs.

With the summer chum salmon run approaching, it is crucial for Jessie to get his boat

into working condition and into the river.

So what I'm gonna do is... I would like to haul my boat down with my truck,

but I don't have a ball hitch on my truck.

I'm thinking I'm gonna attach this bicycle to it,

so I give myself a front-wheel steering system.

It's pretty much the best option I got at this moment.

I don't quite know how I'm gonna do this yet but,

this is the challenge about doing things by yourself.

It's somewhat dangerous.

I gotta get this boat down

in the Nenana River to launch it,

and it's only about 150 yards from here,

so I just have to make this work to there.

All right. Here goes nothing.

(GRUNTS)

(GRUNTS)

Oh!

Whoa! Ah, fuck!

All right.

Whew, this poor bike.

Okay.

It feels like I'm going kind of.

The best feeling for me at the end of the day is,

you know, knowing that I worked hard,

feel tired enough to go to sleep, you know.

It took me three days of work to finish up this boat,

and now the reward is a couple summers

on the river doing what I love.

All right, that worked just good.

Actually turned out to be perfect

'cause I had brakes, I had steering.

I really didn't think it'd go that good.

Today's been a long day. It's already late in the day.

It's been a lot of work getting this boat flipped over.

I had to do it all by hand.

Once this boat's in the water, this is really the start of summer for me.

It's time to really get a lot done out on the river and,

hopefully put up a lot of food for me and the dogs.

Still got to get this boat in the water.

AGNES: We're able to live together, work together,

and it just makes us even stronger.

AGNES: Take a shovel, Mary. Let's go, Qutan, Irene.

CHIP: The ladies here are gonna go pick some of a root called mushua.

And they grow all over through here.

A little bit of something sweet, like, kind of like a sweet potato.

I think they call 'em Eskimo potatoes.

NARRATOR: After harvesting a caribou for camp meat,

the Hailstones turn their attention

to gathering another Kiwalik resource

mushua root.

The time to do it is now. If we don't get 'em now,

all that good nutrients and stuff

that's in the root, or that's inside

these little branches are gonna

go into building the plant,

'cause it's starting to grow.

And then it'll be really chewy and it'll taste terrible.

And what we need is Vitamin C, and we need to have a change of diet.

We need to have some starches and we need to have some fibre in our diet.

And that's exactly what this stuff will provide.

AGNES: There should be mushua right above the sandbar,

so we're gonna go target that area first.

The mushua is gonna be all along these edges,

right along the edges.

If you start to see, like,

you see the light, brownish peeled,

um, roots, then those would be mushua.

Okay, kids, go on ahead and start looking for roots and stuff.

What's this stuff, mom?

Let me see, did you find some already, Qutan?

Let me get out.

It's not.

Yup, that is.

See, you'll find them like this.

This is what we're looking for.

They have a plant like this, and this is why we come here.

This is, uh, mushua tuk, and this is why

we come to go pick these mushuas here.

It's because this bank is full of 'em.

Right now they're, um, real good, they're like, uh, potato

and they're really good to eat, and they're sweet.

So, this is why we're here.

It takes some effort but once you hit a real,

um, big patch, usually it's easier

to start picking a whole bunch after but you just gotta

pretty much find...

Oh, that's all right.

Oh, that's yummy, that's a good one.

Look how big. You got bigger than mine.

Right now, uh, Qutan's just learning.

So she's just getting familiarized with the plants.

We've pointed them out for her,

but this year she's actually, um, looking for the plants

to know where to dig, so.

It's kind of fun watching her.

Move your butt.

Oh, look, I just chopped it off.

-Oops. -Keep going, I see it still.

The days like this are why I love being out here.

Just getting family time.

Looking for food that we can, you know,

thrive on and just, it's good to get out of camp

for a little bit and go do something different.

This is awesome, just being out here

watching the girls find this root

and knowing the difference between one root from another

and, um, just playing in the mud.

Okay, girls, we've got quite a bit actually,

and this is probably what we need.

Let's get back to camp and go have some dinner

and show your guys' dad what we found.

Yeah.

SUE: You don't prepare for your best day in life,

you got to prepare for the worst.

NARRATOR: Without electricity in Kavik for the past four months,

Sue's food supply has turned inedible.

