Original subtitles

[Chip] I'm going to hook up

this battery and make sure it's got continuity.

Then I'm gonna push this baby down the hill.

It's time to throw the boat in the water

and, uh, proceed down to these islands

and have a look here in the Kiwalik

and see if we can find us some seagull eggs.

I don't see a bird, I don't, uh, hear a bird.

The birds are real quiet, they must be on their nests.

[narrator] For the Hailstones, stockpiling various resources

at their summer grounds in Kiwalik

is critical for their survival.

This time of year, the family turns its attention

to gathering eggs along the river.

The harvest is a valued native tradition,

and provides them with a rich food source

and delicacy for the coming months.

[Chip] Okay, you're ready? Forward, one, two, three, go.

One, two, three, go.

Go.

[Agnes] I don't know how slowly it's gonna go,

but it's turning the boat.

[Chip] Okay, hurry, one, two, three, go.

[Agnes] Yay!

No!

[theme music playing]

[Agnes] Yay!

No!

-[Chip] I'm fine. -You freaked me, Mom.

[Agnes] I'm sorry.

We are afloat.

-Life jackets, gasoline. -[Agnes] Whoo!

[Chip] All right, this battery's dead, so, since it's dead,

we're gonna just paddle over.

We're gonna paddle over to this island right here.

We're gonna do about a six or seven mile circuit.

And go round it, and we'll, uh, get the eggs and carry them over here.

And then we'll go over there, go get the eggs

and carry them back here.

-Whoo. -[laughs] Holy shit!

Are you okay?

-Ting. -That was not me.

-Tripped over the front... -[laughing]

Are you all right, man? Your leg is hurting?

Ah, no.

[seagulls cawing]

[Chip] Whoo!

[Agnes] The birds are coming, everybody.

The Hailstones crossed the river!

They know we're coming.

Um, I always put grass on the bottom like a nest

so that the eggs don't break while we carry them.

[Chip] We'll walk around the end of the creek over here, huh?

We'll spread out in the island and we'll get eggs until they're heavy,

and then we can put them on the side and I'll pick them up tomorrow, okay?

All righty then.

[Chip] If you all see the nest, you just go get them eggs.

[Agnes] Whoo! All the way to the end, right there.

Where we wanna be is on the other side over here.

Just right there.

Yeah, I could throw you across, but how would you get back?

We have to wait for the tide to go back down again.

Hey, at least we didn't have to walk far to find out.

What if we put a couple hours into it, huh?

Are you guys looking for muscle?

There could be mammoth,

this river's just washed these banks thawed.

There's wood.

You almost stepped on it.

-Wow! -[all exclaim]

[Chip] It's a beluga tip.

There's a face back here, see the eyes? Like a wolf.

And, look, you can see the nose and the head.

[Chip] This thing here has probably got a hole in it right here.

See where the mud... Look, where the mud is dimpled.

-[chuckles] -They would have a cord there.

[Agnes] So hard to just walk away from a place

you think there's more.

They would've used a string to hold this in place.

They would've shafted the beluga,

they would've pulled this out, this would have stayed inside,

then the hunter would have put another one on his pole.

And shafted him again like reloading a rifle.

[Ting] This is like literally the coolest thing I have ever found ever.

The awesomest thing I've ever found.

You need to put some, uh, glue on it.

-Elmer's glue. -Yeah. Elmer's glue.

That'll seal it and it's also something that can be washed off.

Then I could just have it forever.

-Yeah, you can, it's yours. -[whistles]

It's your heritage, anyway. You're from this place.

Yeah.

[Agnes] Well, no bird eggs, but we sure could find some cool stuffs.

Keep your eyes open, girls.

[Andy] There's lots of moments when I know I could have had a different life,

but do I want to live that way? I don't think so.

You know, ever since I had kind of a close call, a break up,

it's been a go, go, go summer, I've got one more big project to do

and that's build a yurt and, uh,

this yurt it is gonna end up being a workshop for me.

Yurts were built in Mongolia,

and it's a, it's a travelling home.

[drilling]

It'll be the first time in 10 or 15 years that I've actually had

a place to put all my tools.

To build a shop the same size would probably take me

over a year to go out, cut the trees, drag 'em in.

Tremendous amount of labour, milling them up.

When you're by yourself, that gets real old,

so, uh, the yurt was a quick way to get a shop up this summer.

So that I have a good place to work, to finish my house.

