The Joe Rogan Experience - #566 - Sue Aikens

Episode Date: October 23, 2014

Sue Aikens is a woman living in Kavik, 197 miles North of the Arctic Circle in extreme isolation. Her motto is "If it hurts, don't think about it." Check out on the new season of "Life Below Zero" on NatGeo November 4th.

you don't play the music okay the joe rogan experience train by day joe rogan podcast by night all day all the way from how many miles above the arctic circle uh they are saying it's 197 miles north of the Arctic Circle. I say it's a few more. God. So somewhere around 200 miles. Yeah. Jesus fucking Christ. What led you, folks who are just tuning in right now, Sue Akins from Life Below Zero,

which is one of my favorite shows. Love that show. It's the realest out of all those shows. It seems to be the realest. There's so many of these shows that they'll do, like these subsistence living shows, but you know that they're setting up fake scenarios. You know that there's some producer fuckery involved. Yeah, there are some shows out there that are, I would say, very heavily scripted.

You're told what you're going to be doing. But this show, and it's one of my things in my contract, I don't do scripted yeah you know you're told what you're going to be doing not but this show uh and it's it's one of my things in my contract i don't do scripted anything i never want to hear how oh wouldn't that look great if you fell through the river because i'll be like jump fucker see how it feels i'm not doing it you know there's enough interesting stuff that happens naturally that you don't have to script a lot of action yeah i would I mean, where you're living is one of the most bizarre remote places on earth. For folks who have never seen the show, it follows a series of people that live in some pretty incredibly remote locations in Alaska, but you are the most

remote. You're the gangster of the gangsters. Yeah, I'm the queen of the badassery when it comes to remote. You know, my closest city where you could find a Walmart is 500 miles south. And when you take a plane from Fairbanks to camp, once you hit the air, that's it. You don't see another building until you get to my camp. What led you to this spot? Even when I, you know, I say in preschool and kindergarten and the early to mid-60s, when they ask you, what do you want to be when you grow up? For a girl at that time period, it was pretty standard, wife and mother.

For me, it was a lighthouse keeper. I've always craved extreme isolation. This is just an extension of that. Why? What's the attraction? I'm really happy. I i like myself i crack myself up all the time um i'm really comfortable in my own skin i like challenges if it's if there's no challenge in the way that you're living you're not really living you're just kind of you're doing a

script so it's just this attraction to isolation is almost like a natural part of your personality it is it is um i i really bond with the animals around me uh you know and i i don't feel that just because it's brown it has to go down i do hunt for the meat that i eat but you know i find where else are you gonna go my main pack of wolves has 22 in it they're not always out to eat me so i get to see some pretty amazing things uh two three winners in a row you always have a couple of bears that wake up out of season they either didn't store enough fat they woke up for some reason but once they wake up they're straight up killers and the past couple of years i've been able to watch a pack of wolves take down a grizzly whoa and you know like this last year they just have to get

him running because within a mile or two he's used up all of his calories and there's no way he's going to survive so when they came running through camp crashing into my building as they go i'm sitting there on the inside you know with my gun going yeah come through the wall fucker i'll get you you know but not until they do and they went right past and boom they took them down on the end of the airstrip and ate him so those are things that i get to experience that for an adrenaline junkie somebody that's always pushing the limits that's that's pretty skookum that's pretty good what what was that like that had to be insane watching a pack of wolves take out a grizzly yeah well it is because you know it comes at the time of the year when I have 24-hour darkness. So I only have a limited amount of space where I can see them, and then it's gone.

I don't know if they're going to come around and come back inside. I don't know if they've finished it. I don't know if there's a couple of rogue wolves waiting for me to come out. So your own existence then becomes quite limited to inside until you know that it's clear. What a fascinating way to live life. Yeah. 24-hour darkness, too. I didn't even think of that.

Yeah, well, my son is going to set for the last time this next week. And in Barrow and Prudhoe Bay, they get a little bit more sunshine just because, a few more sunsets just because of their location they're not around mountains or hills i've got a mountain to the north the south and mountain range to the east so i lose it a couple weeks before they do and then i won't have another sunrise until march wow so so did you you saw these wolves or you heard them chase down the bear like how do you know what took place did you put a spotlight on it um you get a little bit during this particular time frame that it happened you get a little bit of ambient light you don't actually have the sun but your sky will lighten

a little bit and even when the moon is out it lights up it's an all-white landscape it lights it up and i routinely even in winter as long as it's not blowing aale, I go up on my rooftops and I'm always looking around. You always want to give yourself as much advance notice on anything coming in. It could be a food source for me. It could be a predator. It doesn't matter. I want to know what's around me. And that's where I saw something going on there and I saw a big red splotch or what I assumed was red.

And so i know something was bleeding something was attacking something and then i could make out as it got closer that was a bear running and the wolf pack was in the river and down there's 22 wolves and they just tag him to keep him running once he wears out they've got him wow they're so clever um they are they're top predators and they're top predators for a reason. And they live in that. They genetically are predisposed to succeed. So, you know, for me as a human being being there, yeah, I've got guns.

I've got other things. But, you know, left to your own devices, I mean, we are nowhere near top predator. And they are the only predators that are that size that act in a pack yes yeah they think together they they chase people in the fall they chase animals into a and there's a hierarchy yeah you know you have the alphas who control the whole thing um they control who's going to mate who's not going to mate and if you if you go against the rules you're kicked out of the pack so then you have rogue wolves. And so you've got your solitary units. Wow.

And you're living in these houses that you're living in. They seem like they're made out of cloth or something. They are. They're Quonset tents. Now, for clients, in order for me to be there, as a Caucasian, I'm not allowed to own property on the North Slope. So for me to have a lifestyle there, I have to lease land from the state and have a profitable business. If the business stops being profitable, they have the right to eject me. And people say, oh, it's reverse discrimination.

And you have to stop right there. There is no forward or reverse. It is a fact. I knew that going in. And so it's a challenge. It just becomes a challenge. So the clients can stay in the trailers there's uh bear proof soundproof trailers they can stay in now if i stay in that it's a very small amount of headspace for me i don't like that the doors

open to the outside world you you have to get your life down to all of the doors my final door going to the outside world opens inside because i guarantee 15 20 times a winter i'm going to open that door and it's a wall of snow i have to dig a tunnel so i can get out and open the you know have an open space if i had a door that opened to the outside world i wouldn't get out so i've trapped myself but uh the tent that i live in um i'm not allowed a permanent structure so i have a tent. You're not allowed a permanent structure? No, because I'm leasing the land and everything has to be mobile in case they, for whatever reason, tell you your lease is up, you need to leave. So everything either is on tracks or it's a tent that you can take down or something you're willing to throw a match on and burn.

You're not allowed to have a permanent structure. That's a strange set of rules, isn't it? I mean, it seems like no house is permanent. They knock down houses all the time. And even the term permanent is kind of weird. Yeah, but Alaska still, I mean, if you want to break it down, I mean, we still have squatters rights. We still have, you know, if you're allowed permanent structures, then perhaps you're allowing a squatters rights situation to develop. I don't really care about the background rules. Just tell me what the rules are, and I'll meet the challenge. Wow.

And so you're in these tents. How easy would it be for an animal to get into the tent? One swipe. It's just, you know, figure your Coleman tent, maybe a little bit thicker material, and that's it. Well, it's like the bear that I got this last year. thicker material and that's it so any well it's like the bear that i got this last year that the background of that my dog was outside in her house and the bear came up tore her little house out hockey pucked it around the pad tried to eat her chased after some kids that were camping so it became after the bear attack that i had a few years ago um there was a certain fear factor

i did not aggressively go get bears i waited hey if you come through my wall i'll take care of you but i'm not and you know there was a fear factor well now as an owner i can't afford to be passive this bear presented a danger to my dog but also more importantly to clients camping so i had to go proactive and uh It was 16 and a half hours of tracking, belly crawling over 800 yards, and then I coughed and he turned on me. Well, the long and short of that story was I just got the hide back. Now, his claws are five and a half inches long. So one swipe and it's done.

Five and a half inches long. And he's almost nine foot. Wow. it's done five and a half inches long and he's almost nine foot wow so and his measurements he uh from what i understand he's number five in the world for inland grizzly and people wanted me to you know there was a push to do the boone and crockett thing and i'm like he's number five you know if he's one or two i'll do it you know number five still pretty damn impressive yeah yeah he he was an impressive specimen He was over 34 years old. Wow.

