8000 Miles to Alaska: A Journey Along the Longest Border in the World | Free Documentary Nature

[Music] our destination lies somewhere in the frozen sea two islands one belongs to america and one to russia only a few huts inhabited by inuit families who lament to this day that their natural home has been passioned by superpowers the cold war never ended here be it in the mountains of montana the plains of north dakota or along the river niagara we encounter wild nature and the people who look after it in this way we get to rediscover the old america far from the cities we cross the continent over the course of one winter moving always west we go from the atlantic coast in maine to the pacific and then on to the no man's land of the bering strait [Music] it is only rarely worthwhile sailing out from monhagen at this time of year but if you own a boat like fisherman chris and her assistant travers then you don't leave it sitting in the harbor we start our journey from the only village on the island in addition we've chosen the worst weather of the month cold wet and windy and it stinks of old herring which travis uses as bait so everybody has a different opinion yeah we're like other options we use this uh redfish orange ruffy tuna heads a few others the weather is unpredictable here says chris but you have to live with that every day others who grow up here move away to college and never come back chris did it the other way round she came for one summer and stayed why i worked summers at the hotel uh we were taking out when i was 18 and then i fished i didn't start fishing until i graduated from college and my husband and i we thought we'd spend a year out here before we went to grad school and then we just started fishing because it's the only job and i loved it he hated it chris is a happy-go-lucky person who makes us forget the bad weather quickly i offered to clean the windows to make myself useful then we reached the catching grounds and are curious to see what we'll find in the traps that she's holding up sorry the quarry hide away down there when it gets cold chris tells us we only get those that are still crawling around shrimp but they're happy with the first hole yeah we haven't been catching a lot lately so this is pretty good i mean we've only just set them out the season just the trapping only just started then the larger individuals come up the fishermen are not allowed to keep them all females with eggs and juveniles are put back only fully grown lobsters can be kept and it measures so that's good so we get another keeper i'll put it there for travis to ban two rubber bands lenny's placed with the others not such a bad day says chris in this way she does her rounds year in year out [Music] according to the map we're on the easternmost point of america monhegan is the first outpost of new england we're told only 50 people live here the hotel where she once worked is up there on the hill it's only open in summer as she takes me up the hill i ask her what keeps her here i only see a grey island what is that chris sees the idol you stay i don't i mean it's just really like the day i got here i was like wow this is the just the quaintest prettiest nicest place and it was the people too it was just this really fun loving but interesting smart eclectic community [Music] as the day ends the skies promise some improvement and monegan spirited fishermen invite us for beer and prawns ever since there have been fishermen there's been chat at the end of the day chat about the day and about the old days when monaghan was even further away from all everybody worked hard and seemed like everybody paid their bills and they had something to eat and it just didn't worry about everything so much but now there's so much going on it just got every everything's in the turmoil no i told him i said you know you never know if uh there's gonna be any lobsters in the future but there's always gonna be teeth he wanted to be a dentist and he made out quite well this is still the case on the other islands too provided they have as natives there was 300 and something and now right now there's only 14 um inhabited islands it closed the school for a number of years which monhegan has done they has been through a law and closed the school and then reopened but um matennakis had closed the school very recently they're open again because they have they have more than us now they have like four kids we ask every fisherman knows that uh if their engine lets go they better not have all enemies or they're in big trouble yeah so it's uh so people cooperate for all sorts of good reason it's a different america from the one we know from the news it is more pristine relaxed better tempered the post bow delivers goods from mail order bed sheets to the six-pack weekend inhabitants return from the mainland sick people from the doctors even babies have been delivered at sea chris uses the dry afternoon to do some painting she took over the identification color of the boy from a fisherman who emigrated orange can be seen well from a long way off that's why she took the color when it was up for grabs how how american do you feel out here um i would certainly say we feel american uh but we do call um the inshore or poor clyde we call it port clyde america where we feel like we're going to we say we're going to america when we leave to go inshore because you just feel so in your own world out here or disconnected sometimes