Original subtitles

NARRATOR: On this episode of Life Below Zero,

winter ends with a vengeance as prep for the thaw begins.

ANDY: It's not done now, it's not going to get done, period.

NARRATOR: The Hailstones search for their last big game of the season.

-Whoa, ho! -NARRATOR: In Eagle, Andy goes into overdrive

to harvest essential supplies.

ANDY: This could be a real problem.

NARRATOR: Sue spots trouble in her own backyard.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, I see something.

NARRATOR: And Glenn is reminded he's not the only hunter in Chandalar.

GLENN: A wolf was just here.

I don't anticipate any large predators, but you never do.

So what I'm going to do today,

I don't have pencil and paper, but I do have my knife and some snow.

This is Kavik.

Here's the Kavik River.

Arctic Ocean is up here.

Where I'm going to go, if I go five to six miles to the northeast,

you've got several lakes.

These lakes have the potential of having some land-locked lake trout.

And that's where I'm going to go.

So, we're gonna go from Kavik to the lake and boom.

My plan is the fish are going to be there and I'm going to get one.

I don't know the first or last thing about ice fishing

other than people do it.

But I want to learn, and it's my nature that if I don't know,

it doesn't mean I can't do it. I just gotta teach myself.

Columbus would have never spotted America if he hadn't have left the harbour.

NARRATOR: For Sue Aikens, rising temperatures

signal the start of the busy season at Kavik River Camp.

With clients on the way, she has limited time to gather fresh food.

SUE: It's like being the only kid in a really cool sandbox. You know?

I get to build sandcastles all over the place. It's my big backyard.

I am thinking

this looks like a fishy spot.

I think

X marks the spot.

Yeah, I mean I've never used this auger,

so I'm going to put it together

and try it.

You fucking whore.

You know, it's something I haven't done yet,

so see if I can't dig a few holes.

Got it primed.

On.

That's as deep as this is going to go.

I don't see any water.

So maybe I'll try a little further out.

Maybe this is just too close to the shore.

Well, I didn't hit water, but I did hit dirt.

I don't see any water.

Well, that's it. I still can't get past the ice.

All these holes I dug.

I mean, you've got four foot you can go down,

and I'm not hitting water. I'm staying on ice.

Hit dirt over there, just not pay dirt.

It ain't over until the fat lady sings,

and I'm just chunky and can't carry a tune.

CHIP: Subsistence to me is getting nutritious food

and the chase that it involves to get it.

It's healthy, it's all healthy.

Then there's a great reward for it.

I'm covering my lights up with a piece of cardboard.

I do this so that the animals don't see us coming.

We're not like flashing a flashlight at them, getting their attention.

NARRATOR: For Chip and Agnes Hailstone,

the end of winter is the final chance to harvest big game before the thaw.

They have set up a temporary camp in Kiwalik,

85 miles south of their home in Noorvik,

in hopes of intercepting a herd of caribou.

CHIP: The importance of coming out here at this time of year and doing these kind of hunts

is this time of year is when the females are fat.

But these ones have been grazing in the dark winter.

That's important on a high protein diet like we have.

So, we come up here and this is kind of our last chance at fat caribou.

We're not going to see fat caribou again until probably August.

Maybe 100 of them spread over the side of the hill here.

I just don't see a way of getting to them, or sneaking on them.

CHIP: Let's see how many females there are.

There's caribou scattered all along that hill.

I thought there was 100. There's probably 300, 400.

We're going to have to do some, uh, sneaking.

Where's my white mask?

AGNES: Nice day for a good hunt.

We just got to keep quiet and keep calm,

and hopefully they'll get 100, 150 yards away or something.

(CHIP AND AGNES SPEAKING)

(CHIP AND AGNES SPEAKING)

Yup. Those two. They busted ass.

It's just too wide open for us here.

We need to have something to put between us and them for a while.

You know what I mean? These are what we call educated animals.

They just know what a snow machine is.

They know what a person is, and they're pretty leery.

(AGNES SPEAKING)

CHIP: We don't want to press them too hard.

The sun's going down.

If we piss them off or make them scared, tomorrow won't be so productive.

See how they stopped. They go about 400 yards and they stop, start grazing again.

No matter what we do as we approach them,

they're just going to keep staying out of our reach. (LAUGHS)

They got us busted on this open ground.

But it's getting really late in the day.

And what we wanted to do today was basically scout and locate these animals.

Now we've got them located. We can formulate a plan, and this has just begun.

GLENN: I operate on my own out here.