So, you know, I mean, this was a bear that was probably getting closer to the end of his shelf life and was going to attack anything. When they get ready to den, it's almost a certain insanity that they reach where, you know, they're going into hibernation and all they think is, I've got to eat. I've got to get fat. I've got to eat. I've got to get fat. If you are, you know, I always say don't act like a pork chop. If you're acting like a pork chop, you're in their sights. You were attacked by a bear.

Yep. And was that in a camp? That was at Kavik, and I don't talk a whole lot about it. I mean, people always ask about it. You just immediately got emotional when I brought this up. You could tell. You know, I try to talk about it in the third person i i get my water from the kavok river and at a certain point the water's going to freeze over while i had one more shot at getting some water so i went down and what i have to do is get a pump both hands have to be

used to get it in the river and start it up and i had a juvenile bear that had been every night he'd come and he'd go to my helicopter pad, dig it up, bury his food and run off. I could see where he was going and where he was coming from. And when a bear does that, he's trying to claim your territory. As a juvenile bear between three and seven years old, you know, he's not hot enough. The chicks don't want him. He's not alpha enough. He's not kicking any other bears butt but i have this prime territory at no matter how careful i am it always smells like food it has cool dens you don't have to dig it's a prime place and so it's an alpha push he the first step on the alpha ladder is subjugate something and take over their territory and so um the long and short I was getting my water, I set down my rifle, and he was hiding in the cup bank and snatched me up. And, you know, he rolls with you, he'll open his jaws, put it on your throat.

You can still feel here and here where I ended up having to sew my head together. He tore the hips out of the sockets, and then he ended up going back in the river. An older bear or a female would have just eaten me and and that's you know and and i accept that in my lifestyle um i knew i was injured did not remember i had a rifle by the river got myself back to camp i knew my hips weren't in good shape and he was going to come back and finish the job what he did was kick me out of my property then i am lower than he is on the totem pole and he has my territory so i got my gun belt ratcheted on the hips tried i remember calling one person i was told i called more than one person for help um the troopers i got their answering machine because they're out

doing other things and i called some other people i didn't i don't remember that i tried to get a hold of the oil companies to say i'd been attacked and they did not help um but i went back got a rifle found where the bear was shot him gps'd it i don't know why i did that but it was important at the time and then the hips gave out on the way back over so i drug myself to the camp and i laid there 10 days till somebody found me whoa so um 10 days yeah And it's a memory I don't, I mean, that's going to be with me forever. I had to be flown out. Once I was found,

they flew me to Fairbanks, then they flew me to the lower world for immediate surgery. And my kids did get to see me in that shape. And that was hard on them, too. That definitely brought it into perspective that I may be the first in the family to go and so they had to deal with that did you have any thoughts of abandoning that

lifestyle when that happened i you know it it became because i was working for the company that i later bought the camp from um it was a workman's comp case uh they put the hips in they had to do one twice and they took a couple of discs out and then the the insurance company said well we're not going to do any more work you got to get the lawyer and i you know i'm like why i'm not arguing the company's not arguing neither is the fucking bear he's dead and they said that's just the way it goes and my personality was well how about if you go to hell i'm going home so uh i called the owner he said yeah if you think you can do it and i said there's only one way i had to accept that there's 83 tag grizzlies within 10 miles of camp at any point they can decide to charge camp or come in aggressively um it's only a matter of time

before i do get charged again. So that's my test. When it happens, how am I going to react? If I hesitate at all, I have no business being there. I can't perform the job it takes to be there. But when it did happen, I was able to. I took care of the bear. It was just automatic response. So I knew I would be okay.

But, you know, there's how many injuries do you have? You know, when your head stops being able to get in the game and take care of it, then that's when I have to leave. You said that they had to take some discs out? I've got several discs spit out. Of your back? Yeah, on the spine. And I still have more.

There's more work to do, but as, you know, not to diss the workman's compensation thing, but it's really not set up to help the people. It's set up to help the insurance companies. So I've just gone without the medical attention, and I know I can't twist and bend very often. I know what some of my limits are, and I try to work around it. So do you have bulging discs? Or when you say discs went out, like... Yeah, there's spit out.

There's one that spit out uh pretty hard um twisting into the right is not good i have to when i lift things i have to be careful because when the bear got me yeah um he's twisting and uh your body's just not meant to do that it's an outside force applying pressure and twisting it's not a good thing so but as with anything it's like for me i was later a couple of years later working on the overhead electrics and and fell straight down from 22 feet broke both ankles and the bones in my right leg and uh and that's where at the beginning of the episodes you see that i'm having surgery and coming back to camp um i've since had a few more things that I've had to look at.

You know, you beat up your body so much, and I'm not a spring chicken. I mean, I'm not the crypt keeper, but, you know, I'm going on 52. At some point, my body's going to say, bitch, you want to do that, do it on your own, because I'm checking out. Right. You know, so you must, if you're going to do this lifestyle, you must always assess, reassess, and be extremely honest with who you are, what your limitations are, and how can you work within those.

It's just such a strange life to be drawn to. Not just to be isolated like that, but to be isolated in this really vulnerable way where you're in tents. It's so crazy. It's not for everybody. Fuck yeah, it's not for everybody. Oh, crazy. It's not for everybody. It's, fuck yeah, it's not for everybody.

I would imagine it's for like one of the smallest percentages of people on the planet. But you're very personable. You're very friendly. You're very smart. So you're not like this fucking Ted Kaczynski wacko living in the woods. Jacked and shining. Yeah, you know what i'm saying it's like you seem like a person who enjoys being around people i do um you know people assume that because i live alone i am anti-social or i'm running away from something and that's not the

case you know i run to a lifestyle that i enjoy and i really enjoy being social but i'd like to know when it's going to start and when it's going to end. I don't want to live extremely social, but I love engaging in it. And then, you know, like a hit and run, I know when to leave. Right. So you'll come into town, hang out with people, talk, and they go, Okay, you guys take care. I'm just going to be by myself in a tent. Yeah. Well, and then, you know, no matter where you live, it's a good idea, when you're in a social situation, learn what's healthy for you and what's not.

There may be people that you are quote-unquote friends with, but they're toxic. Right. I mean, cut the toxicity out of your lifestyle and enjoy it. Yeah, without a doubt, that's great advice. But aren't bears fucking toxic as shit, too? Bears are bears. You know, they don't wake up and say, oh, that's who.. But aren't bears fucking toxic as shit, too? Bears are bears. You know, they don't wake up and say, oh, that's who. I think I'm going to knock her around today.

Right, right. I mean, they are animals, and there's an instinct, and there's a drive to survive. And sometimes I get in their way, and I'm in their sights. Like this summer, the troopers even came by several times and said, we need to know that you have an emergency plan. This is going to be one of the worst aggressive bear seasons ever. How do they know that? Because the numbers are so high. You know, as man decides it's going to, like the caribou herd size, they count it and they go, oh, there's too many caribou.

Let's up the amount that people can harvest. Well, when they do that, it went from two a year to five a year. In the villages, it's 10 a day. Well, when they do that, it went from two a year to five a year. In the villages, it's ten a day. So you're putting all these bones and gut piles out there while your predators are going to eat those, and then their numbers are healthier, they reproduce more. And then all of a sudden, like this year, the caribou migrated out a full five, six weeks early.

And so their main food group left the North Slope. So then you have all these bears roaming around and nothing to eat but here i am walking around like a little pork chop you know um but the bears this year i had eight that were circling camp just religiously every day but they never they never did anything they weren't dickheads you know they didn't come through the walls they didn't ransack you know i'm very careful with garbage and everything else. Whatever I have to have in camp, it has to be flown in. Well, it's a protected ecosystem. You can't just go bury your garbage or leave it in bags.

I, by law, have to take all of the garbage and even human waste, separate the liquids and solids, burn everything to its lowest ash, bag it up, and send it to town. So you have to burn poop yes that's hilarious well only if you're not doing the job because i don't laugh when i'm doing it man i'm just saying do you have like a furnace like i have a big incinerator oh okay yeah i mean it's not the greatest job on the planet but it's a job right you know i mean i don't go cook food right afterwards i clean up you have a profitable business up there. What do you do up there? Kavik used to be an old oil camp.

And now, you know, my goal is to, I want to be the first 100% green camp in the middle of the oil field. So I've turned it into sort of a twisted bed and breakfast. It's not a hotel like you'd find here where you have, you know, so many story building in these really cool rooms. They are soundproof, bear- proof containers like a trailer on on tracks that you can stay in and it gives you now that's a measure of safety um but i rent those rooms out if you want food i'll cook it for you it's always chef's menu you know you don't get a menu and get to pick from it it's whatever i feel like cooking that day. But that's how I make money. Now, for me to be there, it's not inexpensive.