yeah i mean we know that our ballots don't get insured until you know well after the election's over but i mean i guess if it came down to a popular vote for this contest we'd get counted we would hope but we we don't always know we you know it's kind of we vote before we depart for america chris shows us her place of work at home which she shares with her husband rich it's the internet jobs as accountant and parenting advisor that enabled them to live on the island on the other remote islands i've seen that it is a does make it a potential a possibility rather for other people to work online or to work at jobs that they travel for but they can be in and live in these communities the main thing we wanted to try to do was to come back in more of a position of uh dictating ourselves what we do to be able to uh work as much as we want so last question why don't you work on the same boat we did we've done that and it's better for our marriage that we don't yeah definitely it's it's hard i mean it's hard well also it's hard to work together for 12 hours all day and then come home and like it's your turn to cook dinner it's just hard [Music] the next time the post boat arrives we depart from an eagan on our journey we'll meet more people like chris who choose to go their own way [Music] [Applause] it is a good 12 nautical miles to the mainland the captain knows how important his services are for the island it's we rarely cancel um again because a lot of people count on us especially in the winter time they have doctor's appointments or whatever if it's only three boats a week we try to go almost no matter what yeah but there's there's certainly our limits [Music] he lives on the coast he tells me when he needs something he just goes to the shop but if someone radios him to say that there's no baking soda on manhegan then he'll bring that along on highway number two which leads across the continent we continue our journey first to vermont and then to the niagara falls [Music] the farm where we stop on route doesn't look special at first glance but it's championing a new trend in america the trend back to the smallholding feeding time in the morning calf celina doesn't trust me [Music] either we need to provide mothers others or the bottle has to go into the railings for selena to drink properly they look like deer actually don't they yes you keep them all no no we um keep a couple every year and the rest are sold through uh jersey marketing services in seoul throughout the us yeah so some years it's harder than others to decide who to pick you know farmer stephen is teaching a norwegian fjord horse to plow more and more farmers prefer horses to tractors he says yeah quite definitely among particularly among organic sustainable farmers more and more people are really looking at the workhorse as a real viable option these days to tractor farming when we first started 10 years ago there was nobody but yeah it's growing and uh all across the country yeah yeah real interest it is not some unworthy dropout walking behind the horse quite the opposite the farmer's collective is asserting itself against the u.s agriculture and industry with ecological standards and traditional working methods the operators even built a village with enough space for dozens of families by now it even has an old people's quarter for the senior members it started from wanting to be a farm so an agricultural base and a close village of people who are taking care of that land the house share became a proper business our community meetings are made up of all kinds of issues everything from energy transportation social i think overall uh we've been pretty happy with this very clear responsibility for that who's stewarding that land and how they're taking care of it and how they're paying their bills and how they're making their income from it and if it was uh 50 you know 44 adults all trying to make the decisions for how to run that business it could have been a bit of a mess others see two new products for example cheese and test them on the market vermont the boss tells us has long been in the same class as the alpine countries there's kind of a uh the curd is is uh here let's try it it doesn't taste like it will when it's aged but it's yeah what is it going to be it's going to be an out of a um cheese which is a swiss alpine stuff okay yeah it's rather sweet than cheesy yes one can see and smell in the cheese cellar that professionals are at work here [Music] in the old days there was a two dollar penalty for not dismounting at the bridge [Music] we take a detour to the north because we've read about the town of derby line which lies behind the mountains of vermont on the canadian border apparently the border runs straight through the houses we want to see that there is a five thousand dollar fine for illegal border crossing even if you are just popping to the shops what if i like that bakery better than this one and i'm an american do i get into trouble every day well no you do have to go through customs you do have to report through customs at the port of entry but there's no custom officer so what else then you have to walk down this hill and then and go through the canadian customs which is just actually just down the hill over the river there so i need a half hour to get my the woman is the manager of the local library a house moose is watching over the border which inside even divides cabinets and shelves how