[narrator] Andy Bassich spends the short Alaskan summer

maintaining camp for his survival along the Yukon river.

He's constructing a new yurt workshop for crucial builds.

But he only has a short window to complete the project

before winter season arrives.

And he's enlisted a young apprentice

to help with the demanding labour.

Let's lay this piece here, Nikolai, out here,

this'll be the last one, we'll let this dry up a little bit.

So Nikolai is from Munich, Germany, and he's here for about six weeks

to just kind of learn the lifestyle in particular,

I wanted him here to give me a hand with this yurt.

[sawing]

We'll go right here,

I'm gonna centre this up right on that seam.

Keep going.

Last year, Nikolai, his older brother, and his mother

camped out here for two days.

Uh, Nikolai was really enthralled with being here.

When he got home, he told his mom he wanted to come back here

and they contacted me, uh, and just mentioned that he might wanna come

and asked me if I wouldn't mind having a younger minor here to work with me.

See this mark right here?

He's never had any building experience before but, uh,

he asks a lot of questions, and he's a pretty quick study.

There you go.

And that's another kind of guy I don't mind working with.

[Nikolai] So, my name is, uh, Nikolai Beckmann.

I'm 15 years old.

I'm just gonna be learning about this lifestyle.

I really wanted to see what it was like, uh, living out here.

I was definitely aware of the fact that Andy was gonna put me to work.

I wasn't expecting this much physical labour.

-That's not good. -[Andy] You okay?

[Nikolai] Yeah. Fine.

But I think it's a good change.

It's amazing how much work it is to live out here.

But I can definitely imagine

doing this someday.

[thunder rumbling]

[Andy] I think we're gonna get wet.

[rain falling]

Whoa!

That's what I was hoping wasn't gonna happen.

[wind whooshing]

Nikolai, why don't you go ahead and cover up that plywood there.

I think this is gonna come in pretty hard for a little bit.

Rain is rain,

and unless it's coming down in buckets, I don't mind working in it but, uh...

rain and wind is a different story

and when it's pouring buckets, it's time to just take a break.

[Glenn] No matter what you do, there'll be setbacks along the way.

Don't let it get you down.

There's nothing like going to climb a mountain on a summer day.

Get up there.

The fresh air, the breeze, the blue sky.

There's a place where I have a stone blind I built many years ago.

And that blind can conceal me when I'm watching

-for game up there, hunting. -[rifle cocking]

But often times when I'm up there hunting later in the season,

the rocks that I've built the blind out of are all buried in snow,

the ground's frozen.

And if I wanna build that blind up better or repair it, this is the time to do it.

Take my shotgun with me, got buckshot here.

If I have any problems with a grizzly,

I wanna have a way to defend myself.

Look at this.

It's a pretty flower, but it's deadly poisonous.

This is Monkshood, it's toxic enough to kill you.

If you're gonna pick wild edible plants out here,

you gotta know your plant. Something like that,

if you ate it, it could actually kill you.

[buzzing]

It's one of the disadvantages being out here in the summertime.

Bugs are coming out.

It's that time of year,

these bugs get really bad.

I gotta cover up, I gotta protect myself. Getting all bit up.

[buzzing]

This is a bug shirt I sewed out of a bed sheet.

It's a really high thread count Egyptian cotton.

It's the lightest fabric I found that was tight enough weave

to keep the bugs from biting through it.

People don't understand mosquitoes until they've been up here in the Brooks Range.

They can be hazardous.

I'm gonna cut off and head up the mountain.

It's several miles up there to the stone blind.

[Sue] I don't do things halfway, it's just not my nature.

I'm not afraid of the hard work.

But you gotta have time to dedicate to do it.

Today, what I think I wanna do,

I'm gonna take Little Red, cross the river,

there's a nice little hole

and, uh, just toss the pole in, see what kind of fish pop out.

Gonna put my stuff together,

and, uh, if I get enough fish, I'd like to maybe even

cook myself supper out there and enjoy the moment.

[narrator] In Kavik, Sue Aikens spends the summer months

servicing clients who are passing through the tundra.

But a rare let up in her workload

allows her to head out in the Argo and harvest fish.

A vital food source for the winter ahead.

Got my tiny little tackle box,

got a couple of poles there, my little guys.

And I'm gonna bring one bigger pole.

Just in case.

Time to get some fishing done.

In the Kavik River, you've got two kinds of fish.