The dollars that it takes for me to be there, even to heat, there is no wood. I can't do wood heat. So everything has to be oil. So my interest in going, you know, I've got a certain amount of alternative energy now. This winter I'm working on a big project, and hopefully by next year i'll be 100 green and not needing any fuel so are you is it possible to be solar i mean when you say 100 green like um well i've already got some solar panels and wind turbine and uh but solar eight nine months of the year doesn't do me a whole lot of good right but so wind is the major one so i'm adding in new large scale wind turbines uh more solar i will always have to have a generator as a backup

but like for example when i first got there working for the other company they used a 100 kw generator 24 hours a day every day and there's also 150 kw well that's going to be over 100 gallons of fuel a day just for the generator to provide electricity wow and so you know the actual per day you're talking between one and 200 gallons a day i've got that down to six to ten gallons a day so i've already made a huge stride in making it better and how have you done that um i switched i changed all the electrics you know there used to be a theory in the oil fields because some of those companies have a lot of money to spend. If they don't spend their whole budget, they don't get a new great big budget.

So there's a theory that you don't need to be more efficient. You obviously just need a bigger gen and more power cords. So everything, every time you plug in a power cord, you have what's called line loss. You know, and that's, I guess, one of the neatest things about the lifestyle I have is, you know, I wasn't born knowing how to do diesel mechanics. And I tell people, you know, the only thing I used to know about it is how to bake bread. In other words, I knew nothing. But I'm learning. And it's just like electricity.

I don't like electricity, but I have to learn how to do it. So, you know, you learn line loss. If you plug in, keep plugging in extension cords, you may have 100 kW when you start. learned line loss. If you keep plugging in extension cords, you may have 100kW when you start and you only get 80kW at your final ending point because you've lost so much of it along the way. So I improved the electrics, did more direct wiring, fell and hurt myself in the process but got back up and did it again. Learned wind power. I have a big battery bank and I can store power and use it later. That's my entire Internet system that I put in 12 years ago. It runs off the battery bank.

When you say Internet system, how does that work? Back when I first got there and I was working for the other company, I said, hey, we've got to get Internet. The analog phones, there's two types of signal for cell phone usage or phones. You have an analog signal and a digital. Analog travels much further than a digital. Digital only goes 27 miles. Well, I'm 83 1⁄2 miles from Deadhorse. No matter what I do, I can't get it, throw the signal again.

It's still not going to reach me. Well, the government took away the analog signal and privatized it for themselves, so I knew you're going to have no communications other than a satellite phone, which is horrendously expensive. So I told the owner, I said, you need the internet out here, you know, and he says, yeah, no, at this point, you know, technology where it was then, you have to get over the curvature of the earth to clip the satellites. So he said, if you want it, you're going to pay for it. Well, all right, there's a challenge. It cost 8,000 bucks to get the dish, fly it up, get the tech. And I worked with a geologist to find the bedrock,

and I bounce a signal off the bedrock, and I haven't lost signal yet. Wow. You bounce a satellite signal off the bedrock. I catch it as it bounces it off the bedrock. Rather than people that point it where they think the satellites are going to go, like here, I point it directly down. So as the signals are hitting the bedrock i kill i get it wow so and it was a risk i didn't know how did you calculate that i brought

the geologist in i had an idea i'm great with ideas but i don't know if they're bonehead ideas or plausible is anyone else doing something similar or is this just completely your original they may now nobody Nobody was then. But you just came up with it on your own. Yeah. Yeah. I knew what I wanted to do. I know the basic mechanics of what needs to happen, and then I apply Sue technology and

come up with a Sue fix. But I do check with people that are trained in that, and they go, yeah, that might work. Well, okay. It's worth eight grand for me to check it out and what kind of like download speeds do you get up there can you like watch a youtube video i can although uh the way they sell the internet up there is you know your bandwidth your bandwidth you get so many gigs or whatever of bandwidth when i use that up then it's really expensive prohibitively expensive but for me to go back to being jungle jane i am a mother a grandmother um for me

to do this you know i work very closely with the kids um we have a loving relationship but you know i like and having children too i mean you're dropping these little seeds and they've got to grow well my personality can throw a pretty big shadow. Not many plants grow in the shade. I needed to step back so that they could get the sunshine. But one of the turnarounds is I need to know that I can communicate with people. You can't run a business if nobody can tell you they want to show up. So, you know, to me, it was the wave of the future.

I had to get it figured out. And if the only thing standing in my way is money, well, I'll go out and make it. That's such a strange contradiction. Isolation, but yet you want a connection. Connectivity. Yeah. Yeah, I need to know for myself that the kids and grandkids are okay. And we have a system of talking to each other, social media.

I throw up ten fingers, ten toes, they know I'm okay. Six fingers, four toes, they know i'm okay six fingers four toes they know there's a problem you know it's pretty basic and then they also we have a phrase and and i won't say what it is but there is a key phrase and if the kids or grandkids ever say that to me that means drop what you're doing get here asap and how long does it take you to get to civilization depends on the time of year. To even come down here and do this, I had a previous engagement in New York City. I've been trying on last, a week ago Monday, I called and I said, you need to pull me now. We're going to get

a bad storm. And my original flight out was Saturday. And they're like, well, we got days. And I was like, no, you really don't. We got a system coming in. I need those weather days. Well, if somebody in the real world, you know, they need to get to the airport a little earlier because maybe it's bad traffic. They're talking hours. Well, this is day, today is day 13 of this major blizzard up there. And I just happen to have a window, a three-hour window where a plane could make it in. Three-hour window. Yeah.

And we just hit it right and i got out but the turnaround for me is when i get home i'm calculating that saturday i'm going to have another window and i hope so because that's my way to get back in right now you know i've got a wolverine that's just been acting like a real creep around camp um trying to get into things and so i don't know what he's doing while i'm not there um i can't afford to lose all my water and let everything freeze up in my tent so my heat is still going if that animal gets into my building he's gonna knock over my heater and burn my camp down i don't know till i get there what i'm dealing with and that might be happening right

now could be can you go to google earth and look at your camp um i suppose you could but you're gonna get a delayed picture i believe with google earth but i do have two webcams and i did check this morning um it's not i can see the dining hall into the east they're actually for the pilots so they can see the mountains and see where the the sky is um and then i try to update it as i can but uh i was able to see okay i still have a dining hall Tits So do you see this wolverine? You can't It's not a live feed on my webcam No do you ever see him?

Oh yeah I see him almost daily Almost daily Yeah Now you know Like with me and the animals If I need the fur I'll go ahead and get them Right now for needing the fur

It's only I think it was five below zero I think five or ten below zero Is the coldest I've gotten so far this year Not counting wind chill. So it's not really cold enough for me. If you're going for a fur bearer, then get them when their fur is prime. You know, and his fur is not prime.

And he's just being a wolverine. He hasn't attacked me as a person. He's tried to mangle one of the buildings, and I do what I can to dissuade him. Like, what do you do? one of the buildings and i do what i can to dissuade him how like what do you do um wolverines if they've ever been injured or you've ever angered them or they've ever gotten trumped on a hunt they'll remember that like a gps coordinate and they come back and they keep trying to attack it um like them i guess it's a challenge so for whatever reason this wolverine has picked one trailer as his nemesis and he goes and he rips the angle iron off and twists it into a little knot

so what i've done is i've tied a little piece of angle iron down there and he takes that and keeps re-tearing it up you know um so it's sooner or later yeah that's for whatever reason that trailer pissed him off one year and i don't know why but uh and it may i can't afford to lose you know for me to try and replace it is an ungodly amount of money. If he doesn't get with the program and leave, then we're going to be like this and I have to deal with it. But right now, he can't help being a wolverine. I can't help not wanting him to ruin my stuff. Do you enjoy having him around in some sort of strange way because it gives you something to think about?

I mean, do you have, like, a connection with these animals where it's almost like a part of your drama? Well, you know, it's not, you don't connect with a wolverine. I mean, well, you could, I suppose. I've seen a show where there's some guy petting them. That's not my gig. But I don't think, you know, it'd be like somebody, if there was a race of people that, you know, bigger than we are, and they come in and I'm drinking my coffee and he tags my ass. I mean, that would be a bum day. I don't see any reason to shoot an animal simply because it exists.