often do you cross the border daily uh i have no idea my office is in the united states um the photocopier is in canada the circulation desk is in canada so i must cross the border 50 times a day at least readers are allowed into the building from both sides but only if they go out the same way we have their benefits too being on the border we we get our we buy our heating oil on the united states side where it's cheaper we get our electricity from quebec because the hydro is cheaper so they're trade-offs one extra border crossing for us then to get us out of here legally driving through vineyards we reach new york state and the border region around the niagara river up to the falls [Music] the river behind us cuts ever deeper into the plane the man next to me explains this is the local rescue pilot rudy huffin who for years has been the only one here to have a pilot's license it was more a straight line you see a third of the water by the horseshoe fall goes by the first third so that's where the poles are going back eroding back the most at the fastest one time because here the ice piled up and then it knocked off the water going over the poles so that you caught at a whirlpool that's a whip it's 200 feet if it's very vicious don't go swimming in there it will take you down 200 feet okay i don't and then you never come up again here we do most of the wrapping up of the victims prepare my fly them out peanut is pretty silly to be out here right the ice breaks up the guys in the water i get the coke my stomach doesn't like the maneuvers as much as rudy does so i am glad for a break on terra firma one of the few landing places for rudy's rescue missions though often it's too late this area from the whirlpool pretty much halfway up to the falls nobody's allowed to go in yeah if they catch you here kayaking or swimming there's heavy fines this area is also supervised by the police on both sides on a daily basis because there's no way of survival it's been dry and many people lost their lives in here only one was lucky recently a dramatic suicide attempt which earned rudy a medal and a lot of respect in piloting sir all around the world it got me on national tv it was the 11th of march 2008 and this main jumped over falls we had 45 knot wind right almost 70 kilometers and um there was no way nobody could get to him then the helicopter and i i got him with his sling yeah but he took it off because he didn't want you to live but it took me so sad and so then if the downwards from the rotors i kept pushing on him and pushing and pushing and after 13 minutes of pushing him with the downwash of the helicopter finally got him to shore to the reach of the fire department and then they pull them in [Music] niagara village doesn't fit this image of horror stories at all it's regarded as the most beautiful village in canada [Music] with victorian houses and lots of views onto the great lakes [Music] [Applause] [Music] and of course the famous falls that attract travelers throughout the year [Music] but unfortunately there are also those who are drawn here by a death witch we don't like to talk about it but it's a fact really tells most us who die around the falls are our suicides the ones who go over are the ones who want to go over right it's a dark number but nobody wants to talk about it and mostly we come too late right because it goes so fast but despite that he loves the views just as he did the first time he saw them when he flew over the river and was all struck like a child [Music] with a short break in michigan we set a course for north dakota and thus to america's midwest which lies beyond the great lakes [Music] and towards the continental winters which make any attempted walking impossible [Music] luckily clarence iverson is there the last snowshoe maker in america giving them a good coat all your snowshoes on so am i good you're good you want to go for a little bit of a walk okay now we walk on the snow he says not through it oh we got coyotes wolves uh martin's fishers fox beer the man is his own best product tester if the snowshoe carries him it'll carry anybody for 50 years his small business has held its own against the competition from cheaper countries and against the bureaucrats if you have any any glimp in in your in your papers they it custom takes and holds it you might not get it for two three weeks it's just it's just been crazy and it's getting worse all the time next door julie is knotting the rawhide for the inner shoe on average if i wasn't doing anything else but lacing for the full day i can do 30 pair of these a day two hard-working employees enough old boss iverson's small business is representative of many that are seeking their own way through america's economic crisis in future he doesn't want to obtain the leather from canada anymore but from the central states the transport takes longer but he won't have to pay customs duty that's why we're in this trouble that's a that's our problem we need to build something i got to make something you want you and you pay me i mean that's our jobs are gone you give them away yeah we got to build stuff here in the united states with our own resources we have them [Music] when we've given our best wishes to iverson and his remaining staff we say goodbye to the great lakes but we stay on icy grounds [Music] and a bitterly cold wind too the wind of north dakota [Music] frank kunst wouldn't swap this for anything my early 20s it