Really that's part of the appeal of being here,

is the independence and the freedom

of not to be tethered to a safety line all the time.

Out here snowshoes are an essential piece of equipment

because the snow gets very deep,

it's unconsolidated.

It stays so cold here that it seldom gets a crust down in the forest

although it will get windblown in places.

And without snowshoes, I just can't get around.

Getting these snowshoes fixed up in order to go out and make some trails.

Because I don't use machinery to travel,

I only walk to get around in the winter.

My hunting territory is very small compared to people who use machines.

And I like the traditional wooden snowshoe.

They're quieter.

You just have two pieces of metal banging together

once when you're stalking a caribou, it could be all over.

When you're sneaking up on game, you just can't have any sound like that.

Today I'm going to build a trail up this mountain on the north side of my valley.

The mountain's about 1,200 feet above the elevation of the lake.

By travelling on the trails,

I can see what's going on with the animals I hunt in order to get my food.

And the trails allow me

to keep track of the movements of the animals and to intercept them.

The first time up is always difficult

and it gets easier once I have a trail in.

But where it's steep like this,

it's not easy going.

I see a very faint track here in the snow,

and even though it's very faint,

I can tell that that's a ptarmigan for sure.

The reason I'm building this trail here

is in order to collect information about what's going on all around the valley.

And I'm mostly looking at tracks.

It's very unlikely I'm going to run into the animal right here that I'm looking for.

But I get all kinds of information from the tracks I see.

That's the purpose of this trail more than anything is to gather information.

It's getting so steep here, that I'm going to take my snowshoes off

and just kind of swim through this snow

because I'm sliding back as much as I'm moving forward.

It's so steep in here, and the ground's so rough in this area,

that it's easier for me to go without the snowshoes.

I got my trail from camp up to the ridge here on the north side of my valley

and tomorrow I'm planning to head to the top of the mountain on the south side.

What a beautiful evening. What a great way to spend it too up here.

ANDY: There's always two sides to everything out here.

There's trying to make life easy for yourself.

And then there's surviving if something really bad goes wrong.

And often times, the same obstacle provides both to you.

Ooh, boy.

Another calm day on the Yukon. (LAUGHS)

So I'm going to need more logs for building the new generator shack.

-Yeah. -And my trail's going out.

I mean, look at it. I'm down to dirt right here. You know things are melting. So

that's kind of like the most essential thing for me to do right now timing-wise.

'Cause once I don't... Once I can't run this trail any more,

-I'm screwed for logging for the rest of the year. -Well...

I'd say get cracking.

I'm really battling the clock right now.

Every year is a different year with the weather.

Climate change is really affecting our seasons.

I probably only got about another four or five days to get these logs in,

or that's it. I won't be able to do it, so...

I'm really nervous about the break-up.

Every year break-up happens. It's a crapshoot for us.

We have no idea what's going to happen here.

It's adapting. Every year is adapting, changing.

I'd rather be doing other things right now.

I'd love to be out running my dogs, but it's time to get these logs in, and

if it's not done now, it's not going to get done, period.

Burning daylight. (LAUGHING)

Time to go get some logs.

I'm having to log in a new area this year

because the river never froze up in front of our place here,

and as a result I'm having to go a little more than twice as far than I normally do.

My trails are getting pretty weak now. They're running out of snow.

I don't have too much more time.

Got a couple of good trees right in this area that I can get.

First step, I like getting a rope on these trees when I'm logging by myself.

A lot of these trees are too small in diameter to use as a wedge.

And when you're finishing up your cut,

if the wind blows the wrong way,

your tree falls back. So this kind of acts like a safety for me.

One of the dangers of falling trees out here is hang-ups,

when they hang up on another tree when they start to fall.

That can be a really dangerous situation.

When they're hung up in trees, you really never know exactly what they're going to do.

Sometimes they break off the top of the other tree.

They flip around, they twist.

So I have to be really cautious about what I'm doing here

'cause one slip-up here,

that could screw up the rest of my year.

Could end it completely for me.

Aw, shit.

She's hung up.

This could be a real problem.

When they get hung up like this, I don't know where this things going to go right now.

When it goes, it might kick back.

It's cut completely free.

So, what I need right now is a big gust of wind

(CHUCKLES) to help me get this down.

But I could start pulling on that rope,

and hopefully this baby will come down where I want her.

But you never know where she's going to go when they're like this.

All right, see if she goes.

There she goes.

Timber!

All right.

Thank you, wind.

