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JESSI: All right, got my rifle.
CHRIS: I've got seven rounds in each mag.
The last time we went out, we were just carrying your revolver.
That's what we had as a side arm.
I feel a lot more comfortable with 320 grains of awesome.
This is a really big bear.
So, we're going out heavy.
You got a couple mags, you've got a long gun.
Jess and I had decided to try to walk up to our trapping area.
Totally not a care in the world.
Dog's having a really good time.
Jessi and I are singing.
Uh, we round a corner and I look up and there is the
biggest damn black bear I've ever seen.
And we make eye contact.
He started raking at the ground and he's snorting at us.
As we start to backpedal away, the faster we move,
the faster this bear moves.
He's about 50 feet from us and just tracking us through the woods.
The dog's dancing back and forth trying to keep the bear at bay.
Fear's coursing through our veins.
We're finally close to home and the bear had no fear
coming all the way up to our doorstep.
That means this bear's been here before.
I know that bear's lurking and watching me from the wood line.
I know he's out there watching me.
We're gonna have to do something about this bear.
Yeah, I'm done just looking over my shoulder.
He's the biggest predator out here,
and right now I feel like safety is paramount.
Honestly, I hope he's denned up for the winter.
JESSI: All right.
CHRIS: Let's get everything loaded up.
NARRATOR: When bears are supposed to be hibernating,
an encounter with the predator is cause for concern.
In order to protect themselves and their property,
Chris and Jessi must make sure the bear is not a threat.
But with Chris' recent leg injury limiting his mobility,
they need to exercise extreme caution while
going on the defense.
CHRIS: If this gets out of control, and he is coming toward us,
we're gonna have to stand our ground,
no matter how close he gets.
Keep your eyes on the bear.
Don't turn your back to him.
Um, we've got plenty of ammo and this isn't just our,
our average hunt.
Um, we're not just going out after food.
I mean, we are protecting our territory.
This is our life out here and, um,
I wanna defend my house and I wanna go out and show the bear
that we also mean business.
JESSI: Now I know he's there.
We're going with a purpose.
CHRIS: You feel good about this?
JESSI: Feel better than last time.
CHRIS: All right.
KALEB: This is a spectacular place to live,
but there are powerful forces at play that just don't care
if you survive or not.
Well, hey! Guys look at this.
These are old fox tracks.
Piper!
BRITTANY: Think she got the scent?
KALEB: I think she did.
BRITTANY: Let's go find a place to put that rabbit snare up.
ELOVIE: Yeah.
NARRATOR: In the isolated town of McCarthy, Alaska,
Brittany and Kaleb Rowland have chosen to bring up
their children, Gilbert and Elovie,
away from the commotion of the city.
But with a tough Alaskan winter on the horizon,
homeschooling means more than just
reading, writing, and arithmetic.
BRITTANY: Living out here, we have different things that we
need to know how to do.
But we're now going to work on snares.
If we lived in the city, there would be other skill sets that
we would need, such as learning the bus system,
and out here we have a set of rural skills;
getting wood, getting a fire started,
getting our food, like things like that.
Everyone has to learn how to survive in the atmosphere that they're in.
GILBERT: I have a cool idea.
KALEB: What?
GILBERT: Set a snare for if Piper goes along,
he'll get trapped.
KALEB: We catch Piper? GILBERT: Yeah.
KALEB: That's maybe not such a cool idea.
So Gilbert, we wanna make a trail.
And animals naturally like to follow a trail 'cause it's
easier than beatin' through the deep snow,
so if we have a trail, they'll follow it,
and then if you have a snare in the middle of your trail,
they'll walk through your snare.
So, what we wanna do is we wanna dangle a snare right
here in this little hole right here and the animal will come
by it and it'll kinda skirt these branches here and it'll
go right through our snare.
BRITTANY: What's your first step for setting a snare?
KALEB: The first thing we need to do is secure our snare to
that tree right there.
BRITTANY: Okay.
KALEB: The snare's all wrapped up.
Who wants to unwrap it?
We're also gonna get a little bit of wire to secure that
snare to the tree.
Here, hold my wire for me, please.
We wanna go up higher on the tree like this so that it
wants to lift the animal off the ground.
Look at this, Gilbert.
We're gonna feed this through the loop here.
It need a little bit of wire.
Secure this to the tree.
Now it's stuck to the tree, it cannot come off.
Now we'll take a couple sticks,
and we'll just kinda use 'em to funnel the animal into the snare.
You guys wanna put some sticks in?
Being a father is about teaching your children how to
survive and live in the world.
ELOVIE: Now I'll try.
KALEB: All right, Ellie, you get to pretend to be a rabbit.
Here in the bush there is a lot you gotta teach 'em.
One of the most important things out here is
how to survive in the woods.
So learning how to do that at a young age is the best way to do it.
BRITTANY: That seems pretty simple.
KALEB: It is fairly simple.
ELOVIE: I hope we get one.