was exciting to be gone you know and seeing different places working in different areas okay it was always nice to come home yeah like i said i never really planned on coming back here but it just yeah kind of happened that way i like good not being crowded i mean it's not overly crowded i love people i love big cities but i love to be able to get out of them in a day or two what frank loves the most are his ranch and his horses [Applause] it is not just any old herd that he's looking after with his brother and a native american partner these are nokota horses which used to be ridden by chief sitting bull in his tribe when he sheds out uh a blue road will change color with the season so when he starts chatting to get his summer coat now he'll it'll get almost white and then he'll turn a steel black and you'll also notice the feathering on the legs on the northern plains and these horses have to be out there on their own when they have their own land and you get snow cover on the grass and things they need to pass through it and that feathering helps protect their the back of their legs is when they do a lot of pollen especially when the snow has a crust or something they can get raw when i go to stroke them they pull back just out of my reach don't go to them says frank wait till they come to you it's true soon they want to be rubbed preferably on their rump because as soon as the sun shines the winter fur warms them more than is comfortable it feels warm we have an appointment in the saloon of the small town of linton we discovered that not everybody thinks frank's 500 head heard is a good idea relations between farmers and horse ranchers have always been difficult i'm told by brothers frank and leo so the ranchers were first and then the farmers right basically then the farmers came in with when they started giving them the acreage what was it 160 acres you could homestead it and stuff like that and then they started putting in fields and fences and the cowboys would ride across their fields cut their fences you know what i mean okay there wasn't always friendly you know there's a lot of people that you know and i'm not begrudging i mean but there's a lot of ranchers farmers that have problems seeing grass out there consumed by horses it's a you know what they today many acknowledge that frank and leo are conserving a cultural heritage [Applause] the argument about hay has been solved long ago over the cold months frank distributes expirations the ranch is financed by a trust and from donations every so often frank sells a few yearlings to enthusiasts as riding horses smaller than a typical horse but bigger than a pony or simply to people who think nokota horses are as beautiful as frank thinks we're going to back off right now i ask why he as a white rancher decided to rescue the coates from extinction was there any event that made you decide well not many certain events is just probably a lot of different events of just life i guess this is where you kind of let you you know uh you know well hey you know we always had horses yeah i grew up in a family there's 12 kids in there my dad you know he loved horses and and i was like say if you wanted to go somewhere you did it on horseback his parents village is within seeing distance complete with the small church i asked frank what fascinates him about these animals what's so special about these horses the native type we're going to trace them directly back to saint bowl's war and buffalo horses when he surrendered fort buford in 1881 all these horses ended up down in medora but also the type of horses that local ranchers were using at that time were native horses we make progress you know we make very slow progress but but uh you know that's like you know slow progress a friend of mine said you know if you go slow and you make progress slow you don't have to worry about backing up so quickly if you have to we are told by frank we should come and spring when it's all green here but he likes the winter though he can hardly keep up with snow plowing he doesn't only admire the horses but also the dakota indians also known as the sioux tribe as we can see when we reach his house frank and leo introduced their partner butch thunderhawk i'm not sure if he was teasing me but is there something about that this is a horse memorial effigy it was carved by um by a warrior to honor a horse that was killed in battle these horses were very spiritual to those warriors and those horses became part of their life they became part of their family and the warrior societies the blue rhones were the most favorite horse and it has the power of a thunderstorm of lightning that gives that horse to speed the strength the endurance i read accounts where the natives would say if they didn't they be in the cavalry didn't catch us within the first six miles in a chase after that they would be chasing us for days and or this way and that way and we would be riding around and around and around them and their horses would in the end i a city dweller even have a riding lesson so that i can admire the horse from the correct place and understand what motivates frank liu butch thunderhawk and maybe even the dog to carry on the wild beauty of the last herd of nokota horses [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Applause] [Music] as we cross the missouri we put in a minute silence for chief sitting ball who now looks down the river valley for [Music] eternity [Music] we travel through montana the rocky mountain state towards the pacific coast and choose the historic railway route the first that was built straight across the mountains the great northern railway it begins to thaw at least in the valley stations once it was mainly hired workers who traveled here who built railway embankments and bridges and lifting quarters right next to the line today the conductor shows travellers between the cities of seattle and chicago to their window seats so they have a nice view of the heart of montana if the fog permits a view along the way there you go have a wonderful trip it's more than 100 years since the last tunnels were ducked to connect america's center with the pacific ports now they connect urban settlements with national parks such as the glacier park the world natural heritage site even though it's losing its glaciers [Music] [Music] we get out at belton station and count the number of wagons on the next freight train which takes minutes to pass our final count is 114 which is not unusual for these parts [Music] [Applause] the reason we got out was the local hotel which has promised us somewhat remote but rather original rooms especially for train travelers first the manager shows me a disused train carriage here we have our restored great northern caboose okay uh-huh so who spent the night here in the old days this would be the gentleman whose job it was to make sure the lantern was lit at the rear of the train so that in case there was a train coming up behind them um that they would see them okay so they worked and slapped and shifted they worked and slept in shifts that was the desks that they would sit at yeah and hang the lantern off the rear of the caboose i like it i take this one and i start with a night shift [Laughter] the quarters even have a terrace i ask how things were when this was still a boom town it was several hundred people coming going this was a major stop all the engines that traveled west had to stop here to get water you know for steam engines or diesel or supplies as they moved westward i also have a look at a luxury suite a converted locomotive that's the blue room welcome to the gn441 luxury locomotive it's our restored great northern engine i don't believe it i don't buy it fireplace and leather couch and a kitchen full kitchen tried to use as many native furnishings as we could antique barn wood floors okay king-sized bed in the rear bedroom uh-huh full bath okay with a lovely view of the train tracks and the train and the train while you sleep yeah where did you get the locomotive from i believe they found it in wichita kansas in a scrapyard and it's an original great northern locomotive then he takes me to the front where they're driving the that's a nice part of a hotel room i never had that so it almost seems as if the engine could still drive but in reality it was dragged here with great trouble please i ask if the brakes still work and at the same time get an inkling of why enthusiasts hearts beat faster [Music] the old sleeping quarters for hundreds of rail workers are today the hotel headquarters the railway also brings winter sports enthusiasts here even houses have been transported on these restaurants what's the story of that photograph very similar it's actually a dorm that was built um for the east glacier lodge by the great northern railway so it was done by the same contractors in kalispell and then shipped via rail over to east glacier yeah it was actually the first building i stayed in when i came out here when i used to work for that company how problematic is winter here for the railway depends on the winter um it can be more problematic some winters than others this winter was a great winter for us we actually had two great derailments the rail lines they work very hard derailments and avalanches and different uh difficulties associated with running the rail lines our camera team gets strapped in again in a helicopter this time we're hanging out of the doors it's freezing cold but enlarges our field of view downwards we want to reach the summit to find the snow ghosts these are tree tops looming out of the mountain covered in snow and embraced by wisps of [Music] cloud [Music] climate change will continue to affect the park whether it'll teach america to look after its natural heritage better is an open question we're back on the highway the states of idaho and washington are waiting for us [Music] as the bridges get narrower names such as salmon or beaver river reminders of the native american tribes who lived here before a different america displaced them [Music] we hit the canadian border again along the branching inland of the phuket sound and we hit the west coast for the first time a whole continent lies behind us [Music] boat building is the local specialty but ancient boats like the one on which jack and matt take us out are even more desirable [Music] hi i'm cops hi i'm matt it's a pleasure thanks for joining us yeah thanks for joining us what do we have to know about the boat um i've owned it for about 13 years and i've and i've restored it and it's just an ongoing project it sounds like it is a real dream boat for you huh it is yes yeah it was known as dreamboat in the year it was built 1928 dreamboat with driver's cab jack also builds his own boats as a teacher in the nearby college workshop matt is one of his students the first owners called her emeline i asked how he