Cut some trees.

Well, what I'm doing right now is cutting small cabin logs, eight-foot sections.

So this tree basically did one round.

I figure I need probably somewhere around 10 to 15 rounds,

so 10 or 15 trees.

All right, looks like a load to me.

I am very comfortable operating out here alone,

but there are certain risks involved.

And the thing foremost in my mind

is that I need to be able to get home on my own two legs

because nobody's going to come looking for me if I don't.

Okay, I've got a bone here I'm going to break.

NARRATOR: Over the course of winter,

Glenn covers hundreds of miles of extreme terrain in search of game.

A high fat diet is crucial for his body to keep up.

GLENN: This is the lower right leg from a young bull moose,

15 or 16 months old, and I'm going to break it to get the marrow out.

Of course you can use a saw to get to the marrow.

But I found that by supporting the bone between two large rocks

and dropping a third rock on the centre of the bone,

that that worked most efficiently for me.

So that's the technique I'm using.

I just position these two rocks here on the ice

so that the bone is supported between the rocks.

So, what I was looking for is the marrow.

This right here. This is the good stuff.

Mmm.

That is right out of the middle of that tibia,

and it's very tasty.

There's a lot more in there.

Look at this.

Yeah, like all that's good marrow right in there.

It's very high in fat.

Fat's the main thing around here.

It's hungry country, it's the Arctic.

At this time of year now, you know, a lot of animals don't have much fat.

I mean, I eat about a half a pound of fat a day,

and if I didn't eat that much fat,

I wouldn't be able to eat enough food because you can only eat so much meat.

You actually get poisoned by too much protein, but you can eat a lot of fat.

You have to get about 70, 75% of your calories from fat

if you don't have carbohydrates.

What a day.

I love it.

This is eating out in the Brooks Range.

Fast food.

Smash something with a couple of rocks and it's ready to go.

We're not harvesting anything.

This isn't wheat that waits for us to chop it down.

We're hunters.

We're chasing these animals down, and we're catching them, and taking their lives.

And then we're eating them, and they're letting us live.

CHIP: I don't think they're far.

I think our biggest problem is gonna be wind today.

We're getting about a 10-mile-an-hour wind, and I can see windy clouds up top.

So, we'll see what we see. We'll see what the weather brings us.

NARRATOR: Chip and Agnes Hailstone

are set to begin the second day of their final caribou hunt of the season.

It is their last chance to provide their family with caribou meat until summer.

In the system up here we have, once I've gotten enough meat for myself,

I take the other meats that I've got and I trade them.

It's legal here to barter for caribou.

It's like basically making your own money.

It's kind of like digging gold out of the ground.

It's something that you're the first one to get a hold of it,

and you just go from there.

Meat is our money.

-Just on top of the hill. -There's quite a few.

CHIP: Huh? AGNES: Caribou?

CHIP: Yeah, caribou up there.

We got lots of caribou around us and we just got here.

So we don't want to spook them up,

but what we want to do is creep around the top of the hill

and have a look over here. And we know that there's a lot of caribou

on the other side of the hill that are coming over.

So we're gonna go get up on top and wait for them to come to us.

(CHIP SPEAKING)

Right above your shoulder.

AGNES: Argh, they're still...

CHIP: I didn't see a hit. AGNES: I didn't see it either.

Shoot when you feel like it.

AGNES: Argh, right between.

CHIP: Pretty hard with this wind. AGNES: It's the wind.

Nope.

In front of it.

We'll just get ready for the next time.

They never stay in the same place.

They're fucking caribou, right?

Caribou do what caribou do.

(CHIP SPEAKING)

(AGNES SPEAKING)

Argh...

CHIP: Smack it with your hand.

AGNES: Whoo! CHIP: Oh, yeah!

Got one down.

I know you nailed it at least once.

Maybe you hit it twice. I don't know.

-I hit it once, and it... -We'll find out when we get there.

Yeah. I finally got my shot.

It took me like a few shots to figure out the wind,

-and the distance. -It's all right.

That's what it takes. It takes a few shots.

-Yeah. Yeah. -Hey. Very few people would shoot in this wind.

-(LAUGHS) -And just...

-Good shot? -Yeah.

-Good enough? -Good enough.

-I'll go down there, and go cut its throat. -Okay.

This took quite many miles,

but when we came across this herd it was to my advantage.

It was downhill, and the wind was in my favour,

and we have one down now to skin and butcher.

CHIP: Oh yeah. Look how fat she is.

