Original subtitles

Hey there, buddy.

(CHUCKLES) Seems like this is becoming an annual thing here.

NARRATOR: In Kavik, Sue Aikens has enlisted the help

of a bush pilot to take her to a familiar fishing spot.

She's received a new food supply,

but must continue to stockpile meat and protein

for her survival through the dark winter that lies ahead.

SUE: We ready? We got everything in?

-PILOT: Yep. -All right.

MAN (ON RADIO): Kavik six flight two takes off to the east,

we'll be northbound to Kavik.

SUE: Why would you take a few hours in an aeroplane just to go get some fish?

Well, I don't have any food.

All the food went bad when I had my injury.

It's possible, at that site, in a couple of hours,

I can get a couple of days' worth of food.

I'm starting from ground zero,

and when winter hits, it hits with an iron fist.

And it stays for nine months.

Sue doesn't go down without a fight.

If I'm gonna starve, it's gonna be my own lack of trying.

And that doesn't happen in my world.

I'm gonna try until I can't try, 'til I can try.

So I've gotta use everything in my arsenal

to try and bring something home.

I'm behind the gun.

I got winter breathing down my neck.

My time is tick-tick-tick-tick-tick.

(THEME MUSIC PLAYING)

SUE: My natural alone time,

for nine months, I have to supply for myself.

It's like having a biological clock

for a woman who wants to have a baby.

My biological clock is saying, "Get food."

Get it now.

I knew I wouldn't have the big tide current,

but I was hoping to have a little more water coming in than this.

So, I don't know if there's gonna be any good fishing at all.

The pilot brought me here. It was a great favour to me.

I've got a fishing pole, and, uh, I'm gonna give it a whirl.

'Cause even, you know,

one goes in the freezer and I'm one ahead.

There.

See the lay of the land and then get down to getting on some fish.

CHIP: I think my wife, maybe even a couple of my daughters,

were born with fish in their hands.

No silver spoons here.

AGNES: Oh, check this baby out. CHIP: Oh, that's fresh.

CHIP: Got meat.

Wow, that's a good one there.

Well, when we're done with these fish,

I'm gonna have to go get poles and some cottonwood,

and we'll be able to set a smoke onto these guys, and...

Yep, we definitely need a smoker going on.

Yeah, me and the girls could go pick berries, and we'll take the dog.

Yeah, if you guys take the dog, I'll take Qutan.

That way you guys'll have someone to watch for bears

while you're bent down looking for berries.

I can see that my wife's gonna need the rack extended

'cause she's gonna need to store those fish once they're dried.

And she's gonna need to make room for other fish

that she's gonna put on there.

NARRATOR: Along the Kiwalik River,

the Hailstone family has spent several days fishing for salmon,

a key source of protein in their diet.

Preserving the meat for the long winter is a priority,

and must be first processed and dried.

CHIP: We're just gonna go down the coast here and get some smoking wood,

what we call cottonwood around here.

I use it to smoke the fish and keep the flies off it.

And then I'm gonna build my wife a cold storage over here.

She calls it a sigloak

and, um, it's gonna be a place where she can put her berries and her greens.

You know, we want to not only go out and get these foods, but we gotta preserve 'em.

We have to keep 'em and, uh, get 'em home back to Noorvik, and freeze 'em.

And then we'll have 'em all winter to eat.

There you go.

(CHAINSAW BUZZING)

This doesn't cost us much.

It's about two gallons of fuel round trip.

We're just across the lagoon five miles

and, uh, there's a lot of wood here.

This is building material.

If I had to buy from a store, it'd probably cost me a lot of money.

Take that back to the boat.

There's four good logs.

It's good for, um, smoking when you're making fish.

It has a way of just punking out and smouldering itself.

You don't have to keep lighting it,

and you don't have to worry about it just catching the flame and burning.

It's really good for, uh, flavour.

And I see some pieces over here

I'm gonna get for my sigloak build.

Some longer pieces.

Here, why don't you give me that?

Got us wood for building a nice cold storage.

Just got wood for fire, wood for the smoke on the salmon.

CHIP: My wife's society,

they divide things between men and women.

And women do certain things and men do certain things in ideal situations.

Our ideal situation is that my wife went off berry-picking with the girls

and my youngest daughter

didn't want to go berry-picking, so she helped me out.

She got to see where all the wood is and why I come down here.

She's almost 10, so spent a little time

together with the youngest daughter.