KALEB: All right, let's get outta here so they don't get
spooked by our scent.
On to the next thing.
MICHAEL: Every time I repurpose something that's
used and old, I am not feeding myself and my hours of labor
and work to other people's systems.
You gotta give the middle finger to the middle man,
and this is the way I'm doin' it.
This right here might not look like much.
This is an old unused building.
It's been vacant for years.
This has been torn down.
It was a nice gambrel roof building.
And gambrel roof is like a barn-style building.
I've been collecting used and reclaimed building materials
that I either got for free or gifted to me.
I have a few more I gotta buzz in to bite-size manageable pieces,
and I'm gonna take all this,
transport this, uh, half an hour up the highway and then,
uh, about a mile off the highway at my basecamp.
Try to reclaim and use everything,
don't let anything go to waste,
and that frugality will keep you moving forward,
keep the bills paid.
I'm gonna feel that in the mornin'.
The cabin kit from hell, and soon be my new home.
Living in a shipping container with two inches of insulation
is not really a permanent structure.
That was supposed to be temporary,
like, four years ago.
I'm gonna actually have a cabin.
It's gonna be real warm and cozy.
All right.
Home sweet home.
I think.
It's gonna come together nice.
Looks like crap, but it's beautiful to me.
I'm just about ready to get all this stuff into a fairly
quaint, cute little cabin that I'll call home.
Snow is just making everything crazy.
It's gonna be a little bit of a challenge puttin' all these
dilapidated pieces of building back together in the snow,
but, hey, winter is here, I gotta put this thing together,
and I'll put it together as quick as I can because the
snow just keeps fallin' every day.
It's a half a foot now, who's to say what it's gonna be like
a week from now?
Could be two feet of snow.
And most normal people don't build in the snow.
You build before first snow.
So It's gonna be a little hectic.
But you know what?
If there's a will, there is a way.
ALEX: You don't wanna learn everything the hard way 'cause
sometimes that could kill you.
You know, it's always good to think like,
"What can go wrong? What can go wrong? What can go wrong?"
Every once in a while we get a big wind storm that comes
through here, and, uh, if a tree is kinda old,
rotten, or dead, it can break, it can fall.
This birch tree, the top of it broke off in a wind storm and,
uh, smashed half of my outhouse here.
If I had been in the outhouse at the time,
it probably would've killed me.
I'll need to build a new outhouse right now.
I'm just squattin' in the woods which is,
uh, not the funnest way to poop.
Before I do that though, there's a lot of other trees
that could also be a similar danger.
If they break, they could smash my cabin and crush me.
That would be probably the biggest disaster I ever faced out here.
So I think it's time to go and cut these down.
This is my biggest tree.
It weighs several tons.
If it comes through my cabin,
it's not gonna glance off the side,
it's gonna smash straight through.
Could most definitely kill me if it fell on me.
Cuttin' trees is somethin' I do a lot.
It's somethin' I'm pretty good at.
But I've never had to cut a tree where I have to be
extremely careful about which direction it falls.
In this case, if I don't control it perfectly,
it could smash my cabin, and then I'm really gonna be in trouble.
Okay.
My come-alongs are set up.
Now, all I gotta do is cut my notches.
It's a good thing I'm cuttin' this down.
The core of this tree is rotten.
The next windstorm could've been it.
Seeing the destruction of my outhouse makes me realize
how vulnerable I am.
Now any time there's a wind and the trees are swaying,
and I hear them cracking, it's anxiety-inducing for me.
This is kinda like nature giving me a warning shot here,
uh, letting me know that I'm not important, saying,
"Hey, you better, you know, get your head on straight,
'cause I'm not playing around with you."
Okay. It might be a little soon,
but I'm gonna go ahead and give a tug.
If it starts comin', I gotta run.
It's movin'.
Oh! That's not good.
ALEX: That's not good. It's hung up in this tree.
This is dangerous. It's not good.
Uh, when a tree hangs up like this,
it's kind of a problem.
The obvious thing would be like,
"Oh, well, I'll just cut the tree that it's holding on,"
but then I'm cuttin' the tree and it's gonna be comin' down,
uh, right where I'm standing.
There's some safer options I can try first.
The good news is I dropped the tree away from my cabin,
the way I wanted it to.
Now, the only danger that remains is to me.
If I'm not smart, if I'm not cautious,
uh, this is one of those kind of predicaments that I could
take it from bad to much worse.
So, that's why I just wanna be extra cautious.
The first thing that I gotta do is pull it off this stump.
(bleep).
Stump's coming towards me and it falls and,
uh, nothing.
Today seems like one of those days where things aren't gonna
go my way, but that's okay because I got a plan B.
I'll need my rope, I'll need my come-along.
I'll just start tuggin' on my fallen tree and dragging it
off of the tree that it's being held up on.
You know, I'm cuttin' down a tree that weighs several tons.
I'll do my best to control it, but I can't expect everything
to go exactly how I want it to go.