Yee! I was waiting till you opened it up. Wow!

Good choice one I did.

-Yup. -Wee!

-Oh, wow. -Ah... Oh, this is a real prize.

Well, today has gone pretty good.

Scoring this first one, you know, it kind of takes that

"are we gonna get it" off.

We've already got success, so no matter how we return home,

we'll return home successful.

Our plan though is to return home quite successful

to make all of our endeavour, and our money, and our investment

in, uh, into caribou. (CHUCKLES)

So what we'd like to do is fill up the sled

and bring home more caribou than what we've got right now.

If we wanted just one, we would go home and go to bed.

We would be done. But we're not single caribou kind of people.

SUE: You know, I don't see myself as a great huntress.

I don't see myself as a great proprietress.

What I see myself as is an explorer.

NARRATOR: Sue has spent half the day drilling through six feet of ice for fish,

and so far she's come up empty.

I did find the lake. I did drill holes.

It was a bust. That's the way it goes.

Disappointing, maybe, but I'm not gonna ruin a brand new piece of equipment

trying to... I'm not going for rock fish.

I wanted, you know, water.

So fins win today.

But I'll follow the river, take it home, see what I find.

(SUE SPEAKING)

Wolverine track.

So this might be what I'm going towards,

and lucky me, alls I got is the .44, which is close range.

But these are wolverine tracks, and it's headed right where I'm headed.

So, we'll see.

.44 is not the weapon of choice with a wolverine.

Not unless he's in a trap.

It's not meant for long distances.

The wolverine is definitely one of the predators awake this time of year.

Saw fresh tracks, so I'll just keep my eyes peeled.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

I see something.

Okay. I see something real dark over this way.

Sticks out like a sore thumb.

I got a little bit of an optical illusion.

The sun hitting the snow is causing a wave that's stretching things,

but it's definitely a real dark colour on a real white background.

I say we get a little closer. See what we got.

Okay. Just stop, see if I can pick it up again.

There it is.

Okay I see something real dark over this way.

Sticks out like a sore thumb.

Boy, there's no telling because it's being stretched.

It's still there.

And they are foxes.

And they are running away. They're saying,

"See you later alligator. You scared the hell out of me. Goodbye."

All right. Yo.

Foxes are friends, not fur.

You know, I don't wanna make a coat out of them.

I don't want to sell them for money.

I don't wanna know that I can get 100 or 200 bucks for a fox.

What I get out of that fox is worth far more than money.

I have companionship and I have the experience of a lifetime.

Shit!

Well, there we go.

A bird in the hand is worth two in the fucking bush.

Yeah!

Well. I know I got a couple of birds.

Sue's plan was to try ice fishing and, uh,

the tundra provided another meal.

Living out here, you know, you're like any predator.

You're an opportunist if you're gonna be successful,

and ended up getting myself a ptarmigan.

So, uh...

Yay! (LAUGHS)

Fish one,

ptarmigan zero.

Missed the fin. Got me some feathers.

CHIP: Up here you have to take care of yourself. You have to go out prepared.

If you're not prepared, you just don't go.

If you don't have the right equipment, you don't go.

If the people you're travelling with don't have the right equipment,

don't go.

CHIP: That caribou got a lot of blood on my tarp.

That's all right. It's all frozen. I can knock it off later.

CHIP: You got hot coffee in a thermos? AGNES: Yes.

CHIP: Okay. AGNES: Gotta have the coffee.

AGNES: Such a nice day. Gonna be fun.

(AGNES SPEAKING)

(CHIP SPEAKING)

(CHIP SPEAKING)

(GUNSHOT FIRED)

AGNES: Argh...

(CHIP SPEAKING)

-AGNES: Yee! -Whoa!

(CHIP SPEAKING)

-Oh, wicked. -(AGNES LAUGHS)

(AGNES AND CHIP SPEAKING)

Okay. That's good.

They're down anyway, let's go finish them off.

-Just relax, relax, relax. -Okay. Okay, okay, okay.

Most of the hard shit is done.

AGNES: Yee!

CHIP: Whoa.

Oh... Well, that one just dropped.

I like your shooting.

It's hard to shoot in a wind like this,

but once you got it dialled in, that's the way to go.

These will go quite nice with the caribou we got yesterday.

This will carry us through till the spring.

It won't be till August that we get fat caribou again,

but I think we'll be plenty happy with these.

Yep. This is a lot of work all right, but it's work I enjoy

and this is a job well done for us today

and just a day closer to home.

GLENN: People are becoming separated from nature more and more.