JESSIE: There's no guarantees out here.

Here, the only guarantee is you're gonna have to work hard for everything.

(DOGS BARKING)

Well, another beautiful morning.

I'm always a fan of the morning time.

It's a time to get a lot of things done.

With dogs, one of the things you got to do every morning though

is get woke up by these damn squirrels.

And they're out there stealing my dog food.

I see a squirrel right there eating my dog food.

These guys tear holes into my $67 bag of dog food.

Every one of those little pellets that they eat actually costs a lot of money.

I don't like killing things, but you know what?

It goes right in the dog pot.

Turn it into dog food.

Just throw it in the cooker with fish or meat,

whatever I got while I'm cooking up.

I don't want to let it go to waste.

Resources are resources out here, you know?

A lot of people would probably laugh at me

for cooking up squirrels for my dogs,

but I'm not gonna just leave them

rotting in the woods in waste.

Got a little excited there. Shot too soon.

I want to kill him,

I don't want to leave him to go off and suffer in the brush. You know?

I got a bunch of dog food here.

You can see these squirrels have eaten away into it.

You know, this here is some super-quality chicken, and beef, and pork scraps.

This is their base food here.

It's a real high-grade kibble, you know,

keeps these dogs going.

These kind of dogs need a lot of calories,

so I don't want to let squirrels

be eating my expensive dog food.

This gun, I wouldn't say it's the most accurate or best gun, you know?

But, uh, sure works for blasting squirrel.

(SQUIRREL SQUEAKING)

Squirrel.

(SOFTLY) I'm gonna see if he didn't come in and get this dog food.

Take my time with this one.

This is what I call protecting my investment.

-(GUN FIRES) -(DOG BARKING)

He just ran right on off.

They're pretty quick like that.

I don't think this gun is actually shooting that straight.

It's kind of old and rickety, been beat around in dog sleds,

and think I kinda need to sight it in

'cause I'd rather they die fast

so I can, uh, throw 'em in the dog cooker.

This thing isn't really seeming to be shooting that straight.

I'm gonna take this can and go see what's going on with it.

MARTHA: I love being out here in Iliamna

and experiencing the same stuff that I grew up doing.

I got the day off of clients

and I'm gonna take Martha upriver to a place I've never been,

that I've heard is a really good grayling hole,

and see if we can't go ahead and find a real honey hole

to slam some grayling next week.

MARTHA: So where's this spot you wanted to go to?

How long of a drive is it?

It's not too far. I think we'll have some good luck.

It's really nice out there today

and mountains are shining.

Let's, uh, burn out of here. There's not much daylight.

MARTHA: Good day to catch grayling.

ERIK: Yeah, I think we're gonna get lucky here.

We have a wide variety of game fish here in the Iliamna Lake drainage,

but a really neat fish we have here is grayling.

There's an area that I've been looking at

out of the air for a couple years.

It's a really nice riffle.

I want to run upriver a little further than I usually do with Martha

and see if we can't get into a real honey hole of grayling.

There are some unknowns associated with going to a new spot,

but the reality is the risk part is more about travel with the boat.

The boat is the bigger obstacle.

You want to make sure that there are no really shallow riffles

or hidden rocks.

-You know, honey, the water's actually pretty high in here. -Yeah, it came up.

A lot of these rocks that were really obvious to see.

MARTHA: Well, that's what jacks you up too,

is when the water level drops and rises, and drops and rises.

Yeah.

Look at that big wave right there.

ERIK: This is a totally different river

than I was fishing the last time I came by.

Many people have died in these waters before.

There's a lot of people

who wanted to make it up to the second set of rapids and never have,

so, let's just say there's some boats down there.

ERIK: What the fuck is that right there?

Rocks like this will really screw you up, huh?

Yeah.

Look at that son of a bitch there.

MARTHA: There are certain kinds of boats for certain kinds of rivers.

The flat bottom with the little jet boat on the back

is meant for running around small streams with tight turns and stuff like that.

It's not meant for running these kinds of white waters.

You need a really big, heavy boat, with big jets on the back

to be able to run these kinds of rivers.

Why don't we land right here, Erik? This looks safe.

I'm working on it, honey.

Okay.

I'm gonna get up there.

It's usually a good spot right there to fish,

but it's too high right now and too rapid,

so we're just gonna play it safe and fish from shore.

NARRATOR: Erik and Martha, are surveying the river for a new grayling hole.