So what I can do is hopefully I'll just keep dissuading him and he'll go, wow, she's crabby, and he leaves. Or it'll come down to, yeah, I've got to take him out because he's now costing me revenue. So he might start tearing up a different tent. Yeah, yeah. Or he's going to go in and, you know, he attacks the walls. I mean, I can only let it go so long, but I'm willing to bet that if I keep, you know, he keeps trying to come in and I keep dissuading him, sooner or later he's just going to say, wow, whatever, and leave. But I do enjoy the animals in their natural habitat. I enjoy, you know, I've been able to see one of the moodiest grizzlies up there.

She's tagged, and her name is Marty. Well, a couple of years ago, and she is, what, 38 years old or something like that now, or she was then. But she ended up popping out a couple of babies now she's the worst mother in the planet you know she'll let them get two miles away from her and uh and which for a hiker it's really easy to get in the middle of mama and cubs so i try to warn people but i was sitting up there on the roof of my i call it the perch and i'm watching and here's marty crawling up the hillside and there's still a snowfield and she goes and slides down here come the two cubs and they just all day long played and they were so loving so it's it's really you know it's a dichotomy i see the aggressive side but i also can appreciate the maternal natural side yeah and you're dealing with it the same species that almost killed you

you're you're watching them play well you know and even to do the lifestyle at all and i don't care what part of the world if you're going to go this remote and and immerse yourself in their territory you have to be comfortable with your own death not the same as having a death wish but um like with my kids and grandkids we do one big meal a year and whether it's over the skype or whatever um i tell them tell me three things you can't stand about me what did i do that really pissed you off but tell me three good things and i do the same for them and it's you know just a very honest relationship i have it i have accepted that i may die due to either conditions or animals out here,

and I'm okay with that. That's, you know, roll of the dice, I'm willing to accept. But we each year tell each other, I love you for this. I think you're a douchebag for that. But you know what? I am going to miss you when you go. And, you know, over my life, I have this big chest, and I've been filling it all the cool crazy things they've ever heard about me and some things are pretty i mean there's some things in my life even as a very young person that were really fantastic and so i take the photographs or the proof or whatever and i stuff it in this box so when i go they're going to be able to open that for the first time and see oh my god that really happened oh shit look at that but it'll be a pretty cool chronicle your life do you find it

really rewarding to be out in this incredibly wild environment like when you come to a city like you go from that to new york city is is new york city just like a cool little vacation for you and then do you do you appreciate the wild or do you appreciate new york because of the wild um or both does that make sense when you you know my lifestyle the challenges i face and overcoming that um there is such pride in yourself that oh my gosh i did that how cool is that um and being self-sustaining really little i mean i little, I mean, I was terrified of the dark. But now I live in a place that's dark for nine months out of the year, you know? I mean, there are always challenges.

Know yourself, better yourself, you know? When I go to a city, a bear, I know exactly what he wants from me. You know, pretty much. He's either going to eat you or he wants something here or he's just passing through. But it's a pretty honest relationship. He wants to eat me. I don't want him to. You go to a big city and I'm used to seeing my horizon.

I'm always checking things. There's no trees. There's no buildings. There's nothing to mar my horizon. I go to New York and you can't go eight feet and you've got a 60-story building. How the hell do you check your horizon? How do you know what's coming at you? see people but you cannot be guaranteed when i see a bear and he's charging i know he wants to attack me you see a person walking down the street you don't know whether

he's going to pull a gun out of his pocket shake your hand pinch your ass or wave goodbye you don't know so that's a predator that uh i'm pretty impressed people want to be around you know and like when i got here i look at all these lights and all these people i'm like oh my god and they're here on purpose wow i always appreciate la when i leave and go into the wilderness whenever i go into the wilderness i being there. Like a couple times a year, three times a year, I go hunting. And when I come back, I always really appreciate the city. Oh, yeah. Flush toilets are just like cool.

Oh, yeah. But just being warm and like dry and sitting on a couch and watching TV. Yeah. Yeah. There is, it is not saying that I've never lived in a social setting or a city. I certainly have. You know, the kid's father, biological father, you know, he tried to make it in Alaska, and it wasn't the way I live, it wasn't his gig.

So you're married. I went down there, tried to make it in the city. That boy, that wasn't my gig for very long. You know, we were married 17 years, and then one day we're laying in bed, and he's cracking up, and I said, what? And he says, you know, it's real simple. You're more Grizzly Adams, I'm more John Wayne. This shit ain't going to work anymore.

So we stayed the best of friends until he passed away, but we developed, and that's part of me. Don't sit there and cry and be sad because it ended. We were still best of friends and realized, yeah, you're John Wayne, go get your horse, cowboy. I'm going to go over here and get a bear. And we made it work. Were you always living like this?

Like, how did you meet it? Well, I was born in Chicago. And at a very early age, my mom was leaving my dad. And back then, divorce still wasn't very popular. But she left him, brought us up to Alaska, and then she left to go do her own thing so um very quickly i had to get used to living in a tent hunting and i finished school very early i graduated high school just before i turned 13 why did you have to get used to living in a tent and hunting um i don't get into that part of my life very much so um because you know i love my mother to death i've never walked a mile in anybody's shoes let alone

three feet so what made her decide to go from chicago to alaska and then leave us and and uh to our own devices and go to something else i don't know and how old were you when this was going on young and um but she's still alive. I've never held anything against her, you know, and that's the thing. I mean, when people, they hold grudges on other people or they let it affect their lives. You know, how many people are in therapy saying, when I was 10, this happened? Well, fuck, it's 40 years ago. Get over it.

You know, I mean, you have to move forward. If you have one foot in the past and one in the future, the only place you're not living is today. Some people wallow. They enjoy being upset. Being a drama queen is fun, I suppose, for some people, but it's not my style. Obviously not. Drama queens really wouldn't be back in Alaska

after getting almost killed by a bear. queens really wouldn't be back in alaska after getting almost killed by a bear well you know are you gonna then be is your life then going to be run by your fear and when where does it stop fair is a desperate creature that grabs as much turf as it can get so once you start letting it run your life you better have a good pair of sneakers because you're going to be running the rest of your life that's an excellent description it really is that's very very accurate you're looking for the nicotine again yeah i saw it do you anticipate living there for the rest of your life or would you be interested in a similarly sort of isolated but different environment um or do you have a personal like i don't plan that far ahead i

currently am enjoying the hell out of the challenges and thriving with what i'm doing but i have kind of a raven personality there is going to be another shiny thing on the horizon and i'll be like checking it out um a lot of people don't know, you know, I've traveled a lot in my life. I mean, there are so many awesome things to see on the planet. And I don't want to die, be sitting there in the grave, my little soul lifting up and go, fuck, I wish I would have done that. I want to be lifting it up saying, got it, nailed it, you know. So there will be other things that catch my eye. My body is getting older. I've beat the hell out of it. I'm probably not going to stop doing that when I can no longer function at Kavik and

make it safe for people. Then I don't have any business being there. Um, there's so much to see and do. And is that how you've always run it? You've always run it as sort of a bed and breakfast. Um, yeah, the, the company that had, that owned it before I know before i know uh you know the person that used to own at the company um they were friends of mine and they came looking for me i used to have a 400 mile trap line along the gym river and had a bunch of sled dogs and that's how i lived for a long time wow you go 400 miles up

sending your trips 400 miles down checking them all by yourself yeah and then i thought you know i did marry again that did not work out out as well as I would have liked. Did you marry another trapper? Yeah, he's somebody I knew when I was little, and I ended up in Alaska. He was going to come up there, and we used to joke around because he used to say, I'm going to marry you, and I'm like, yeah, I'm never getting married. Sorry, sucker. But on his way up, he got two avalanches.

He turned around and married somebody else, and I'm like, well, a real man would have made it. But it ended up, it was not a good thing. He went a little bushy up there in Kavik. Bushy? Yeah. What's that? Where you lose your perspective. When you're all alone, there's no social.

There's nobody saying, oh, you can't wear, like in the winter, I wear my long johns And jammy pants As long johns All winter long I try to gain 20 to 30 pounds minimum To go into winter

Because when I get stuck At 50 below In a blizzard Working hard I'm going to lose pounds Every day I don't want to come out Being unhealthy

So I go in being A little junky Wow that's interesting So it's a strategy Yeah What do you eat To ensure that? Whatever I want it's a strategy. Yeah. What do you eat to ensure that? Whatever I want.