You've got the grayling and the char.

And you're really too early for a char run,

this is not that time of year yet.

The grayling live here year round.

We all say as Alaskans,

that from the minute that sun comes up, you're working

because you're waiting for it to go back down and winter to roll in.

And it's true, we do get consumed by the complexity of our ecosystem.

I don't care where you live in Alaska,

we're all proud that we're badass enough to handle it.

All righty, just kind of taking a look at the water,

where you see it's really kind of flat and rolling, generally deeper.

Where you see all the ripples,

it's crawling over rocks, it's not as deep.

It gets a pretty tangly, braided mess over here,

so I wanna kind of go kitty corner, head this way,

it looks like I see some nice, flat water over here.

I'm gonna get in here.

Scoodle across hopefully, successfully.

And then bear upstream again.

Little Red is 2,400 pounds,

so it's got a little bit of weight to it but it's not designed to float.

It'll go through about 37, 38 inches of water.

But it's gonna sink like a stone, given half a chance.

[engine starts]

Whoa. Whoa, whoa, whoa.

Shit.

Come on, baby.

[engine squealing]

It was squealing, so I had to downshift.

All righty.

Well, that was a pretty good crossing.

You know, definitely I'm glad I, I picked that angle.

Right over here, just a little ways, maybe half a mile or so,

I see a pretty good little flat spot, deep spot.

I think it might be a good hole,

so, that's what I'm gonna shoot for.

Just cast it in, see what happens.

I eat a lot of red meat,

but it's nice to throw the dice

and get something different in your diet every so often.

Oh, shit!

-Come on. -[hook reeling]

Come on.

[screams]

Come on, dummy. Come on, dummy.

Oh, my God, he's a big one.

Come on, come on.

Man, I don't know if I can get this dude up without losing him,

I didn't bring anything else.

Come on, come on, you don't wanna fight me too hard.

Oh, you cunt!

[exclaims] Damn it.

I casted in first cast,

got a beauty on, I mean a big one.

But I couldn't keep him on, he spit it out, the end.

That would've been a meal or two on that one.

That little fish is like, "Give it up, Sue.

"Just freaking give it up."

Nope, the fishy say otherwise.

Damn, you little prick!

See, that's the trouble with fishing, is it's an addiction like anything.

Just one more cast, baby, that's it, and I'm giving it up, I'll go leave.

[hook reeling]

I'm leaving, last chance to get in the frying pan. Until the next time.

I'm just gonna go a little further up, stop, fish,

little further up, stop, fish.

When you're looking for holes, that's what you're gonna do.

[Andy] You kind of have to second guess

what Mother Nature's gonna throw at you every year,

and there's so much life out here, it's all tiny.

Let's go set this door frame.

Stick up some walls.

Yesterday, we got rained out for a couple of hours during the middle of the day.

Uh, really slowed our progress,

but we still managed to get the installation down

and the finished floor down.

Come to me.

This is very important on doors to make sure

they're level and they're plumb.

Otherwise, doors don't hang right, don't swing right.

Perfect.

Perfect. Now, hold it on the inside here, where it's a nice level.

Okay! Good job.

What we're doing is, uh, this scaffolding was built for another project

and it's too tall for what we're doing with this project,

so we're just gonna shorten it up a little bit, and hopefully...

I get it short enough that it's gonna work.

Right there, that's good.

Let's move this a little closer.

-There you go. -[drilling]

Ready.

Okay. There's our centre.

[Nikolai] So, we're building the, uh, ramp,

so it can support the weight of the ring. See that we get it up there.

So, this is probably gonna be

about the most important part of this whole structure.

I'm used to working alone all the time,

but there are a lot of jobs where it really is nice

to have a second set of hands.

There you go.

Just push it up.

One, two, three!

Okay, right there. Go ahead and get your post, I'll hold it here.

[Nikolai] I've never actually done much building.

Only, like, small things at home, like putting up a fence or something.

It's kinda fun. I like it.

I'd like to be doing more of this in the near future,

-maybe at home somewhere. -[Andy] Good.

The latticework is the next thing we wanna put into place.

Summer's waning, and this project needs to be done

before the snow flies and it gets too cold.

You're gonna be the lord of the ring,

and then I'm gonna hand up the rafters.

Each one of these rafters goes into a notch.

Whoo-hoo! Let me see what it looks like up there.

Oh, this'll be a good moose hunting from up here.