But treacherous rapids have forced them to test for a safer fishing spot.

MARTHA: I've lived in Iliamna my whole life.

I've witnessed some people doing some crazy stuff in boats.

There have been some people who have tried to run these rapids and had bad luck,

so, you know better than to play on 'em.

Today our objective is the smaller prey.

The Arctic grayling.

These rapids right here are very beautiful.

They're a great place to fish.

But they will kill your ass. (LAUGHING)

You gotta be really careful around this type of water,

show the river a lot of respect and pay attention

and make sure you're within your abilities and your limits

before you do anything.

Well, what do you think, honey?

Should we keep on keeping on?

Yeah, there's not very many fish here.

Let's go back to the boat and we can find another channel and keep on going.

Okay.

ERIK: We're gonna head back to the boat and drift out of here

and head up another channel that doesn't have so many rapids,

and keep on keeping on looking for that honey hole of grayling.

We're nowhere near the spot I had in mind yet,

and, like usual, Martha and I got distracted fishing.

CHIP: So we're always you know, thinking ahead,

living for the day, but working for tomorrow.

AGNES: We're definitely gonna be spending our evenings picking salmon berries,

which is when the salmon are here after July.

Then the salmon berries should be ripe.

NARRATOR: While Chip collects building supplies for their fish rack and sigloak,

Agnes and the girls must gather and stockpile

a vital food source for the coming winter.

It takes a group effort to get through these willows

'cause you never know what's in the willows.

There could be, um, bears, wolves, muskox.

That's why we have the puppy dog here,

so it can just scare off anything.

Look at the size of these berries.

And they're ripe.

I usually just try to keep picking all the ones that are orange.

You can tell how good and nice they are.

And I just try to leave the ones

that are already sunburnt and stuff, and not ripe.

When we have our long, cold winter,

it's nice to have something sweet

besides all the meats and fish we have.

So we balance it out with the berries and the greens,

not missing anything from our diet.

It's hard work.

It's backbreaking, but, um, in the end it pays off.

Phew, that looks like that's enough for today.

We could just pack up and start heading back.

These short pieces right here are cottonwoods.

Those are gonna be for smoking salmon.

Then I got these pine ones over here

and we're gonna be using those for making the sigloak.

Stick your guys' berries in.

So all the berries you got don't have to be eaten right away.

We can save 'em for winter.

-Sound like a good deal? -AGNES: Sounds like a real good deal.

CHIP: Yep, it all worked out good though.

AGNES: Yep, we all work out real good together.

CHIP: Let's munch. AGNES: Let's go home and eat.

CHIP: Come on, come on, come on.

(EXCLAIMING)

JESSIE: You're pretty small when you're out in the wilderness out here.

There's other predators, you know,

that are gonna come in and try to take your food.

I never grew up, like, out shooting or hunting in the woods, you know?

It's just kind of, a desire that came to me,

something I wanted to do.

And I somewhat feel cheated sometimes, to not grow up,

you know, doing things like this.

You know, for me, like, guns are really important where I live.

There's a lot of wilderness around.

There's a lot of predators. Wolves, bears, coyotes.

I have a lot of stuff to protect, you know?

My fish and my dogs and my own life.

You know, a bear can come into your camp,

and that could be all she wrote.

(GUN FIRES)

(GUN FIRES)

I can see that this is shooting low and to the right.

I'm gonna need to adjust the sights for a little more height

and, uh, tweak this over to the left a little bit.

Okay, I'm gonna try again here.

(GUN FIRING)

Looking pretty good.

Adjusted these sights here a little bit

and I'm liking what I'm seeing.

I'm ready to go kill some squirrels.

Twenty-two's the meat gun up here.

You know, you can't always kill big game, you know?

So you can survive off of ducks,

geese, beaver, porcupine, rabbits.

Once, I, uh, got to 17, I was on the road,

I started learning how to shoot guns.

Got on with a guy who was an old Vietnam vet,

he kind of taught me the ropes of shooting.

And then once I got up here,

I just kind of learned from hunting and being out in the woods.

(SQUEAKS)

I hear a squirrel back here. I see him too.

Straight ahead there.

(DOG BARKING)

(GUN CLICKS)

You son of a bitch.

(GUN FIRES)

One shot, one kill.

Doesn't get better than that.

So this goes back to the dogs, and goes in the pot.

At least it doesn't go to waste.