Just eat a lot of cake and pie? Well, you know, my body, if you listen to your body, it's going to tell you what it wants. Even a pregnant woman, when she's craving pickles and ice cream, she probably needs salt, potassium, and calcium. So you break down your craving into what's in there. Oh, okay, and you can eat something else, but it's going to give your body what it needs your body can only remember where you last got it from so it's going to throw all these wacky things together and say eat chocolate bananas with raisins and uh you know some steak so break it down you need iron you need calcium you need potassium you know you need

niacin so go grab it do you ever have any vegetarians try to stay up there with you? I do Really? I cater to, you know, I do vegan You do, really? Yep, gluten-free, diabetic Any nutrient diet, other than there's some people There was only one group And I don't know what they call themselves But they will only eat something, an apple that fell to the ground

It has to, like, commit fruiticide or something And I'm like, yeah, yeah no i can't do that one oh my god people are so crazy um it must be very difficult to get vegetables up there it is i i try to do a garden every year but for me at my location um when i used to do the oh my god i'm having a hard time putting that out. Visqueen. It's a type of plastic, but it has a very oily smell. Bears are attracted to oil. And so every time I'd make a visqueen greenhouse, it would start going good,

and then the bear comes up and tears it apart. And my area is much, much, much more volatile with the weather. I will get snow and ice uh at least once a month um this year i got my first big blizzard the end the third week in august and it never went away the caribou migrated out and that was it i i froze up third week of august yeah i have four or five feet of snow now and you know i've already dipped into the 5 10 below zero range uh probably 20 below zero with a windchill factor what's the lowest it ever gets up there my thermometer only goes to 100 below and i peg it every year you know and that's the real temperature you add some wind on top of it and it gets psycho oh my god and then you'd start compiling that you're in a tent with a thin piece of fabric how do you keep

that warm yeah how do you keep that warm um sometimes you're just going to have to put on the gear there's been times where you know the wind is your biggest enemy so as the winter goes on and you're building snow up the sides of the building i try to let it get six eight feet deep because that's a form of insulation but where the wind your fabric, it's going to wick away the heat as quick as you can make it. So I have battery-operated fans to convect the air. And then sometimes you're just going to wear your winter gear for a week or two until the temps come up. 100 below zero. That's incredible.

I do this thing called cryotherapy where I step into this chamber. It's 237 degrees below zero you do it naked it's where your underwear you stand in it for three minutes you get out you warm back up and you go back in for another three minutes and it's uh it's improving your circulation massive for anti-inflammation for like any injuries you might have it's incredible for like the healing properties and for soreness like If you're sore from working out, it straightens all that shit out right away. Yeah.

But that's just three minutes. I'm not sleeping. Well, it's like for me, the equipment that I have, I have a mile and a half long runway. If somebody wants to land in the winter, I've got to get out and work that runway. Yeah, how do you do that?

I have a Bobcat. I don't, I'm not the proud owner of a piece of equipment that's all enclosed and heated um whatever it is outside is what i'm experiencing so like for me to even get out on my two to three hour window i had to go out there clear it and then sit there for an hour and a half until boom the plane landed and uh so ermy my dog and I jumped in the plane and left. Wow.

A hundred below zero in a Bobcat. What the fuck is that like? It's not good. Your face is exposed or you're wearing a mask? No, you're covering as much as you can. I'm not the biggest fan of Polypro. It's in the end a plastic product. And it will, at a certain temperature, instead of keeping you warm, it's going to turn hard. And then it's going to conduct the cold.

So I'm not a big fan of polypro. I like natural materials, fur. It depends on what the temperatures are. I do have two fur outfits, one with the fur facing in, one with the fur facing out. At those temperatures, you're going to wear both. And you get out there, and you just get your work done the fur facing in in the fur facing so you have like several layers of fur yeah yeah you make these yourself out of bear or um usually caribou um and so well and if you go back to the very first episode when the oil and

everything got stolen um a lot of my things got taken, too. So I am in the process of making new outfits. Who stole your oil? I'm not going to get into that. But you know a person did it. I did find out who did it. Oh. And for me, the legal battle, you know, so sure, I go out and I sue them and I say, hey, you took this amount of money in fuel. Well, they have more money than I do as a company, and they're going to be able to stand the battle longer than I can.

So I'm going to spend four times as much to get back a little bit of money. The North Slope is a place that even if we don't live anywhere close to each other, word spreads like wildfire. That company is having a hard time even getting business now. Because they stole from you. Good. When you lose you know respect is something that is absolutely earned up there but it's lost so easily why would

they do that why would they steal oil from you like that just because it was there and they could get away with it they thought they could yeah and they did but you know and they had uh it it people use now the camp is mostly ecotourism and ology. That's the majority of the money that comes through. Bird watchers, northern lights viewers, scientists trying to get their groove on. But August and part of September, that's when the hunters show up. And when I had to leave to have my surgeries, shut down the camp, this company thought, hey, this is a great way I can bring people in.

I don't have to pay for anything and they're going to be warm and they're going to use the equipment. But I did find a bill of lading that they left behind. They threw away their garbage. They did not burn their garbage. So I went through the garbage.

But in the end, what is it worth? How long were they up there for? I would say they ran people through for a solid month wow yeah but you know the the point is for me what a bunch of fucking shitheads a choice do i choose to live in the negativity of that and drag myself through several years of court over it or do i just go right beyond it right you know they have to live with being a dickhead i've moved past it so you say august and september you have hunters up there in your camp and is it

because of the caribou migration yeah three of the major herds migrate right through camp the kavok river valley is if you go into the different geologic papers, professional papers, even in the late 1800s through the mid-1900s, the Kavik River Valley is very unique among the watersheds there. My variety of plant life is far different than it is in other ones. Well, the type of lichen that a caribou eats and moss that they eat to gain the most fat for their journey out is right in that valley now it is in other places white stuff i've seen yeah i mean it's multi-colored but yeah they eat lichen and moss right and that's where they gain their fat well i have a high concentration of it in that

valley so they want to migrate through no guarantees implied because like this year they just lifted their collective cow heads and moved out and uh really unusual that they did now looking back at it winter hit with an iron fist and hasn't left yet so it was a smooth move somehow they knew it was coming and they left but yeah go figure that one but i do i pay attention to my plants sometime in august i start peeling the bark off the willow if it's you know if it's easy to peel the plant still thinks there's going to be plenty of good weather. Once it starts to really get tough and it's sucking up to the skin, well, all the sap is being reserved and that plant's getting ready for winter.

It may be 80 degrees outside, but the plant is telling me to get the hell ready. So, you know, meteorologically speaking, I can get on the Internet and look at the weather systems and say, oh, I think this is going to happen. get on the internet and look at the weather systems and say oh i think this is going to happen but i go outside and look at my plants and my animals and i know what's going to happen that's amazing so you could tell by just pulling the bark what off of off of a plant that's that tells me that those plants are getting ready for weather that i may not be thinking is coming, but they do. That's amazing.

How the fuck do they know? I don't know. Wow. Million dollar question. They know and the caribou know. Everything knows. All of a sudden, like there was one year and all the bears, rather than like they'll dig their dens into the side of the bank

and when the water starts to rise, it comes in and wakes them up. And a bear's favorite food is cub. So boars wake up the male bears usually first and they run around find the other dens and eat the cubs yeah um but then one year all of a sudden the bears came up and about 3 000 foot level 2 000 foot level started digging dens and i'm like i called a fishing game and i'm like wow what the hell's up with that you know and nobody's ever there but me so i'm like dude i see this going on, and I'm like, wow, what the hell's up with that? And nobody's ever there but me, so I'm like, dude, I see this going on. What's happening? And they said, I don't know, but all the bears, the ones that are collared, they're all moving up.

And I was like, oh, shit. So I try to get everything set up in camp because that usually means an excessively high amount of snow, which means an excessive amount of water and flooding in the spring. So I try to get everything ready. By watching what they're doing, I can set camp up differently to be protected from and flooding in the spring. So I try to get everything ready by watching what they're doing. I can set camp up differently to be protected from a flood in the spring. That is amazing. That is so amazing that they know that an excessive amount of snow is coming.

How they figure it, who knows. But they will adjust and readjust their actions, you know, based on something that they feel. I can adjust what I do based on what I see. That's so bizarre. I want to go up there now. Well, get up there. I want to go up there. I want to come up there and hunt caribou up there in August, September.

That's the time? What I tell people, I mean, I cannot guide without a license, but I can look at trends. Sometime between August and the middle of September, that's when they're going to be there. Now, it opens up in July. Our hunting season goes from July through July. But, you know, for so many months out of the year, they're down south having a vacation in Palm Springs. So you have a 12-month hunting season? It's just open all year round?

Pretty much. So you have a 12-month hunting season? It's just open all year round? Pretty much. The animals, depending on the species, our hunting season starts in July of any year and then goes through the winter. And depending on the species, you have to shut down the season so that the animals can give birth and raise new babies. They have to have a safety zone. But in July, it opens up again. Wow. So when you shoot these bears, like when a bear comes in, are you eating these things? Mm-hmm.