But the way of nature is for life to consume life.

It's a continuous cycle that happens every day here.

And I'm part of that cycle.

It's possible to judge the temperature very accurately

by the sound of the breath freezing when you exhale.

And at 40 below zero, I can just barely start to hear it.

I can just barely hear my breath freezing now.

NARRATOR: For Glenn Villeneuve,

a hunting trail is imperative for food and survival.

Yesterday, he broke the first half of his trail

but today will be a more difficult climb.

So my plan is to snowshoe across the valley and then go up this ridge

to the skyline there and then back further to the top of a mountain.

It's probably a total of about four miles walk from here to the top.

And about 3,000 feet in elevation gain.

Hopefully, I'll get up to the top today and have my trail finished.

About six miles across the valley here.

One hazard of the extreme cold weather when you're working very hard physically

is getting frostbite.

Any exposed skin, like on the face or fingers

when I have to use my fingers for dexterity and take my mittens off.

I can only do that for so long and then I will get frostbite.

That's one of my biggest concerns about the cold.

I've travelled more than half a mile from camp

and I haven't really seen any fresh tracks, which is not unusual.

It's really hungry country out here.

It's feast or famine.

There's times of abundance, and there's times of scarcity.

Right now's a time of scarcity right here in this particular area.

The snow down in the forest is pretty deep

and walking on snowshoes, I got a really good trail in there.

Now I'm up above the trees where the snow is wind-blown,

and in places it will still be deep.

I think I wanna leave my snowshoes on a little while longer.

The snow's all windblown. There's some ptarmigan tracks.

The wind blows a lot more than it does down in the forest

and it blows a lot of the snow right off the ground.

What's left gets windblown and hard packed.

It's much easier and faster to walk on.

You can really make time up here.

Wow. A wolf was just here.

Wolves.

There's been a pack of wolves walking around here.

I'm not the only one out here hunting today.

That's a fresh wolf track right there.

The wolves are hunting the mountains too.

Wind blows up here and tracks don't last too long without changing.

These look really fresh.

I'm gonna follow these tracks and see where they lead.

You know, the wolves have a really good nose

and there's times when there are not many caribou around.

I might not be able to find one, but the wolves do sometimes lead me to them.

So if the wolves are finding something to eat up on these mountains,

then there's a chance I will too.

There's a wolf track right there headed that way.

He's headed right toward the top of the mountain.

(SIGHS) That's the way I'm going too.

See, I travel from the valley up to the ridge top to see

what's going on because that's where a lot of the action takes place in the winter.

I've gotten meat from wolves when they've killed caribou just in front of me.

Usually the wolves, they don't want anything to do with me.

-They know I'm dangerous. -(WOLVES HOWLING)

The wolves always backed down.

Until last year one time there was this big pack of 20 wolves,

and I was approaching them.

They had just killed a moose

and those wolves actually ran after me

and I ended up shooting three of them.

We are on the top of the mountain. This is the end of my route.

There's some tracks down there but they might have passed there a few days ago.

If I saw a caribou there, that would be a different story.

What interests me is just that there are wolves out here

and there are caribou around.

Small numbers.

And more very well may be coming in the coming weeks.

I just have to be patient and wait for an opportunity.

That ridge top there, that's where I was yesterday.

It's about a six-mile route that I've got now

from the top of that ridge to the top of this one up here.

It's just good to be back out here.

This is the place that I feel most comfortable at and most at home at.

I feel like the lifestyle out here affords you much more freedom

than lifestyle in modern America does.

I don't like other people deciding what I do.

I'd rather follow the dictates of nature.

This lake right here

is home.

CHIP: Noorvik is a large family basically,

and there's a large sense of community there where people take care of each other.

It's a really good social system among hunters.

It's 'cause we like to keep what we must and share what we can.

CHIP: Pretty bright, nice day.

-Wow. -Whew.

We'll just get these caribou off here and start skinning.

We got five nice caribou.

Five nice females, real fat.

AGNES: Yee!

CHIP: We saved the skinning for today for a couple reasons.

Number one, it's because we were so tired last night.

Number two is because it holds the heat in the meat

and the meat goes through rigor mortis and then it relaxes

and it's a much softer and a better grade of meat.

These are March females and they're really fat.

And that's the reason why we're specifically after these kind

before the end of March is over

so this is like our last chance at getting fat caribou meat until August.

If we want to have any more really good, fat caribou for ourselves and our kids,

this is the time to do it.