So, we've got a structure. Now, all we gotta do is cover it.

We managed to get the base rim down,

build a big scaffolding.

We got the ring up, and then, uh, probably the most challenging thing of the day

was trying to get that latticework up,

but we managed to get that stood up and spread it out.

I think it's, uh, beer-thirty for me.

It's, uh, lemonade-thirty for you.

[Andy laughs]

So, basically, in two days' time, we got, uh, the deck down,

the flooring down, and the main framework for the yurt down.

Good job, man. It's good to see this thing up.

[Chip] It's just spring turning into summer,

and that's kinda the way we like it.

We know it's officially spring when the birds show up.

Everybody sit down.

Can you get a life jacket on?

What we're doing today is gonna go egg-hunting.

[engine starts]

You ready?

We call it treasure-hunting sometimes,

'cause you're out looking around for birds' nests,

or you're out looking around for mammoth,

or you're out looking around for bones.

But you're not looking specifically for any one thing,

you keep your eyes open for everything.

[birds squawking]

[Agnes] Okay, we'll see you girls later.

Usually, you can see the birds sitting on their nests,

like you can see one way over there,

and they sit and lay eggs around little islands

and we just go get some fresh eggs.

Wow, a goose nest?

Both of them.

Whoo!

Oh, look, the birds are diving at you!

Watch out! Look, the bird is diving at you!

[birds chirping hysterically]

[Agnes] Oh, it sinks. They both sink.

That means they're good.

Two fresh eggs.

Big eggs.

This is almost like Easter. This is our Easter egg-hunt.

[Agnes] Oh!

They usually, um, don't fly until you get closer.

That's a sure sign of nesting birds.

-[both] Oh, Puppy! -No shortcuts, Puppy!

[Mary] I got nine goose eggs.

[Agnes] Getting kind of exciting. The girls love to run around.

-Ah! -[Agnes] They love the free, open spaces,

and they love all these little mazes to run through.

So it's a good exercise.

Gives them a chance to see what washed down from up river

after the whole winter and the ice break-up that floods this whole area.

But we're just gonna keep walking.

We have miles more to walk, and, uh, hopefully buckets of eggs to pick still.

[Glenn] 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.

[buzzing]

[narrator] Glenn is hiking the Brooks Range

to find and repair a blind that he built years ago.

The stone blind will allow him to scout and hunt game.

But with limited resources in the region,

his survival depends on his knowledge of the landscape.

[Glenn] It's really critical to take advantage

of the opportunities as they come up.

And you can't plan it by calendar out here.

You just gotta look around at what's happening.

Hey, look at the blueberries! They're getting ripe.

Blueberries are the first wild fruit-crop out here each summer.

These are one of the most nutritious plant foods around right now.

I gotta take advantage of it.

I'll pick some of these berries to eat later up on the mountain.

I haven't had blueberries since last summer. It's always a big deal.

Blueberries are one of the most important plant foods up here.

Look at this, I got a whole pan full of berries.

I'll take those up the mountain with me and eat them later.

I gotta go get some water here because up on the mountain,

it can be real hard to find water.

It's hot out here,

it's dry, and I'm thirsty.

This creek bed's all dried up.

It's been really dry for a long time.

It hasn't rained. It's hard to find water.

If I don't have water, I can't last long.

But I can hear some up here.

There's water over here!

This is good.

That's not so good.

This could be a problem.

[groans] That's not good.

It's a really dirty stream. Look it. It's just full of silt.

Can't drink that, it's too dirty.

I'm gonna have to keep looking.

You can go a long time without food, but you can't last long without water.

Not out here in the summertime, that's for sure.

I'm gonna keep going this way,

see if I can find another stream that's cleaner to drink,

because higher up on the mountain, it might be really hard to find water.

I'm already thirsty, I don't wanna start up this steep mountain

without getting something to drink.

Up here, there's a creek that flows down out of the mountains.

I'm hoping this one's running clear enough

that I can get some water to drink out of it.

I have to find water somewhere.

A lot of times I'm thirsty out here. But it just goes with the territory.

You gotta become inured to that kind of hardship.

You deal with it every day.

Out here, sometimes, it's buggy. You get a lot of bug bites.

Sometimes it's dry, you get thirsty.

Sometimes you don't have food to eat, you get hungry.

You just gotta deal with it.

If you can't deal with it, you don't belong here.

[stream water gushing]

I can hear the creek now, it's not much further.