found the boat a classmate of mine and i were talking and just decided to buy a boat it had nothing to do with anything we had ever done before and you decided just to have enough money for a boat uh well it it took some time but well i i quit college to buy a boat so what did your parents say you're quitting college for a vote they didn't find out about it until i had already quit because they were overseas at the time i i sent them a postcard on uh i was going to school in virginia on the east coast and we quit school and drove to the west coast and i sent him a postcard from somewhere in the midwest is that a role model well i finished college but i've always wanted to go to and built a few so yeah now i'm studying with jack at boat school and learning how to build the mountain boats we arrive after an hour's journey from the main harbour of the bay fort townsend mariners used to live here today it's students at the boat building school of port hedlock [Applause] the side plank is heated in the steam oven to make it pliable [Music] those who work here aren't earning money they pay to be here old and young working teams many are retraining are you gonna be hands-on too you have to sit in a class and learn about things you gotta learn how to do things it's just wonderful and um to have this thing done and be out on the water over there oh yeah oh yeah is that what you're really gonna do well we this is a sold boat this was um has an owner but yeah we'll launch it and we'll make sure that it doesn't you know sing great did that ever happen i don't think so i think so far our record's pretty good if need be they put a boat together twice we have spent literally days uh measuring and re-measuring the spaces and and the shape of the plank uh we had one unfortunate error that caused us to have to start over again many start from scratch even though when they start in jack's class they may have a whole career behind them as a doctor or salesman the college builds ten boats a year he says do they all find a buyer to learn how to do it you have to build one and so uh but we if we're building 10 boats a year you know within a couple years we're gonna have more boats than we know what to do with so so we have to sell them the clients are loyal and return every so often for example to get new sales the course includes sewing skills the leather cuffs are for protection though it can hurt at times [Applause] this class um oh maybe 379 000. there's been a lot of blood on these sales so every day somebody breaks and it's like go quick get away from the sale you don't want to get blood on the sale this has taken me two days to just do this corner [Music] i'm new to it but it's slow even if you're not [Music] at the end of the day the campus team often go to port townsend dots this is where the sailors who sailed from europe all around south america used to land [Music] max is playing in one of the my bars back home again i wish i had more time and could find what i was looking for well has jack found it actually i've seen a lot of corners of the us why did you end up here the climate is really pretty mild it's a little cooler on average but you don't get the extreme heat you don't get the extreme cold there aren't a lot of bugs working our way along america's west coast we reach alaska our destination is the gold digger town of nomie [Music] the inhabitants call their state the last wilderness and anyone who's been here knows why [Music] near a town called geardrick in a valley that was recently flooded by the sea we have a date with two young grizzly bears their story is tragic the mothers were shot because they were roaming in inhabited areas the cubs have been here since animal keeper aaron is now preparing them for a life in the zoo station was the first command that we taught them for safety for us and the bear so we teach them stations so that they know that they can't get too close to us they are called shaggy and tagoka and are just one year old station good boy come on shaggy we don't wrestle with these guys we don't pet them i've never even touched these guys with all the time that i've worked with them because would you like to no actually i would not um even if they're playing those claws can just snag your skin right off she's a biologist and came to alaska from texas she's also an animal lover my project was to train a camel a camel a camel so i had to train a camel to target to wear a halter and to cush which is to sit down to lay down for a camel and then i've worked with a lot of other carnivores which also helped me working with bears because i do know a little bit of how to react around a carnivore in certain situations so i've worked with hyenas a tiger a very different animals is there any rule that is valid for any animal did you learn something from the camels that you can use here now with the bears i did the camel probably even though it's a camel and it doesn't have teeth like a bear does they can still hurt you but you need to make sure that you're not getting comfortable with it you're not acting like it's a pet that's the number one mistake people make is that they get too comfortable with an animal and it's a wild animal so they could have a bad day and just not want to yeah work with you the two cubs wouldn't survive in the wild the keepers tell me and they'd look for food in the villages and be shot but it isn't always self-defense that's the cause of bears being shot