I'm very against wasting things.

I would never shoot something, and kill something,

if it couldn't be used somehow.

But killing's just part of life out here.

Part of the food chain myself.

(SQUIRREL SQUEAKING)

I see one.

It's moving now.

(GUN FIRES)

All right, I've got some good squirrel hunting on this morning.

Just part of the routine around here,

maintaining the pest.

You know, as is getting firewood.

These are jobs that just have to be done,

so my next task is go get some firewood.

(DOGS BARKING)

Can't cook dog food without firewood.

You can't heat your house.

You can't dry out your blue jeans

when they're soaking wet, so.

Two squirrels down.

Time to go cut some firewood.

(CHAINSAW BUZZING)

Nothing goes to waste, you know,

these are leftover from projects that I've had

and it goes right back into the woodstove.

You don't just use wood in the winter around here, you use it all year round.

You never can have enough wood,

you always got to think ahead on wood.

It's one of the most important things of living in Alaska.

All right, well I got myself a little bit of wood here.

This ain't gonna last me too long, but it's a good start.

I'm gonna take over some wood to my dog food cooker

'cause that's where I use the most wood at,

and, you know, having all these dogs

makes my wood consumption

at least a third more to double.

Life would be a lot more simple if I didn't have dogs, I'll tell you that.

That isn't what I'm looking for.

I love living with dogs, they're my best friends,

and, uh, I rely on them

to keep me alive in the middle of winter.

AGNES: You always gotta help and give a hand,

and then when you need it, someone will always give you a hand back.

CHIP: Oh, man.

I'm trying to extend the fish rack here.

This thing had to be made bigger.

There's no way this thing's gonna accommodate

all of her fish by the time we get the fish going.

NARRATOR: Extending their fish rack will allow the Hailstones to dry,

smoke, and preserve large quantities of fish.

This will help them with the supply of protein they'll need to survive the winter ahead.

CHIP: I just basically doubled it by adding three rows to what's already up there.

The rows up pretty high 'cause I don't want animals

coming along from the bottom and getting hanging salmon.

What I gotta do next now that I have a smooth pole on top is put another layer of tarps.

And then I'm gonna put an end over here

that can be used as a doorway and yet be closed up,

and I'll have a smoking stove off to one side.

These are to hold the tarp out and away from the meats.

So that if there's a wind, that the tarp here doesn't beat against the meat.

Definitely one advantage we have here in the Arctic

is that these longer days in the summertime

let us work whenever we're comfortable.

Wow! Awesome.

-CHIP: You think so? -Yeah.

AGNES: It look like a cool smoker, huh?

Cool. We love it.

CHIP: Well, this will be your smoker end.

(KIDS CHATTERING INDISTINCTLY)

Okay, thank you so much.

I love you.

SUE: How you live is a choice.

Take the opportunity to grow.

Take the opportunity to deny it.

But it's your choice.

Now, the tide's not in, you know, and that's what the fishies, they do.

They get in here on one tide and they swim out on the next.

Char, um, are aggressive.

When the current's against them,

they're just invigorated and they go after stuff.

But, uh, there's no tide right now.

NARRATOR: For Sue, summer offers a short window

to harvest protein and restock her food supply.

But low tides have made catching Arctic char a struggle,

and she must soon return to Kavik.

SUE: I don't have the time to wait for the tides.

All's I've got is the here and the now.

My time is tick-tick-tick-tick-tick.

I got a fish!

That right there is a nice Arctic char.

I don't want him to flop back in.

I'm gonna put him up here.

Get ready for my next fishy.

Come on. You know you want it.

Damn it.

Damn son of a bitch fuck!

All right.

The lure came off. The fishy got away.

This is supposed to be 20-pound test.

These kind of snapped that like a little son of a bitch.

Yeah, every cast I'm just getting weeds.

Yeah, you know, I mean, this is not gonna get me fish.

It gets in the way of getting fish.

I'm not giving up, no way, but, you know, my time is short,

so I've gotta make some decisions soon.

Come on, bite on it.

Don't you dare spit it out.

Ah, nice!

Got him!

Whoa! I don't even know how to get you out of here, little dude.

That's fucking amazing!

I got a twofer.

I get my old lure that I just lost

and the new one that he just ate.

Okay, come meet your cousin.

All righty.

I think one more cast from here,

and then I've gotta call it.

The pilot's needing to get his work done.