But I can't see it yet. I don't know how clean it is.

There! There's the creek right there.

Let me go check it out. Hopefully, I can drink from this one.

Hey, look at that, it's clear.

This is good, I got water.

[sighs] I'm thirsty.

Oh.

It's one of the necessities of life.

You can't go on without water. Sometimes, it's hard to find though.

Very refreshing.

I had plenty of water to drink,

time to go climb a mountain.

[Andy] We live out here to live a certain lifestyle,

to be connected to the land, to get the resources from the land.

That's what's important to me.

This is another one of those great things in the instructions,

"Install installation." [laughs]

No details. Just install it.

[narrator] Andy and his apprentice, Nikolai,

are building a yurt workshop,

a structure that will help Andy's survival along the Yukon river.

Insulating this structure will allow it to function in freezing conditions.

But with temperatures already dropping,

time is of the essence.

[Andy] We're gonna try and get our big, heavy tarp over the whole top of this.

That's gonna be pretty challenging for us,

'cause that thing weighs a couple hundred pounds.

[chainsaw whirring]

I think one of the saddest things for me is seeing the way

the world's tightening up,

and how hard it is for young people to get out and try this lifestyle.

You know, it's a whole different generation, too.

We didn't have Internet, and we spent our youth building skills.

Let's see if you can just come up with it.

-Right... -[both grunt]

[Andy] But one of the things that I really am hoping for

is that just a small percentage of young people

come out and just try this lifestyle.

That's it. Good.

[Andy] It's a great way to start your life when you're young.

And it's always something you can fall back on

once you learn some of the basic skills.

It takes a lot of drive. It takes a lot of planning.

It takes a lot of hard, back-breaking work.

It's much harder to work and get a job done

if you don't know what you're doing.

Once you know what you're doing, even a hard job gets to be much easier.

But I think, you know, if Nikolai chooses, it may not be Alaska,

you know, who knows where he'll end up.

He might be in Africa, building a yurt sometime.

But at least he's gonna have some of the foundational skills

when he leaves here to understand that that's an option.

This lifestyle isn't for everyone, but it sure is for me.

And, uh, maybe one day, it will be for him.

And that'd be great if...

To know that an experience here was maybe a catalyst

for someone reaching a dream.

That's what I like to see when people come here.

Oh, man. My knuckles are about ready to fall off.

-Yeah! -[Andy laughs]

[Andy] Well, that was a little bit of a struggle, but hey, we got it.

[Andy grunts]

Finally, something light.

[Andy] This is the top to our, uh, yurt.

This is the final thing for the roof, to put on, to get us weathered in.

Doubles as a skylight to let light in all the way around in the yurt.

Okay, I'm gonna go up on the ring...

Pull that.

You help it a little bit.

Think I'm good.

I'm feeling like all the hard, physical work right now is done.

I don't think I could've gotten this tarp up by myself.

Maybe in a day or two days I might've been able to,

but, man, that was a struggle.

So, it was really nice to have a second set of hands.

And a good, strong set of hands, too,

a strong back, 'cause there is nothing easy about getting this top on.

Looks like I got weathered in just in time, the rain's starting.

And I got a hell of an umbrella right here.

I'm gonna go drink a beer.

It's a good day!

[Glenn] Whatever you do in life,

my advice is learn as much as you can about it.

Starting to get up a little higher here.

Up above the trees. There's a little breeze.

Mosquitoes should be a little bit better up here.

Getting closer.

The stone blind's up this way on the mountain,

about a mile and a half from here.

It's been years since I was up here.

I'm really curious what it looks like now.

Almost a decade ago, I built this,

and I haven't been back in years.

There it is! I can see some of the rocks I stood up up here.

Yes, this is the spot.

Right here!

This is where I built my rock wall.

Oh, it looks like a lot of it has fallen down.

Think about it. I stood that rock up ten years ago.

And somewhere over the years, it fell down,

broke in half.

This is just a great vantage point up here.

Look at the territory I can survey from up here.

I can see for miles and miles.

Sheep have a trail. Comes from those orange rocks

through this pass and up this side,

and then on to these mountains over here.

Wait up on top like this, when the wind comes up

there's no shelter. And any animals walking around on this whole hillside,

they can see me right here.

But with this stone wall here,

I can conceal myself and I can protect myself from the wind.

It's been a long day getting up here,

I'm gonna set up my tent, get some sleep.