poachers and gun freaks also pursue the animals the ranger knows this too station good boy let's say a bear a big bear is killed uh and someone sees later hey there were cops around so i killed the mother bear you estimate who calls and who doesn't call them there are others also who wouldn't call it right um it's tough to say yeah but we're where the bears go that uh people report and we work very closely with the alaska department of fish and game to ensure that those cubs have homes yeah but why do you have to stay out of politics if it comes to animal protection because it's always turning into ideological fights that's exactly why we don't want to get involved in an ideological fights we our purpose here and our mission here is to take care of animals that [Music] can't take care of themselves with every mile that we move north we are moving deeper into winter soon the settlements aren't connected by roads any longer but by light aircraft and pekka's [Music] runways [Music] the railway was only in use for a few years when a few lumps of gold were found here and gold hunters came from the yukon and klondike to nomi which thus grew to become alaska's most western town [Music] many inuit families live here but also dropouts who have rediscovered an old way of living the earth [Music] a hot soup for the sledge dogs stephanie johnson her day jobs and nurse originally came up here from west virginia because she and her husband wanted to risk something in life again and to venture into the arctic cycle you need a dog sleigh she says he loves mushing so we were i never dreamed i would have all these dogs but i think being in this area especially in the winter you have to have something that you're passionate for especially in the winter time you have to be busy um to survive because it can be very lonely and you're kind of away from your family and and friends and there's no shopping center to go you know get your mind off of the winter blues we however were more attracted to her yeard they decided on the year because a house was too expensive uh this piece of lumber right here it's a treated four by four uh twice the length eight feet long and this costs twenty four dollars now if we weren't here in this area and gnome uh and we were down in anchorage say um this same piece of lumber would cost twelve dollars how much did it cost in west virginia in west virginia yeah it's probably about six bucks yeah of course we want to see the earth from the inside and it appears to be larger than it looks from the outside wow i didn't expect that living room study open plan kitchen bathroom and toilet then a sleeping gallery under the roof people uh say it's our circus tent so when we build it we're gonna put a trapeze in the middle but the fan got in away they paid 45 000 a house would be four times as expensive were there things that you would do differently if you had the chance to do it again you can opt to put real windows in instead of the lexan windows and um we kind of wish we had done that especially for these two and when you leave i mean it's easily said to take it with you would that work practically sure uh the the yurt absolutely um the lattice work is in three pieces it just comes unscrewed shuts back up like an accordion and then in the meantime they continue settling in even though every piece of wood brings the cost up there is no more forest here instead says lance there is the occasional unwelcome visitor it's not going to stay by itself at this point there's another yard over there and another year back there and um they seem to be surviving okay so except when last year they had a bear go through both of their yards so we're looking forward to that so a bear could go through the wall it did not here but the one that's over there yeah just ripped it down and went in and was looking for food since then lance and stephanie have put even more trust in their guard dogs and they hope that that winter was an exception for the animals and their constant search for food we have to pack for the last leg of the journey a plane that can land on the ice will take us from nomi to the diomede islands which lie on either side of the u.s russian border [Music] for a long time we see alaska's coastline underneath then we start flying towards the airstrip between little and big the last outpost of america the destination of our 8 000 mile journey [Music] not far from the only village on the island the pilot makes a textbook landing on pure ice the visibility is unusually good for the area he says shortly afterwards the transport sledgers from the village are here and a handful of passengers for the return flight hey my name is hello i get to know what thanks for having me one of the village speakers to our visit this is little david yeah we had this great view it's wonderful i'm glad i'm glad you guys came here you guys will have a wonderful time we got nice people here in diamond they got a good hospitality they'll find out you'll find very unique people here in diamond [Music] first along the landing strip and down an ice track we reach the small settlement [Applause] about 50 inuit families live here with a view towards the larger sister island surrounded by ice and rocks there's a church an empty army post and a school the curriculum is the same here as everywhere else even though the children have no knowledge of many things the teacher tells us [Music] diamond is so isolated and remote and