Alaska Twins Live Off the Land 150 Miles From the Nearest Store | National Geographic

this is a very physically demanding way of life there's been times where I've been skiing for eight or ten hours through deep snow and stopping to maintain traps and I'm really tired and I'm hot and I'm sweaty and I know that I'm just one sprained ankle away from literally dying and that's a risk I'm willing to accept when we were little kids we always wanted to go exploring and find out where this river went and people in talent seem like they're more interested in who or what going to school and whose birthday party is coming up and we just want to know what kind of bird is that and where's the best place to find moose we are trying to preserve the old way people used to live on the land because there's not very many people who can do it anymore most people seem to think it's a choice but it was never really a choice for us this was always our home we inherited this trapline in 1975 it's basically a hundred miles of trail bounded by rivers and so we will travel about 15 miles a day from one camp to the next and every quarter of a mile along the trails we have traps set that are targeting whatever furbearer is in that particular area we mostly catch Marten but we also catch Lakes Fox make and occasionally wolves and Wolverine we caught very large numbers of Marten in the 1990s the crash came about 2001 since then the Marten haven't managed to come back or I think it might have to do with climate change it's really difficult when our lives are so closely tied to the seasons to the climate and to the land we always hold back some of the first that we catch to make the hats and mittens and mukluks they keep us warm in the wintertime when we get temperatures of 40 50 60 below or very high winds some people think that's inhumane to catch an animal in a trap it's really no more cruel for an animal to die in a trap than it is to be crushed in the jaws of a wolf or died over a period of a month of starvation that is life in the bush we really feel very strongly that we are deeply involved in the whole cycle of life and death subsistence is a huge part of living in the bush because you have to go 150 miles by plane to get to the store the most important things in our life come off of a land whether that's something to eat or to build your cabin with or to feed your dogs there's too many people living in towns and they work all day long and they move a pile of paper from here to here and we work all day long and we have a quart of water we have a 5 gallons of berries or a moose in the freezer and so it's a much more tangible reward we've learned an awful lot in the last 55 years and the people who lived here before the white men moved in knew the land so much better than anybody who lives here now it's humbling to think that we know it'll even a little bit

Channel: National Geographic

Views: 724,959

Rating: 4.6574264 out of 5

Keywords: national geographic, nat geo, natgeo, animals, wildlife, science, explore, discover, survival, nature, documentary, wolverine, wilderness, Denali, magazine, sled dogs, video, Alaska, bush, twins, trapline, profile, youtube, DIG2016, fur, National Geographic, trappers, identical twins

Id: lkbaG1dh2VQ

Length: 3min 42sec (222 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 22 2016