Get up tomorrow, and reconstruct this wall

and build it even better than it was the first time.

I'll sleep with my shotgun just in case I have any visitors during the night.

You never know.

There are grizzly bears up in these mountains.

[Sue] You can't live someplace this cool,

and not enjoy the scenery every once in a while.

It can't all be work.

I think there's a good-size fish mulling around in there.

I keep kind of seeing something.

[narrator] Isolated in the tundra,

and 500 miles from the nearest grocery store,

Sue Aikens must take advantage of any opportunity

to add to her food supply.

She's fishing in the Kavik river for grayling,

to help her survive the coming winter.

And she must do so before the area freezes

and the resource is no longer available.

There he is. There's two of them!

There was one big one here,

and another one jumped right here.

Come on, momma needs a new pair of shoes.

Take the bait.

Variety is the spice of life,

but it's not gonna jump into my frying pan on its own,

I gotta go out and get it.

These little ripples, that's the fish surfacing.

He is right there. Dammit!

Come on, baby. You see it. You see it. You want it.

Right there, right there. Oh!

He followed it almost all the way in.

There he is.

They're right here. And he's sniffing my bait,

he's following it, but he won't take it.

Dammit.

I'm gonna get out of here 'cause they're just not taking what I'm offering.

Fishing is all about not giving up.

Just keep trying, keep trying, keep trying.

I'm gonna scoot on up, not sure how far

but when I see another area that looks promising,

I'll stop and toss the pole in a little bit.

Oh! There he is!

Come on, baby. Come on, baby. Wear yourself out.

Wear yourself out.

You don't have it in your mouth very good.

Oh, no, no, no. Not that way, not that way.

[singing] ♪ We want to... ♪

...get you up on the shore. Yay!

[laughs]

Look at that monster. Whoo!

Beautiful grayling.

Yay, Susie!

I'm gonna take my gear, put it in the Argo.

I've got that one humdinger,

and, um, it's the end of the day.

I've had a long day on the river.

See if I can't get some scrap wood

and just cook him up right here,

and think about the day I've had.

I don't wanna char the fish to death.

But you do want some heat going at it.

This is really a lot of what I'm here for.

I work my little booty off to enjoy where I'm at.

Like anybody else,

you gotta work your 50 to get your two-weeks' vacation.

This is what it's about.

I'm getting ready to do the job that I'm supposed to do,

and that's the business of Kavik.

But the life of Kavik is important too.

[Andy] And there was something, some deep drive inside of me

that, um, put a calling to me to come out here and live here.

[Nikolai] It's now starting to look like a yurt.

[Andy] Hanging these goes pretty quickly, I would think,

but a foam board insulation will probably be pretty labour-intensive.

[Nikolai speaking]

Just drape it over your head. Straight over your head.

Let me get the bottom end.

[Andy] Living this lifestyle out here, there's the yin and the yang.

I love, you know, spending time alone out in the bush,

but too much alone time out in the bush is bad for anybody.

You gotta be around people...

You're slowing down. What's happening, young buck?

[Nikolai] I'm still worn out from yesterday.

You gonna let a 60-year-old man

-out-work you today? -[Nikolai laughs]

[Andy] That's the way to do it!

Enjoying working with Nikolai, he's a good worker.

He's kind of that real laid-back kind of guy,

and that complements my type A, "Go, go, go" thing.

There you go. Got the outer skin on it.

So it's gonna be really tight.

All right! Let's try and get the next one zipped up.

-[zipping] -What's wrong?

I'm just trying to think where I wanna put it.

Support it. Try and get it into this one.

[Nikolai] Yeah, I have to say I was surprisingly exhausted

after some of the days of this yurt build.

Well, you gotta think of it this way, though.

I've seen some people come out here that were really athletic,

but when it came to doing this kind of stuff,

climbing up, down ladders...

So, you know, a lot of it is just what you're used to.

Yee-haw!

Let's put the heart of the shop in there.

You know what the heart of a shop is?

-No. -Table-saw.

Yee-haw.

Now, there's only one problem with this workshop right now.

It's way too damn clean.

You get to make the first cut in the new shop.

What am I cutting?

You just get to cut a board 'cause it's a ceremonial cut.

All right. Go for it, buddy!

[machine buzzing]

-[machine stops] -Woo-hoo! We got sawdust!

For a couple of guys who never put a yurt together,

and one guy that has almost no experience in building,

I feel like we did a pretty darn good job.