Kavik doesn't run itself.

It's been a good couple of hours.

Got a couple of just glory, prize-winning char.

Those are beauties.

Learning a little somethin'-somethin'.

I can catch fish out here even when there's no tide.

Just not many.

And logic says that there's a lot more fish in here,

but again, char is a fighting fish.

When you have a good current,

you'll have a good time catching char.

It might be hard for people to grasp,

but I choose to live so remote from the rest of society

not because I don't like people.

It's just where I shine the best.

Okay, little buddy.

All righty, then.

Well, time to wrap up this little chapter.

JESSIE: I didn't come up to Alaska to live some complex life,

I came up here to live simply.

Hey, I got myself some wood up, you know.

I got some squirrels knocked down

and, you know, spent a lot of time here around my dogs,

and that's a good day in my mind.

That's one of the reasons you do live out here,

you gotta work hard, but it's a hell of a lot more

slow-paced than a 9:00 to 5:00 job.

You know what time it is, huh?

Favourite time, when I cook you up some stew.

Pretty proud of this cooker.

This, uh, seals it tight.

Keeps the fire going.

This thing cooks pretty quick.

I got my squirrels.

And then I put 10 gallons of water in here

for the amount of food I'm gonna have to cook for these dogs.

Now it's time to add some fish.

Big ol' chum salmon, there.

They get kind of excited

when I'm foolin' around with the cooker.

They know what that means.

They know I'm cookin' 'em up the good stuff.

This is gonna be the biggest sustenance added to this meal,

and this is, uh, real high quality human-grade chicken.

You ain't gonna feed these dogs off of squirrels,

that's for sure.

But, you know, the reason I cook these squirrels

is just to not see 'em go to waste.

Grab one more bucket of meat and this sucker'll be cookin'.

All right, now this fish and this meat and this fat,

this is what really substains my dogs.

These dogs are meant to like, travel,

and they have great endurance,

and great endurance relies on fat.

That's where their energy comes from.

And protein is what repairs their muscles from, like,

the extreme training, you know,

and builds back new muscle.

Put some squirrel in there.

This is a major resource to me.

Without this resource,

I can't continue to have as many dogs as I have.

It's time to feed the dogs!

Dogs don't just need food,

they need tons of love and attention.

They need a good, solid pack leader.

Everything I do is for my dogs, and like,

they come before me, you know,

and that's the way it should be

whenever you got a bunch of animals,

'cause I choose to have this many dogs, you know.

I choose to be ambitious and wanna race.

Oh, there's one of those squirrels, Prince.

Yeah! There you go.

As you can see, the dogs like it, you know,

it just adds a little more nutrition

to the diet and a little variety.

Mostly, it just keeps me from wasting resource.

When you live out here and stuff's sparse,

you just try to use everything you got.

And dog mushin's expensive.

So, to like learn how to utilise these resources is extremely important to me.

Dogs are happy, I'm happy.

I feel like a king, you know.

I got everything I need around here.

CHIP: I have other people that are counting on me.

And part of counting on me is me being able to do

the things that they want and need.

It's nice, soft dirt, I gotta say.

Lot of sand in it.

Some clay, not much.

Well, the point of having a fish rack

and the point of having a nice cold hole

to store things is to preserve stuff.

If you've got all this food

and you're trying to keep a surplus,

you have to have a way of preserving it.

This right now is just about keeping what we've worked so hard to get a hold of

in good condition to get it home,

so we can have it for the winter.

-Is this gonna be the door? -Yep.

If you have it just laying here on the ground

like a hole in the ground, a bear could just part it.

Weasels can go in it. Mice will fill it.

NARRATOR: For the Hailstones,

it's crucial to build a cold storage, or sigloak,

to preserve their supply of berries and greens,

and protect the food from predators.

CHIP: Old-timers used to make 'em round.

I make mine square.

It's got a lot more to go.

I'm just getting the basic frame down.

Ah! How come!

It just smacked my knuckle really hard. Pissed me off.

It's not bleeding or anything, just got thumped.

It's gonna be a little blue right there.

It just caught my knuckle up here in front

and gave me a good little whack.

I guess what I did was probably take it off the tip when I pushed the tip,

and I was sideways, and it just gave it a chance to roll off the side.

The trick is to make sure the bar isn't bent.

But it's not.

And a long time ago, if an Eskimo came across a chainsaw,

there's no way he would have rejected it.