Eat the back straps? Yeah. Spring bear is always better than fall bear. The gamey taste, if you will, is more concentrated in the fat. A brown bear from down south is eating a lot of fish diet, and you are what you eat. So it's a very fishy tasting product i don't care for that um but up by me i i like to tell people that the bears eat berries and slow tourists so i'm cool you know but yeah the bear that i got um what you don't see in that episode is you know

i i shoot the bear i make sure he's gone it was a it was an emotional thing but i start skinning him and i start getting the meat i got about 300 pounds of meat off of him well here's another bear another grizzly start circling in and getting real tight so we i had the four wheelers i brought them up and the boom the fog came down it went totally dark and so now you can't see so the safety dude for the filmies was there with his weapon and we put the headlights all out and you'd see this bear come in and sideswipe the four-wheelers. Well, after 300 pounds of meat and getting, you know, harvesting the fur, I just had to say, it's time for me to back off. The bear can munch on this, which will buy me the time to get away. It's weird that bears are such cannibals. They're opportunists.

You know, I'm sure they don't look and say, oh, wow, that was Marty. You know, it's just an opportunity to fill their beaks. And survival at its basic. The cub thing, though, is really creepy. It is. It is. I don't know. I don't know what started that with bears.

But, I mean, it's a sure bet. In an area where the caribou may not have migrated out early enough. And when the bears wake up, they're fairly sluggish. They walk around like drunkards. Their muscles are atrophied. And there's not a lot of food but it's a sure bet that the mothers with cubs tend to wake up later so they just go in dig it out and it's an opportunity for food still it's just so crazy that an animal would almost instinctively and naturally cannibalize it is you know i mean from a human's perspective it's it's

it's a little creepy but from an animal perspective if you want to survive you're going to find what food's available but it seems like they're one of the rare animals that cannibalizes on a regular basis like that is that's a staple i don't know about that if you've ever had a kid that had a gerbil as a pet. Oh, that's true. Yeah, that's true. I actually had hamsters and they ate the babies. We had to watch it and we're like, what the? But they had a disease, though, called wet tail.

There's some disease that hamsters get. When the babies get a disease, the mother will eat the baby. But our cute little hamster that we love was just chowing on its baby's head. It was like an open coconut i was like what the fuck is wrong with fluffy jesus christ bloody mess inside the hamster cage but i think that was more like i said because they were sick it wasn't like she was really hungry she had plenty of hamster food yeah i don't know i don't know either i'm just guessing but it's just it's one of the weird things about bears like bears particularly that they will yeah they will survive at any cost yeah

and they actually as you said they actually go out looking for the cubs yeah the boars that wake up early and marty actually the bear that i mentioned earlier she is old enough that uh she acts a lot like a boar a boar is a male bear and a sow is a female and uh old as she is she has she digs her dens where she's going to get hit with the water to wake her up first and she'll do the same thing wow she'll go out looking for cubs yep whoa yeah jesus when i was in alberta the uh the camp that i was at, the guy who was there, this guy John, his son, saw a bear kill the cub, attack this female, kill the cub, and then ate half of it, left, and the female came back and ate the rest of her cub. Yeah. And he was like, wow, that's a first.

I've never seen one eat their own cub. But I guess once it's dead it just becomes meat yeah we watched these bears go at it too it was crazy watching these like ultimate fighting championship of bears they just started going to battle because the male kept trying to come into camp and the female would send her bear her cubs up the tree and try to chase off the male and he would deal with it for a little bit and they would come back in and then they would start fighting and they were standing on two legs and going at it it's amazing to see even the wolves or the wolverines now you know i mean i've

seen a wolverine now and when i say wolverine yeah they're uh they're like a badger mine are about three and a half four foot at the shoulders 120 pounds but i've seen them take on grizzlies and come out on top that's a big wolverine yeah so the wolverines up by me and even the wolves um they're considered to have they call it a throwback to the mackenzie river breed and they're averaging about 200 250 pounds the wolves yeah i used to have state record for the state of alaska on a trapped wolf uh it was 9'6", nose to tail, and I had it in Kavik, you know, in the dining hall. 9'6". So the wolves I'm dealing with are not these little tiny shih tzu things.

You know, they are shih tzu things. Wow, that's crazy. And you get in like a pack of 20 plus that are that are actually taking out a bear yeah usually a wolf will they adjust their pack size according to how much food there is an opportunity there is well there is enough by me that they've actually they never split the pack they're still and i used to say 21 and then the people that do the air censuses you know he called in and he says hey so it's sandy here you know you always you always say 21 wolves and i'm like yeah so what is it 18 it looks like 21 to me and he says no 22 plus pups and i'm like

dude and he says yeah they've actually dug a permanent den now which is unusual they follow their food source so to dig a permanent den shows me that my ecosystem is changing enough that the wolves feel they can stake a territory and stay there. It's not just everything migrates out, you follow it, it comes back in, you follow it. They feel that there is now a good enough food source that they can stay year-round in one place. Besides the time where they chased the bear and the bear brushed up against the tents and you know they took them out how close did they get to you? Yeah pretty close. Back when I first started at Kavik you know it was set up differently different buildings everything but the desk was in the dining hall. I used to live in a corner of the dining hall and so you have a window out here on the wooden end cap and i'm doing the stuff

for work and you just had a feeling something was behind you and i turn around and i'm nose to nose with the big black wolf his head was stuffed right through the window so i go to reach the gun and he just slipped down and ran so so he kind of had a feeling that you were gonna shoot him um or knew that you needed to get the hell out yeah you were making a move that was yeah i was i was doing a shady move so he needed to get out hell out yeah you were making a move that was yeah i was i was doing a shady move so he needed to get out but i don't know how long he was back there and he certainly could have chewed me up but he was as curious about me as i was about him and it seems like if they're making a den and having cut they probably have a steady supply of food yeah fairly

now you know am i on that food group probably do they normally go oh yeah let's find a city and start attacking people no but i'm not a city i'm an individual so um but like when my granddaughter when she first came up there to visit and she was six five or six and every time she got more than 10 foot away here out of the riverbank the big gray wolf would start slinking so i had to tie a rope from her to me and she couldn't get more than 10 foot away and which frustrated her so i took her for a walk down to the old uh fox den where the little babies were and all the little bodies are there and bones are there and and the wolf had gotten in and eaten them and uh she was all bummed out and i turned her around to walk now we had not even two minutes

there and here's a wolf track about this big and i have a picture of her hand next to it and it was right in her footprint and i said okay and she says he is stalking me and i said yeah so what does that tell you i said where is he right now and then her eyes got big and all she sees is brush and i said yeah we need to get the hell out of here you are a scooby snack and you're carrying a gun the entire time you're doing oh yeah yeah you don't go anywhere without a gun nope and when the kids get up there you you know, I teach them with little weapons first. You know, they get a 410 shotgun and a.22 single action, and they learn gun safety. And then, like, my grandson this year, he came up, and for the first time, he got to take down a couple of caribou and feed his family.

You know, I helped him prepare the meat, and he took it back down south. So my granddaughter, though, you know, that's the difference in I have to celebrate who she is, not who I am when I'm with her. After her first year there, I asked her as I was bringing her home. I said, so are you going to come up and visit Nathan, my grandson? He's all booyah about coming back. I said, so do you want to come back up and see Grandma? She said, well, Grandma, you know I love you, right? I'm like, yeah.

She says, but I'm going to go visit Uncle Jesse and Aunt Megan, because they do mani-pedis and they like to shop. They do mani-pedis. So for her, she's a girly girl. Anything sparkly, shiny, and pink is on her hit list. So I told her, I said, well, okay, you can't bum out at your brother when he gets to come up, but when I do take a break, I'll hook you up. We'll go to Laughlin and uh we'll go get

big ass sunglasses drink virgin mai tais and go shopping for dresses and get mani pedis so i have to celebrate who she is not necessarily who i am or who i think she should right well good for you now you live in a place that doesn't have any trees why is that just because miles above the tree line is it is that because it just gets too cold the weather's too harsh like yeah i don't have soil there is no soil you have ice permanently frozen ground you have rocks on top of that maybe a little silt but that's a round rock silt is a round rock it's not soil and so it's very difficult for things to grow and with the growing season and the cold temperatures things grow very slowly so it's just uh it's very difficult for things to grow. And with the growing season and the cold temperatures, things grow very slowly.