To keep predators away from her camp,

Sue has been advised by the State

to dispose of the spoiled food down river.

SUE: The visual says it all.

That's not a healthy freaking product.

But the quality of what I buy

is just outstanding.

So it just hurts, hurts, hurts, financially.

But, you know I put a lot of me.

Kavik is me. Ya know, I am Kavik.

Synonymous.

But I take a lot of pride in offering people

the best of the best when they're out here.

But I mean every single little bit of this is lost, lost, lost.

I mean, besides the disgusto factor,

um, I mean

it's an incredible amount of revenue.

How do you put a price tag on the caribou?

Or the fish that I bartered for.

Hard to put a value on that.

You know, if there's anything close,

it's gonna start getting interested.

Bears, wolves, they don't mind eating rotten food.

And I just put up the dinner bell.

Just gonna be continuing the process

of getting all of the rotten goods.

Even though we're getting it in the water

so it distils the scent,

it's gonna go downstream.

There's no way they won't smell it.

That's why once I start this I gotta,

the fact that I opened 'em up

and looked at it today, I got to finish it today.

Boom.

Boom.

SUE: I'm gonna get up on top.

It was a little chilly, so I threw on my sweatshirt.

And we've got a wolf on the runway.

That's the area I got to go to,

that's the area the wolf is at.

Looks to me maybe a juvenile female wolf

on the runway, headed towards where I had to dump all that food.

Little wolfie on the spot there.

Wolves are a pack animal.

They don't generally travel alone.

Doesn't mean they're not there.

Not even 30 minutes from when I tossed the last rotten biscuit out,

and here's a wolf. Boom! On it.

And that's exactly what we were hoping,

is get everything away from camp.

Now imagine if I had families here with little kids and

your predator-human interaction is, is right there.

That's how quick it can happen.

Nine times out of 10 the interaction with a wolf,

I'll go out there and he'll...

It'll get skid away and then come back in.

If it were a whole pack, I'd, I'd probably just hold off on my activities now.

The sun doesn't set so that works in my favour. I'll just be tired and sore.

CHIP: You know I want to show my kids every season.

And there's a different skill and a different way of doing things each time.

Just making heart and tongue soup.

CHIP: This is the first meal usually off of an animal.

The tongue and the heart

are organs that are small,

full of fat, really good tasting,

different kind of quality of meat.

Throw some potatoes and an onion in there.

Now we can let this all cook for quite a while.

And then for dessert, my wife and my daughters

picked a bunch of mushua.

We've had an all-around profitable day, I'd say.

Ladies really socked it in with the food

and it's gonna be a big, hearty meal.

And it's by their own hands.

The girls may not have shot the caribou

but they helped work him, and drag him,

and participated in everything but pulling the trigger.

This is like food of the season to us.

This is kind of like having turkey for Thanksgiving,

or having a ham at Christmas.

-Pretty good, eh? -Pretty good.

CHIP: Yep. We've got firewood, so we've got heat.

We got our tents up.

We got uh, meat.

Now we're secure. We've got all the basic things we need.

The best thing is that some day when me and your mom aren't here,

you girls know how to do all of this, no matter what the job is.

And the best part of that is that you get all hands-on experience.

We don't just sit there and tell 'em what we've done,

we talk about what we've all done, and done together.

It's adventure, it's family time,

it's just, uh, being together.

CHIP: We're in the right spot. We're at this spot for a reason.

This is uh, this is home to us. We keep coming back here.

Nothing like Kiwalik, yeah?

Nothing like Kiwalik.

(ALL CHUCKLING)

GLENN: You have to learn the cycles and the times where things are happening

so that you can take advantage of the opportunities.

In the spring when the lake starts to melt, it's the time of year when the ducks

are gonna be concentrated along the shoreline because they got no wheres else to go.

Ducks need water, and this is where it is.

Right in this moat along the shoreline.

But conditions are changing fast.

With that sun beating down on the ice today,

it'll get up in the 70s.

And the lake ice right along the edge,

the moat's getting wider, it's starting to break up.

Little pieces are breaking off when the breeze blows.

It's gonna change real fast.

If a breeze comes up, this can all disappear in one day.

I see four so far.

Let's see if I can get close enough to get a shot.

(SHOT FIRED)

(GUN SHOT)

I hit one.

I shot, it took off, and I kept shooting

when they were in the air and got one of 'em.