Folks up here have always wanted

to make their lives better in a really harsh environment,

and you really gotta admit that they came up with some

very clever ways to do it socially and to do it personally.

And these folks up here, if there's a better way to do something,

they have always incorporated it into their way of doing things.

And we have a door!

Is it done yet?

It's almost there.

I got the basic frame up.

The idea of making it, building it,

is to keep all the foods fresh and keep all the mice away,

so they don't go bad.

CHIP: It's part of living like we do, Bun.

So we don't have to depend on anybody but ourselves.

There ain't much for jobs up here,

so you gotta make your own work.

Qutan there's our youngest daughter,

and it's always been a pure joy just to teach the kids.

We consider this to be part of their education.

They have to have local knowledge of the local materials

and the local foods, when to be there,

what to do with 'em, and how to store 'em.

We cut down these willows quite a while back,

and they're useful for lots of things.

I just need the willows right now to hold down the grasses

that we've stacked against it for an insulative layer.

I'm done.

Just flip it all the way up and back,

so it doesn't fall on your head.

-Not bad, huh? -Can I go in?

Yeah, you can get in. You can play. You can do whatever.

So I'm pretty happy with what's going on.

We'll have a place to store berries and greens

and use like a refrigerator and have no mice.

We'll have a place over here to dry foods up.

I know it's kind of small and narrow, but that's the whole idea.

If we made it really big, it would be hard to keep it cool and chilled.

It's big to me.

Well, it's big to you 'cause you's a little lady.

It's just part of preservation.

You don't wanna work really hard

not to be able to, uh, use what you've got.

SUE: The worlds are colliding,

and they're formin' a good circle.

Touchdown!

Awesome fishing trip!

Yay!

But, here, thank you, Jake.

You're sure welcome.

-I sure, I appreciate it. -Absolutely.

Wanna get the sand off, clean 'em up.

Make a nice, smooth, clean cut.

And just get the guts out of 'em.

Um, getting this fish is super important to me.

So, you know, anything that's gonna help me be successful

in obtaining my food stores is a good thing.

I want as much of the meat.

Gonna lop off his tail down here.

I'm a single person.

That's a nice-size little fishy steak.

Look at that.

This is actually a trout, related to a trout,

but it's got pink meat like a salmon.

You know, I had about 500 pounds of food that went bad.

And that's of all varieties.

You know, it may not seem like a lot, but it is.

Looking at it, "Oh, it's only two fish."

Well, it's not just two fish.

This is the same as going and getting,

down south, maybe a week's supply of protein for somebody.

And I did it in a couple of hours.

This is a grand total of six meals.

Every day I wake up and my brain just says,

"What the heck can I learn today?"

I learnt that I could put six meals up,

visit with a friend,

learn about my fishing hole.

What a great day.

All righty. Now to add to my little pile.

Boom.

Adding a little sushi to the winter food.

ERIK: I couldn't be luckier.

I wake up every day and my wife and I are self-employed, and we do our own thing,

and we just have a good time running Talarik Creek Lodge.

Just reading the water, it looks really good right in here.

NARRATOR: Violent river rapids have forced Erik and Martha

to change course in their search for a new grayling hole.

Finding its location is critical

for their subsistence and incoming clients.

Let's drift down from here.

The grayling fishery here in Alaska, as a whole, is strong.

It's a native fish. They're found in almost all fresh waters here in Alaska,

and they're just a really vibrant, hard-fighting, sport fish.

Both to catch and eat for supper.

So we're just up here exploring a new fishing ground,

few days in between fishing clients,

and I've learned it makes it a lot more fun and exciting

to fish different waters every day.

We always like to experiment, get out there,

and check out some new fisheries.

Today's just a fun day for Martha and I to go out and do a little fishin',

but at the same time, we're scouting out a new area.

Martha, despite being the sweetest nice girl ever, is extremely competitive.

And she loves to fish.

All right, I'll tell you what, Martha?

Whoever catches the biggest fish doesn't have to clean 'em.

MARTHA: Sounds good.

ERIK: Are you gonna catch the biggest? MARTHA: I'm gonna try.

Oh, but I thought you were super fisher woman,

down from Alaska Peninsula, Iliamna.

Always catch the biggest fish.

This is what I did as a child, I'd come out on the...

Oh, yeah! (LAUGHS)

-I got a fish. -You got one?

Nice-sized grayling. Look it!