So it's just, it's not a climate that trees can grow in. So this is an incredibly inhospitable environment to a lot of animals. So why do animals live up there? Like what keeps them coming back? No matter where you are on the planet, whether it be a form of bacteria, look at an asteroid. You've got bacteria and viruses that grow. Why?

Who knows? Life finds a way. Wow. And life finds a way 200 miles above the Arctic Circle. Yeah. I just, I have a hard time, I just don't understand what compels you to choose that isolation.

When you can choose an isolation more like in an area where you maybe have more trees. That may be one of my next steps. I mean, when I want a softer, easier way of life, I'll go down where there's trees. Softer and easier is to live in the forest. That's so hilarious. Now, how the hell did they find you for this TV show? The creator of this show also created another show called Flying Wild Alaska. And I used those pilots to fly for me.

And so I appeared on a couple of those episodes. Sarah Palin also did a show and she came out there to hunt. And now I already had a family out there at the time. It was very early in the hunting season, not a lot of animals around, so I flung her and a little plane further out because I had an 8- and a 10-year-old girl that were hunting for the first time out there. But they had seen me do these other shows, so when he created the Life Below Zero concept,

he called and he says, I've got this idea. Do you want to do it? And they came out and I said, well, I never do anything scripted, period. I don't want to hear how you think it'd look cool and go do it yourself. I mean, there's enough natural stuff that happens. That's what we stick to. And that's what the show does is it's, I mean, if we swear and go psycho, I mean, that shows it on TV. If we pooch it and don't stock enough of something, well, it's going to show that. Or if you get hurt or whatever.

So anyways, they did the sizzle reel and asked me, and I said, all right, as long as you don't ever ask me to do something stupid. Did you have any reservations about exposing yourself like this, about putting yourself on television and about showing this lifestyle? I don't have any reservations about showing what I do. There are some things, you know, privacy is privacy, and I do expect a certain amount of it, and I'm certainly, I treasure my alone time, so I can sometimes get an attitude about sharing that. There is a trade-off. You know, for me, doing the show and the premise that it does it on, one of the cool things for me is, you know, later my number is going to be up you know i've looked all over there's no expiration date i can find i just simply know it's coming now i may not ever

get to meet my great-grandchildren but if they want to know who i was pop in a dvd they see who i really was not who they thought i was so that's a pretty cool trade-off for me. Occasionally, there is some unique territory that comes with being in a social setting. There are, go to some of these sites, and I've had people send me emails, why don't you just die? I hope a bear does eat you. It's like, oh, thanks. Well, whenever people have access, just any kind of access to people,

there's going to be a certain amount of shitheads that are going to do things like that. For me, there's far more people that are positive, curious, and it's cool to touch this kind of a lifestyle. Some people romanticize the Grizzly Adams thing, and this is a way for them to experience it without having to actually outrun a bear yeah yeah that's how i feel about that show i i don't have a desire to live a subsistence lifestyle but i i really enjoy watching all these guys do it and you do it and but you're the very you're very different than anybody else on the show because everybody else in the show they live

in a place where there's like woods and they have a house and like you like i said you're the gangster of the gangsters like they're all pretty gangster they're all like you know there's everybody there's a unique set of challenges for each and every group yeah it's just such a weird way to live life and i think there's a trend that's going on right now where a lot of people feel a bit disenchanted with urban life. And have you seen the Werner Herzog documentary, Happy People? No. It's called Happy People, Life on the Taiga, A Year on the Taiga, the Taiga River in Siberia. And it's about these guys who are just hunters and trappers, and they live this subsistence lifestyle in siberia and they're

incredibly happy they're always joking around and smiling and laughing and that's one thing maybe on the series you don't get to see i'm a really big goofball and i laugh a lot and i dance a lot and i but you do by yourself though yeah yeah well there's there's a lot of footage because every time they do a time lapse i I, oh, what are you doing? Oh, that's been done for a little while, we're just letting it run out. Well, I go out there and I do these songs and dances, and there's one really good video that they did. But, you know, I swear too much, so it can't go on in the air. Why don't they do an internet version?

Yeah, yeah. Like, put uncensored clips, give it a little warning so you know when you click on it Yeah, I'm pretty goofy, it's like me, you know, for the hunting sequence Because, you know, for me, any of us when we go out hunting and there's a camera right behind you You know, the very first episodes were learning experiences for us all You know, I'm out there trying to get the ptarmigan And they're all flying away, flying away And I'm, you know, bitches, You know, what the hell are they doing?

Well, I turn around. Here's a six-foot-something guy in a bright blue outfit going, dude, there are no six-foot blueberries in the winter out here. Can you fucking get it down? You know? And so we've all learned. But so for the hunting sequence, me and my hilarity, you know, I went and got Cornish game hens. And, you know, what kind of a trail do they leave? You know, big sludge and the thing.

So I have this whole thing. Where are they found? On the shelf. hens and uh you know what kind of a trail do they leave you know big sludge and the thing so i i have this whole thing where are they found on the shelf so i did this whole hilarious sequence of uh you know hunting the cornish hens oh and uh but you know i mean all of us have a unique set of challenges part of the challenge is still being in love with your lifestyle at the end of the day there's just i think the cure to this sort of aimless life that a lot of people find themselves in when they're stuck in a cubicle, they're working for a company, the end of the day, they just go to sleep, they get up again, they have to do it all over again. It doesn't feel like they're connected to what they're doing or it doesn't feel like

they have a passion for what they're doing. And then they see people that are living the subsistence lifestyle and it has this romantic quality to it, this sort of throwback. Well, you know, the society today, both people are going to have to go out and work. They're going to have to work a lot of hours, are not raising their own children, and they're eking out enough money just to pay the electric and the water, and do it all over again. Are you living life, or are you just getting through it?

And is that the fault of the government is that the you know i mean are you over governed i mean where is the break where's the profit margin on the companies gonna fall down short enough so that the money a family makes you get your two weeks vacation you go play in the woods with your kids right now people can't do that so i think these shows go look you know there people were governed by the same law we're just a little lawless about it yeah i think the over competitive nature of a lot of people has led us to all agree to this really ridiculous life where you're working 50 plus hours a week and you don't really have a life outside of work well i can't imagine having to set my alarm clock

and punch a clock for somebody else anymore you know i don't even well i know i own a watch i don't know where i put it i lost it a few years ago um but for me in the winter you know i know when i get my first sunset again in late august i know i'm about a month before i don't see people and then i don't even worry about the clock. I wake up when I'm not tired. I go to sleep when I'm tired. If I'm hungry, I eat. If I don't expend a lot of calories, then I'm not hungry. I don't take it in.

What do you do to entertain yourself all throughout the dead of the winter? Snow is the gift that keeps giving. You can always dig and move snow. Try to keep the paths open. The outhouse is a quarter mile away from where I'm at. What? When you've got to go, you need to open you know the outhouse is a quarter mile away from where i'm at when you've got to go you need to you know wait a minute lord forbid you get the trots because you got a long way to go and you could be in a blizzard wait a minute your outhouse is a quarter

of a mile away from a mile away from my door that's insane so every time you go you have to go a quarter mile yep that's i mean i when nobody's there i mean i can just go outside drop my drawers and take care of business i can get a five gallon bucket and do it there because who's watching i can walk around naked all day long and the windows open you know i mean if that's what i want to do um but i'm setting the tone of my life not somebody else why is the outhouse so far well they can i'm not allowed it's a protected ecosystem i can't dig a hole in the ground and have you go in it because human waste is considered potentially hazardous people take chemicals they take drugs they do whatever so it has to be in a bin that

is collected which i then have to separate the solids and the liquids and burn it to its lowest ash it can have an odor that some people don't like therefore you don't want it right next to the dining hall but a quarter mile is really far not when the next city's 500 miles away it's all relative right but when it's a hundred below zero then i can always grab a bucket and do it in a bucket you know, I understand. Yeah, I mean, you just adjust to your own lifestyle. And you don't mind in the summer walking 100, you know, whatever it is, how many hundred yards? How many hundred yards is a quarter of a mile?