AGNES: I enjoy doing this work out here.

It's kind of nice. It's a nice day.

I'm pretty satisfied with our catch.

We're off to a good start.

Spring's coming on pretty quick here.

This winter isn't gonna hold on too long.

CHIP: We've had a pretty good winter. We've done well with fur.

Next to the other one.

Perfect, babe.

We've done well with fishing.

-One, and it have eggs! -Full of eggs!

CHIP: We were lucky to get what we got.

I like the partnership we have when we do this kind of hunting.

It's the same thing when we're hunting for predators.

My wife is the eyeballs, and I'm a driving.

-That's a taste, huh? -Yep. Fresh.

CHIP: Now this is a way to end a nice, fat female caribou hunt

before we're on to the next thing.

ANDY: Every day is different.

Every week is different here.

Walk 200 yards down to the river

and it's a very different place than it was the week before.

NARRATOR: Andy's managed to gather a sizable load of timber,

but getting it back to his homestead

will require navigating a narrow trail through the dense forest.

These are 18-footers. This is gonna be a lot squirrelier going back.

Uh, back end's gonna wanna slew around and it's gonna wanna fall off the trail.

It's a lot of weight. Anytime you have weight,

you got issues.

If it falls off the trail,

yeah, I don't know what I'll do.

I'm a little concerned about that.

All right. All loaded up.

Last load of the day.

It's getting late. I'm getting tired.

I'm thirsty. My back's getting sore.

Time to get this load home and into the pile.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Easy, easy, easy.

Slow down, slow down.

Son of a bitch. That was close.

Don't you dare fall off of there.

What I've always noticed, I don't know if it's 'cause it's the end of the day

or it's just the way things are around here,

but it's always the last 100 yards to the house that seems to be the killer.

You know, I have a lot of problems coming up my ramp around here

'cause of the dirt, and the mud, and the steep hill.

Once that sled falls off one time,

it creates a rut and then it always wants to go into that rut.

It never fails.

Anyway, good day logging.

Uh, didn't get hurt.

I'm making progress but I got a lot to do.

Yeah, I think we... I think we should just finish building our cabin

and then we can be like just

big, fat beer bellies, and

we can sit around and complain about all of our aches and pains and...

-I look forward to that day. -Me too. (CHUCKLES)

You know, everything that I do out here is

something I get jazzed about,

whether it's hunting meat, putting fish up, milling wood, running the dogs.

Every time I do something, it reaffirms that I'm doing the right thing

living out here the way I live. For me.

I'm glad I listened to my heart when I was a 20-year-old kid

and decided to come out here

and make a life for myself out here.

'Cause it's, it's been a, been a good ride you know?

KATE: We've learned how to survive and we've learned very well.

And we're proud of it,

and we want to keep on doing it until

our bodies say otherwise,

our souls drift off down the river.

So here's to springtime, babe.

-(GLASSES CLINK) -(ANDY LAUGHS)

SUE: What is life without the surprises?

If we knew what to expect every day, day in, day out,

my personality?

Nah, I like the unknown.

I like the challenge.

All right, this would make three of them little beasties.

So I think I'm just gonna cook them up.

A little garlic, a little onion,

and go have myself a little picnic.

It was a big day.

You know, I was going after the fins

and life had an alternate meal plan for me that I wasn't aware of.

I'm grateful for every single bite this thing's giving me.

And if it's not pretty, that's okay.

Neither am I. (LAUGHS)

For my fine day's work,

I got a bowl full of ptarmigan,

a snoot full of single malt,

some stogies for dessert.

So it's time to head outside and enjoy the day.

If you go back and you look at the whole year,

I mean, it's been boom bust, boom bust, just like the history of Alaska.

Boom, I got the bear that was roughing up camp.

You know, but that's me, that's my life.

It's a series of challenges. Some are natural and some I create.

And it doesn't get me down. It just keeps me going, keeps me learning.

Winter is what it is. It's a tough son of a bitch up here on the north slope of Alaska.

And I'm grateful when summer gets here,

but I'm grateful for every experience I get. Every day is new.

Maybe it's a huge problem that I don't...

I, I didn't really sign up to get,

but I overcome it and it's one foot in front of the other.

Not one day of my life do I wanna stop learning.

I've looked all over my body, scary as that is,

and I don't see an expiration date but I know it's coming.

I don't get to pick the day. It's gonna pick me.

So up until that moment, full steam ahead.

You know, if it's a horse race

put your bet on this old nag.

'Cause I'm crossing the finish line.