Thankfully a breeze blew the duck back in,

but it got hung up in some grass out here off the shore.

The bottom here is really soft and muddy,

so I'm gonna make something to throw out there and retrieve the duck.

I don't want to walk out there and get stuck in the mud.

Here we go.

We'll see what happens. It might work.

I might be able to throw it that far,

I'll see. I don't know.

No. Didn't make it.

Give it another shot.

I just missed it.

Broke a few more braches off. Lighten it up a little bit.

See if I can get it out over the duck.

Yes! I'm gonna get it this time.

There it goes. Snagged it.

Got my duck.

Another shoveler.

A male. That's what I wanted.

Duck hunting's good today.

Couldn't ask for a better day.

Got my three ducks.

Looks all right for now.

(SIGHS)

Cook 'em kind of long and slow.

Look at those beautiful ducks.

Oh, yeah those are done.

The only meat I've had for a while has been dried caribou meat.

This is the first fresh meat I've eaten in some time.

Mm.

I mean what better place to have dinner,

than right beside the lake

that I walked around to find these ducks?

Mm, it was a beautiful day.

SUE: Well, the world is circle and it turns around and round.

Things change, things evolve, things rotate.

The journey of getting Kavik back up and running.

I want to get the mass done rather than all the tiny little chores.

Finished getting all the freezers out.

But now, I've got a whole winter's worth of garbage to burn.

This is, uh, this is just another chore on the list.

I mean it's like anywhere, you know, sweetie baby honey do-list.

Take out the garbage.

Only problem is I'm my own sweetie baby honey do.

This is the Sue-do list. The honey-Sue list.

So these are the cigarettes.

Um, to do the work the doctor did,

I had to quit smoking.

So, and he told me the gravity of the situation.

And that it was, ah,

the necessity of the surgery was life or death.

He wouldn't do it if I smoked.

Put out the cigarette before I walked into his office,

haven't had one since.

Come on. I'm serious about quitting.

So I'm burning all the cigarettes that I had.

Bye, cigarettes!

You're gonna have to smoke without me.

Ah! Who the foxy?

Who's my little foxy!

Who is that? Is that Slinky?

It took Slinky a day to figure out that I was here.

Come on.

Slinky and Ermie were best buddies.

Um, they would, Slinky would beak on the side

of the tent every morning.

And Ermie would beak back on the window.

And they would come out and play.

Because of Ermie's health condition, um, she's got to stay in town.

And is now living in town permanently.

So, I don't have a little friend here any more .

Don't want to get emotional, but it means a lot to me to have the foxes.

Yuck! Come on, dummy, come on.

(WHISTLES) Come on.

Come in.

It's good to be back. I mean, that the amount of work I have to do is astounding.

Um, I'm gonna have to be creative.

Uh, I have a 10-pound weight restriction, for the foreseeable future.

Honestly I need to take this entire summer,

and assess how well I can do my job.

Am I done?

And the answer is, I don't know.

JESSIE: When you're in Alaska, you work until the sun goes down.

NARRATOR: After repairing his boat and successfully getting it to shore,

Jessie must launch his vessel into the water

and test its durability before he can begin his summer fishing season.

(EXCLAIMS) Yeah!

Time to get the summer started!

Yeah, we really got it easy, you know?

These old timers, they just figured everything out.

Poling up rivers,

pulling their dogs, boats out with dogs.

When I do this kind of stuff, it's like I'm living in the past.

I think I was born 100 years too late.

I hadn't been out on the river since the ice flowed, you know?

So, I'd been out with other people in their boats, but this is my boat.

And now I can go take care of my jobs, I gotta do out here.

I'm gonna start putting up some food for my dogs and myself.

I miss that taste of that fresh fish.

I guess this is the bonus of living right next to the river.

All my stuff's close for getting down here.

Get to take the pleasure of doing a lot of this stuff by hand.

The motor's running. That's a good sign.

Go upriver, see how the boat's running.

Woo!

Wow, it's absolutely beautiful out here.

Getting on the river is pretty much the peak point

of happiness for me in the summer.

You just feel so free when you're out on the river.

It's an indescribable feeling.

Words don't really do justice to it.

Now I got a lot of work to do, but it's all work I want to do.

If you're out here, it's hard for it to seem like hard work.