Well, a quarter of a mile is 5,000 and chump change, so you got, what, 1,200 to 1,500 foot that you're going to go, so 500 yards? Yeah. No, I don't mind that. Why would I? I got a leg cannon on you know something jumps out at me i'm gonna jump back a leg cannon yeah what do you like a 44 mag or something i've got a couple of 44 mags some have shorter barrels some have longer barrels and i just got a 454

pistol so with a chest harness there's something i'm going to be doing here in the near future where i felt i needed something a little bigger a little closer to the chest because i'm gonna need hands free what are you doing can't tell you is it a part of the show yes okay well i'll tune in and i'll watch i'll learn from that do you do you anticipate like do you have a plan of like how long you want to stay in this place or you just merely like by your feelings for me personally no i don't plan uh you know when i like i say raven personality there may be something awesome that i find out about or i see or i want to do or maybe i want to go gold panning for a while i don't limit myself my my vision is my own not anybody else's but because i am only there through the grace of having a lease with the state and a

profitable business if that turns around or the state or anybody else says look there's been a land swap it's no longer owned by the state these people don't want you there it may be out of my control when i leave so and that's something that you know i have reconcile. I'm also not a spring chicken. Not that I'm the cryptkeeper, but my age and my body is starting to wear down. So I need to read the signs. Right, you need to plan for the future. Yeah, I mean, life happens. What if I can't see well anymore? Then hunting my own meat probably isn't going to be real successful.

What if I break another couple bones in my body? I just had some more foot surgery. I've got to have the feet worked on again from when I broke them. I had a difficult time walking this summer. So I had one procedure done, and I'm going to have a couple of more. What if that doesn't come back? Are the bones, just do they heal in a proper way? I have a lot of scar tissue.

The tendons reacted poorly. The level of pain, I mean, I did it for a while, but I was barely, you know, walking. So they did, I went down just to see the doctor. He ended up doing surgery on both feet. So that was kind of a trip. But he wants to do some more procedures to try and help the situation. If it doesn't get better, I have to change what I'm doing. And then you also have the downtime after surgery where you can't do anything for a while. I didn't take downtime. I couldn't afford it. So I just dealt with it. Wow. This time I'm going to try to give myself two or three days of downtime, but life keeps happening whether I like it to or not. I can't let all of the chores go.

I have to, whether I like it or hate it, I have to keep fueling my heat tank. If I don't have fuel or oil in the heat tank, I don't have heat. The longest I've gone without heat up there is two months, and I just cubbied up in all my winter gear and waited for a fuel delivery. Two months? Mm-hmm. And what time of the year was this? That was in January, February, the coldest time for us.

And it was not pleasant, and I didn't enjoy it, and I don't necessarily ever want to do it again. If I have to, I have to, but I don't want to, but you don't know what's going to be thrown at you. What if a blizzard sends something, you know, somebody dropped a pop can on the tundra, and I don't know about it, in a 80, 100 mile an hour breeze, that's going to become a missile that might take out my tent. So I have to have several places, another tent that I can go to and live in. That gets taken out, a trailer that I can live in. And you also have to be able to get to those tents.

So you have to be able to make a path. I tie ropes. Wow. But to get through the eight foot deep snow. You tie ropes. You can tie it to the roof line. You can tie it to the bottom. you can tie it to the bottom and you wear snowshoes and just walk on the top of it uh you know when when an emergency happens you

don't get to pick what you're wearing well how do you get through eight foot deep of snow though it depends on the type of snow if it's hard pack you walk on top of it if it's soft you swim wow so swim through the snow how much has changed since you've been doing this television show? I mean, has the attention of the show changed your lifestyle in any way? Has it changed how you, you interact with the people that are coming into your camp? Um, no, I mean, I am who I am. Uh, you know, I smoke cigars, swill single malt, and swear a lot. It doesn't change who I am. The basic needs of the camp are set.

Now, some people, I don't have a lot of people that come in just because of the show. Kavik is extremely remote. The dollar value it takes to get to me precludes some people from being able to do it um but there has to be some crazy dude out there that's in love with you they're watching the show is that what you're getting that's my gal yeah there was uh there was one that showed up this year and actually for a couple of years i've been trying to set up you know and it was you know bringing the family out to hunt whatever and then it was like oh they can't make it can i still come out well yeah it's gonna cost this much you know assign their room to them i'm busy working come in and this person had moved into i call my personal building the twinkie it's

long yellow and filled with goodness right so i come in and here's this dude laying in my bed and uh has decided that you know we're in love and and he had his whole thing going on in his head and he got very upset when i told him to get the hell out and he laid hands on me put his hands here and was holding the knife so i had the gun on my hip and put it in his chest and said you just brought a knife to a gunfight you lose what so i had military people some of the seals were there and they held the guy i called the plane and kicked him out that's it just kick him out yeah why don't you feed him to a bear seems like that'd be the best way to get rid of him i wouldn't want that guy coming back

fuck that no no well all of the knife yeah all of the bush companies have a no-no list and they know this person or that person or this nobody flies in unless they ask me right and then and the troopers know that should i feel threatened i i i'm not gonna shoot for the kneecaps i I'm going to take them out. Does anybody keep tabs on this fella? I don't know. That's a bad human being. You should have just fed him to the bears. Yeah, you know, that's not my gig is just getting them out.

Yeah. You know, it's like anything. You neutralize the threat, kick them out. Chances are, I mean, they've got to live with themselves and they're probably not going to want to embarrass themselves again some people have an amazing ability to distort reality in their head to the point where it's not living with themselves the rest of the world's i get interesting emails sometimes and uh men in prison seem to find me awfully sexy but um and none of them they're all innocent,

I'll tell you that much. I bet. They're like, if I just get out, I could live with her up in the middle of nowhere. Yeah, there's one. He's done 27 years of four consecutive life sentences for killing his wives. He didn't do it.

How many wives? Four wives. He killed all four of them? Well, he didn't do it, obviously. He's been framed. Yeah, he's been framed. But... Clearly.

He and I belong together And I'm like Whatever You know it's Well just don't marry him And I think you'll be good You know Conjugal visits Probably not gonna happen

Yeah Don't marry it Just say listen You seem to be Killing wives Key to this relationship Let's just keep it platonic Do you

You know You could do your own show Like really easily. Like, you know, and I enjoy the show Life Below Zero, but you're such a powerful personality. I mean, I guarantee you there's a lot of people that are just like, fuck all the rest of these people. I want to find out what Sue's up to all day.

You're just such a very rare human. Yeah, that's probably a good thing for some people. That you're rare yeah well i don't know why not i mean we could be all right with a bunch of you running around i mean it probably wouldn't happen but you know have you thought about doing your own version or another show that just kind of entirely focuses on you you know that's not something i would think about um that would be something that a network might present they must be like looking at you and realizing that this is this incredible

personality that's attached i know you probably don't like to think about yourself that way but no i like you know people say there are some people that say oh my gosh you're a star and i go no i'm just a fat chick you know living on the tundra you know i i mean uh don't put yourself on a pedestal unless you like falling from high places. Sooner or later, a honey boo-boo is around the corner and you're done. So if you put yourself on a pedestal, that's a pretty big drop. Yeah. No, I agree.

But I just think you obviously enjoy some aspects of being on the show. Otherwise, you would have told them to fuck off. I do occasionally. We all go through our diva moments. So you do kick them out sometimes we have butted heads a few times and um i have i call it putting them in time out and i just lock myself in the in the twinkie and i don't come out you know um but they've they've been very very respectful occasionally it's too much social time for me and i have to i have to get my alone time just to get it back in perspective and how much time do they spend filming do they

only come in the summer are they only there for a couple months out of the year no throughout the year because if you notice there are winter episodes and then there are summer episodes so throughout the year um they're very respectful. They call and they say, hey, what are you up to for, I don't know, until like, you know, from now until the 25th of November? Well, I'm going to do this, this, and this, and this is going to happen, and fuck, I didn't get that done. Well, hey, do you think we can come and cover this and this and this?

And I'll go, no, I want to do this by myself because I might bonehead it. Don't need that on the air. But, you know, I go, yeah, we can do this. That would be cool yeah you can tag along and so they're they're respectful of asking me what am i doing do i mind having company and and let's get it together so there's no real set shooting schedule it's essentially just they decide like you guys let's say kate and andy may be doing something you know everybody else's location is vastly different temperatures than I am.

I'm way up there. So my winter is much, much longer. My freeze-up is much, much different. They may break up before I do. So, I mean, we all have to be given the respect of our individual areas, and the show does that. That's amazing. Well, listen, you've got to get out of here. I know you've got some other stuff to do, but thank you so much for doing this i really appreciate it i

really enjoy you on the show and i just think you're awesome thank you so much love talking to you okay thank you so much for the caribou i would love to i would love to and everybody you could follow sue she's on twitter it's sue akins on twitter and the show is also on twitter life below zero tv thank you so much that was awesome It's Sue Aikens on Twitter, and the show is also on Twitter, LifeBelowZeroTV. Thank you so much. Thank you. That was awesome. Thank you.