the kids don't have the same background knowledge that a lot of kids do when they grow up um somewhere that's not the bush in alaska and so they don't have a lot of the same concepts that kids do growing up like there are no trees here um and there's no law enforcement so you can't take a visit to the fire station or the fire house via there's a lot of things that they haven't experienced but there are cinnamon buns and apple puree from the school kitchen even though that's a world away from the children's favorite dish what do you like most if it comes to eating pizza really what about you pizza the regional cuisine has something very different in store at the moment at least that's what robert promises as he takes me out on the ice at this time of year he spends every day out here from dawn till dusk over in russia the next day has started as the international dateline runs here robert is constantly on the watch for polar bears whilst he monitors his fishing lines and hopes that the alaskan crabs bite is there a hook or do they do you just have to wait till he the the crab holds no until the crab gets a hold of it and then it feeds on it so once it feeds on it it don't want to let go as we know when we know when we got a crab is uh when uh we try to pull it up it hangs on yeah the crab hangs onto the rock yeah right now it's got only six holes but i may put more down because i have more crabbing lines his neighbor at the hole next door has just struck lucky these are the long legged specimens that the inuit catch here what do you do if it holds if it holds i hang onto it for a while and just slowly try to move it up be patient he says but my fingers are already freezing i wouldn't survive here you going i don't think so a store to last all winter is piling up at our neighbor's hole nature has been feeding us in this way for centuries robert explains some people use crab pots a man can live on this island without any supplies coming in we have on the island we have salmon bears the fruit on this rocky island on this rocky island we have this uh all kinds of plants wild potatoes wild onions uh subsistence what we hunt is right around the island yeah that's where it is the seals the walls the bear the whale everything passes through the strait between these two islands here and there was no better place you found there's there's some places i like to live but this is home the children that grow up on diameter may never have seen a tree instead they learn early how to survive at 50 degrees below zero a change in the weather puts a spanner into our return flight plans the sun only rarely makes it through and new snow piles up on the runway meanwhile the villagers perform dances for us [Music] dance next to language and food are what connects the inuit people worldwide the drums are made from walrus skin the rhythm follows the animal world the musicians explain that's how the motion started we we couldn't even put a motion watching these things you watch this is right and if if the beach just right through that washing dishes we'll put it we'll put that we'll use that motion we've put up nighttime quarters in the classroom the storm continues the villagers live off their stored food out here that's the oldest person in the village he remembers how it was when the inuit lived on both islands until the russians forced the neighboring islanders to move elsewhere they were really going back and forth yes and they share whatever they got that big island so people over here always get something first this time you know when um belugas or yes and they share do you think it is difficult to keep back then he was in the national guard yes did people stop going from one island to the other or did people go yeah where they are no one sneaked out completely close no you can't just go over there even nowadays yeah they what they see you as soon as you got up that paragraph yeah they're looking down at you yeah 24 hours big we'd rather not find out if he's correct even though the weather has improved but several days pass before the snowplows have cleared their way to the airstrip go time to say goodbye to robert he's back on his day shifts russia in the late 60s and early 70s yeah we used to have uh anutes used to come across and beat us halfway on the ice and we exchanged a few gifts tried the rifles just just to have a good time knowing that we're we're here and they're there but we still think big diamond belongs to us and russia has taken it away from us because our people live on both islands our relations we are we were pretty much related before the iron curtain closed yeah with these words that sound very familiar to a german our adventure ends in no man's land between two islands that history has [Music] forgotten [Music] you

Channel: Free Documentary - Nature

Views: 236,642

Rating: 4.7619553 out of 5

Keywords: Free Documentary, Documentaries, Full documentary, HD documentary, documentary - topic, documentary (tv genre), nature documentary, Free Documentary Nature, Nature, Travel, Travel Documentary, US Canada border, United States, Canada, Niagara River, Niagara Falls, Northern Border, Alaska, Great Plains, Maine, Bering Strait, Bering Sea, Ice Curtain, Cold War, Middle America, 8000 Miles to Alaska, Longest Border in the World, Winter, North America, Montana, North Dakota, Ontario

Id: nvp9X3PC08k

Length: 73min 11sec (4391 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 24 2021