So, I'm proud of him and I'm proud that I was able to do this with him.

All right. Let's get out of here.

It's beer-thirty!

I know so much more than when I got here.

I know how to do so much more than when I got here.

I learnt more than I would in a whole school year.

Lemonade-thirty...

Yeah, you get a root beer tonight.

[chuckles] If I'm lucky.

[Andy] I think Nikolai is gonna walk away from here

with a different view on life in the bush.

Everybody that comes out here thinks it's all about hunting and fishing,

and surviving on the land.

And that's a part of it.

But there's a lot more to it,

and that's planning, perseverance, problem-solving.

I think he saw that side of it, and I think he'll do well in life

no matter where he goes.

[Andy] Good job, man.

-You did a good job on this. -Yeah, it was fun.

[Chip] Kiwalik is boomin'. It's boomin' with the Hailstones here.

It's just a wonderful place to be.

Best bet is to go over here

and then sweep that way.

She's gonna be in trouble here soon.

-Ah, Putin! -You're gonna lose a boot, dear!

-Wow, you are so lucky! -Don't do that!

Lots of kids leave their boots behind in the middle!

Lucky you didn't fall in there and get stuck!

So, right here! Right here is a goose nest.

Oh, look at that! Three of them. Beautiful!

Oh, I see feathers.

[laughs] Oh, wow!

You can tell which ones are fresh, yeah? The white ones.

Awesome.

[Chip] I got three seagull eggs. You usually get them in clutches of three.

And I got six geese eggs. You usually get them in clutches of six.

There's a crane nest right there.

Nothing like a renewable, like, really renewable resource.

In three days, there'll be six more eggs.

-Look! One, two, three... -Ooh!

...four, five, six!

[sighs] Yeah!

[Chip] We've got a few eggs put together here.

The girls are over there, spread around.

Not too many birds have laid eggs yet,

so we're kind of ahead of the game.

I'll get a fire, and maybe we can make some eggs and have a snack.

It's good to be with the girls again.

Good to get to kick back with everybody and enjoy some tea,

and just be mellow and walk around,

and see what there is to do out there.

-Oh, yeah. These are done. -Are they done?

Can I have one?

Hot!

Yum! Mine looks perfect!

Wow, these are some fresh eggs!

I'm so glad we decided to cook here before we go home.

Hmm, like devilled eggs if you just add some paprika.

I wouldn't be exactly sure where the birds have been,

and what they've been eating, but being wild,

I'm sure they've been moving on.

They're not like pen-fed ones. There's no GMOs in this stuff.

We put out a little bit of effort, we got a little bit of eggs.

So we got a lot more effort to put out,

and we'll get a lot more eggs.

This is a good start. This is the way it should start.

But, um, still lots to do.

[Glenn] Weather's always changing, seasons are changing,

and on a bigger scale, the whole landscape's changing.

Got a good rest here over the night.

Now, I'm gonna get to work on this stone blind.

It'll serve two functions.

It'll conceal me from game when I'm watching this whole mountain here,

and it'll also provide a wind-break.

So, I'm just gonna go around now, find rocks to work with.

Some of them are pretty big, and they're heavy.

There's a lot of different resources around

if you know what to look for.

You can make use of all sorts of things.

You can make use of just these rocks sitting right here on this mountain.

Just by stacking up some of these flat rocks to make a blind,

that could help me get more meat when I'm out here hunting.

All right, I got a nice little clutch of rocks.

Time to start building this blind.

Just using gravity to my advantage leaning the rocks against each other.

Trying to stack 'em up in such a way that they won't fall over.

Look at those berries.

There's something primal about these mountains. Look at them!

That's what the earth used to look like a long time ago,

before people started changing it.

It's different. You can imagine.

Ten thousand, 20,000, 30,000 years ago,

it basically would've looked like that.

People haven't changed anything here.

There's no highway going down through that valley.

There's no bridge across that river.

There's no power line strung up through here.

This is just raw nature here.

There are not a lot of places left like this.

There. Isn't that a nice stone wall?

I'll have a look around right now.

This is an incredible spot over here.

These rocks are gonna protect me from the wind,

and they're gonna hide me from the animals.

This is beautiful.

I can't wait to get back up here again and use this during hunting season.

What an awesome day.

Had a great hike,

got up on the mountains for the first time in quite a while,

and repaired my stone blind. I like it.