Okay, so you got the first.

Bam! I got one too.

Yours looks small.

ERIK: Mine doesn't look small to me.

Let's have this one for dinner with the other one.

Aw, shoot. I think Martha's is bigger.

You wanna measure fish?

ERIK: Oh, holy moly!

Looks like you're cleanin' fish. Look at this beast.

You clean the fish, I cook the fish.

That's the way that it goes.

ERIK: This is a really beautiful Arctic grayling here.

They call it the sailfish of the north.

It has this really neat sail on the top.

Just protect his gills and hold his body there,

and this is a pretty nice one.

We're gonna go ahead and release this one,

give him a kiss and hopefully this fish will still be here next week

for a client of mine to catch.

We're gonna go ahead and call this a successful trip,

and we know where to bring our clients in the future.

And right now, we're gonna go and find some dry firewood

and make a little campfire and eat some grayling supper.

Super easy to make a shore lunch or dinner on the river.

All you need is a bunch of dry wood, a pan,

little bit of butter, and fish.

The bark of the birch tree is the best fire-starter that exists in nature.

So I don't know what kind of wood we're gonna round up here,

but whatever it is, we get it going

with some of this birch bark as an accelerant.

-Look at that. -Nice.

That's probably good enough for now.

That should make a good bed of coals.

I'm gonna clean those fish since you're the big winner.

Nice white meat fish.

Mix it up with some onions that Martha has along ready to go,

and it's gonna make for a delicious meal.

MARTHA: It's a good spot.

Definitely gonna bring clients next week up there,

-make a day of it. They'll love it. -Oh, yeah.

Aw, that was good.

MARTHA: So today Erik and I went out to have a fun day out on the river,

and also look for a good spot for our clients to fish grayling.

We managed to find a really great grayling hole.

We caught us a bunch of grayling.

Now we're nice and full, so we're gonna head home.

It was a beautiful day out on the river.

Just another great day in Iliamna.

CHIP: Food is the centre of a lot of things we do.

Food is the reason why we hunt,

it's the reason why we gather, it's the reason why we fish.

AGNES: Oh, awesome.

So how do you work this?

CHIP: It's, uh, just a board for a lock.

Just pull it out, unlock it.

Look, it flips all the way up so you don't hurt yourself.

-It'll fold all the way back. -(LAUGHS) Cool.

If you wanna get down in there,

we can hand you all these buckets and you guys can stack 'em proper.

And that'll be good for your seal oil in the spring, and the eggs.

It'll be good for birds to keep 'em cool,

it'll be good for greens and for berries.

Chip and Qutan was real busy around camp.

They made us a sigloak, which is a cold storage.

That turned out pretty good. I'm real happy for that.

Now he won't have to worry about my berries and greens going sour.

CHIP: Should we have these bellies for dinner?

-All the ones up to here are salt. -CHIP: Okay.

All right, then I'm gonna put these all in the same rack.

-That would be perfect. -Yes, it would.

AGNES: Nice, yeah? CHIP: Yeah, ain't it?

-This'll do just fine, huh? -Yeah.

This will do just fine.

I really like it.

CHIP: I like revitalising this camp quite a bit.

It's been a lot of fun.

This is our backyard. This is our home.

It's where we live, and we know where the food comes from.

And not only that, it's the chase that is involved.

And for my kids, it's culture.

In their background, they can see the things

that their grandparents have done.

Maybe materials have changed, but the food hasn't.

The animals haven't and the land hasn't.

So I think folks here are pretty well intact,

and they're pretty well grounded in what's going on.

And, um, I like that.

I like knowing where my food's from.

For now, we've got enough to keep all the meats stored really well,

and all the greens, and all the berries.

We'll get 'em to Noorvik,

I think, in better shape than we have in a couple years.

It's very important, when we're trying to live the subsistence lifestyle,

because not only we're out here to get the food and preserve it,

we also want to store it and make sure it's stored properly,

so when we bring it back home and eat it this winter,

it'll still taste as good.

If you go through all this tremendous effort

to get all this equipment, to do all this work, and you get all this food,

if you don't take care of it and preserve it, there's no point to it.

So it's just a continuation of what it is we're about.

So we'll let these smoke and we'll let the berries chill

and we'll go eat our dinner, huh? Call it a night.

Pretty happy with the way that all ended up.

My wife's pretty happy, too.

AGNES: A good day. CHIP: Oh, what a good day.