Life Below Zero

Bugs out here this time of year,

there's thousands and thousands of 'em everywhere.

That's one of the worst parts of living out here, the summertime.

Midsummer, the bugs get intolerable.

This time of year when the bugs get bad like this,

it's hard to get anything done.

And the only way you can really get any relief

is to go up to high ground, up on the mountains.

I got to get out of here.

Summertime out here at the lake,

it's actually one of the most difficult times of the year.

The bugs are the biggest problem.

But one thing about summer,

it's a good time of year to get out of camp.

Over on the other side of this mountain,

there's a river I've never crossed before.

And on the other side of that river,

there's a mountain higher than any mountain

I've ever climbed up here before.

It's over 7,000 feet high.

Within five miles of the lake, I got it pretty well covered.

I learned all the little nooks and crannies around here.

Now every year, I try to go somewhere new.

I try to look a little further.

I got a big journey ahead of me.

First, I'll paddle all the way across the lake,

then I have to cross over the first mountains here.

This is all familiar country,

but when I get to the other side of the mountains,

there's a river.

And I've never walked over on the other side of it before.

It's exciting just to get out and see something different,

go a place where I've never been before.

The canoe's gonna have to stay here.

That's as far as I can travel by water.

From here, it's through this pass.

I got several miles to go

just to get to the bottom of the mountain.

It's not all about the hustle, the bustle,

the will I make it, won't I make it?

It's not always something.

Sometimes it's the nothing that really grabs you and takes hold.

Man, this is a cold northwest wind coming in.

I'm not glassing for a bear or a caribou

unless I have reasonable expectations of seeing one,

or I've physically seen it with my eyeballs

and now I need to gauge more.

You glass just to check for that which does not belong,

what sticks out.

What's different?

You know, I've been here 14 years.

The bushes don't move; animals do.

So it clues me in on where I need to look.

There's a possibility

that there's a little caribou down that way.

I just see a dark spot that doesn't belong.

But not with enough clarity.

I don't want to whine later on this winter

that I'm losing too much weight

when I could've gone and got something.

I'll get the .30-30, I'll get my little shorty gun,

and I'll go down there and see what I can see.

I might just be chasing a bush, but at least I'm chasing it.

Sue Aikens spends most of the year

isolated in the tundra

and 500 miles from the nearest grocery store.

With dark winter soon to arrive,

she must take advantage of any opportunity

to increase her food security.

It's always a good day

when you can fill up the freezer a little bit more.

That's for sure.

But I just can't lay claim that,

I mean, it could just be a big raven sitting in a tree.

I won't know until I get a little closer

and close the distance.

So I'm just scanning and making sure I'm not missing anything.

And then I'm gonna stick close to this side and go.

Why am I, why do I care?

Why am I gonna stick close to this side?

Well, there's brush.

If I need to--ahh!-- dive off for cover,

then that's what I can...do.

Let me look. I see another dark spot.

And here comes an airplane.

They're most likely gonna need fuel.

Really?

There's three planes.

Alright. That has to be it.

That's what pays for the bread and butter

that I want to put on the caribou.

So I got to go make that money.

One plane just landed, number two is landing,

number three is lining up.

That's one, two, three strikes, and I'm out.

I got to go back to camp.

Having the planes in is an advantage.

Having the opportunity to maybe see if I got meat hanging out

down on the end of the runway is an opportunity.

And I definitely want the caribou,

but I need the revenue more.

There's things in this world

that are just bigger than us.

And you go with the flow.

You be like the grass and you make the bend in the wind

and you survive.

Yee! Look, who's that? That's your brother.

Hi, brother Doug!

Ho! What you got?

Doug brought three seals.

He brought a ring seal, a young ugruk,

and a full-grown bull ugruk.

Yee!

I'm gonna lift and you're gonna pull.

One, two, three, lift.

Ooh!

These seals are a really valuable resource,

simply for the fact that you can't buy them.

Pull, pull, pull, you guys!

Okay.

You have to go out there and you have to get them yourself.

You know, my son's a hunter of the ocean,

so that's what he does.

Girls, come on now. Yes, Mama.

We need your girl power.

Two, three, pull, pull, pull, pull!

Ooh!

Wow.

Oh, my goodness.

Doug lives right at the coast in Deering,

so, um, he's able to watch the ice come in and go.

He was able to go out and go hunting

and come provide us and share us with his wealth.

Good and stiff there.

Thank you, son. That looks pretty good.

Yup.

We have a lot of work ahead of us.

You ready?

We're gonna make uqsruq.

For the native members of the Hailstone family,

seal hunting is a centuries-old tradition and way of life,

providing vital meat, oil, and skins

to survive the extreme Arctic climate.

It's a long, slow process,

but in the end, it's gonna taste real good.

We pretty much dip all our dried meats and fish and stuff

in seal oil, and this is where our seal oil comes from.

We're about to take the, uh, seal meats apart,

and hang them up so that they could dry,

and then we could put them into our uqsruq.

Then we'll have our black meat and seal oil.

As much meat off as possible.

And it'll just come apart.

It's gonna be heavy. Ready?

One, two, three, go.

Hold it, good job.

We're pretty much got it real good, majority of the slabs.

This is just the first process of the ugruk meat,

so we have a lot of work ahead of us.

Big part of living in the bush is the mental game

that you have to play with yourself

and keeping a good attitude and just being well prepared.

There's not a lot of room to work in here.

I was driving my tractor and the steering wheel came off.

The steering shaft broke on it,

which rendered my tractor completely useless to me.

Okay.

Got to get the whole steering box taken out.

And of course, it's buried under everything.

I've never dealt with one of these steering boxes on it

before, so this is all new to me.

I have no idea what I'm doing.

I need to get some longer bolts in there.

Andy Bassich grows 80% of his yearly food supply

at his home along the Yukon River.

But the brief summer growing season is coming to an end,

and repairing his tractor is critical

to his ability to grow and maintain his crop

for the year ahead.

I use my tractor just about every day for something.

Probably about the worst time of the year it could've broke,

'cause I really need it now for getting my compost

so that I have good soil to start my plants with next year.

If I don't make the compost now,

I would have to probably spend about $5,000 in Fairbanks

in fresh vegetables and canned goods,

an 800-mile round trip just to go grocery shopping.

This is the steering arm,

and what happened was this pin broke right here,

that goes through here.

That's sheared.

This job's as far as I can go.

I need parts.

While waiting for the parts to repair his equipment,

Andy must now turn his attention

to another key task for his harvest.

I like to let my grass grow nice and long,

and I use all this grass clippings

for the green in my compost,

which is actually the most important part of the compost,