If I crush my leg or crush my lungs out here with a
heavy tree, that's pretty much it.
I'm not gonna crawl outta here to safety.
I'm just gonna lay there and bleed until I die.
(bleep) piece of (bleep)!
It's not budging at all.
I've tried my best to do a simpler,
safer option, uh, but it's just not working.
So I think my only option left is to cut the tree
that's holding it.
I just gotta just do this carefully 'cause basically
I'm standing underneath the tree and cutting the thing
that's holding it.
So, this is about as, as stupid dangerous as it gets.
(chopping).
(cracking).
Ah-ha!
I thought it was coming for me for a second.
Uh, the tree is down where I wanted it to go.
It didn't crush my cabin, it didn't crush me and, uh,
this is one down out of three and it got a little hairy.
Hopefully, the other two go better,
but, um, yeah, I'm just gonna collect up my tools,
try to get a good dinner tonight, rest up,
and tomorrow will be another kinda long challenging day.
BRITTANY: Sometimes, I think people think I'm a lot more
tough than I am because of where I live.
But, I'm such a city girl.
Adapt or die, right?
Kaleb, is this the tree?
KALEB: I think we can make this work.
So, guys, do you know why we picked this tree?
GILBERT: Why? ELOVIE: Why?
KALEB: Because it's a nice, big, wide spruce tree.
There's dead stuff like this all around it.
So, we'll be able to grab stuff like this branch here to
add to our fire.
BRITTANY: Can you guys help us with that?
ELOVIE: No. BRITTANY: Yeah.
KALEB: Today, I wanna teach my kids how to build a shelter,
build a warming fire.
I want to arm them with the tools necessary to go out in
the woods on their own.
That way, if they do wander off,
they're able to take care of themselves and not get into a
hopeless situation.
Here's some, Gil. Gilbert.
Take these and put 'em in the pile.
BRITTANY: So, Ellie, you wanna know something interesting?
ELOVIE: What?
BRITTANY: Because of where we live,
we don't have a school for you to go to, right?
Well, this is something that we can call school.
We're out here learning survival skills.
So, it's called the school of life.
Look at all that!
KALEB: Let's start gettin' these green cottonwoods here
and we'll kinda make a wall from that tree around to here.
BRITTANY: Okay.
KALEB: And then we'll build a fire about right here,
and it'll kinda reflect heat into the shelter.
ELOVIE: I am tired!
BRITTANY: That's okay.
You can be tired and still do it.
This is an all-day school session, kids.
When the family and I get to go out together,
we're not only creating memories,
we're teaching our children things that will hopefully
carry them as they grow.
And I think that's really great that we can wrap up
learning things and family memories.
KALEB: Now, let's light a fire.
And we just kinda nurse it along until it's got a little
more strength, then we start putting a little bit bigger
stuff on it.
BRITTANY: I'm really glad that we get to learn this from daddy.
That way, if, God forbid, you two are ever separate from us,
I know that you have a little bit of an idea of how to be
okay until we find you.
I think that's really cool.
Can you guys say, "Thank you, daddy, for teaching us?"
BOTH: Thank you, dad, for teaching us.
KALEB: You betcha, guys.
JESSI: It's just the outdoors, right?
Just living out in Alaska.
It's just the Cosna.
You're either gonna be the hunted or you're gonna be the hunter.
CHRIS: There's just nothing for animal prints.
Kinda surprised.
We're constantly battling to keep our homestead safe.
Always somethin'. This time it's a bear.
As we start entering into this really thick brush,
we have to really keep our eyes out.
He chased us off last time back through this way,
uh, so we're definitely gonna be entering his territory and
I'm just really afraid of how dense the brush is,
especially with a little bit of snow on the branches.
Chances are he may be denned up.
But I mean, it's been really warm.
I mean, it's almost raining out today.
Uh, so it's likely he's still awake.
JESSI: Looks like somebody's been eating everything, huh?
CHRIS: Yeah. Let's keep after him.
If he's out there, he already knows we're here.
A typical bear hunt, we're sittin' up on a ridge and
we're watching bears come out on to a lake.
We've got 300 to 500 yards distance.
We feel safe, we're covert, we're up in the woods,
but this is different.
We're on that bear's terrain.
So if you look out, it is super dense woods out there.
He could be standing 100 yards out there watching me
and I wouldn't see him.
There's a lot of tall brush around here and heavy woods.
Once you get a snowfall on top of it,
it becomes harder to see through.
All the trees start to bend over.
Uh, about six feet off the ground is, like,
my blind spot, and that's about how tall that bear is.
He's gonna be hiding underneath that cover of
snow and branches and everything that's bent over
is perfectly hiding him.
They'll just lay down like a dog waitin' for you to come
home, hidin' behind the door.
These guys are sneaky, they're quiet,
and they know what they're doing.
I'm worried about this guy.
JESSI: This, for me, is putting me on edge.
As we're walking through the trees and it's just building
up this anxiety that's inside of me.
This bear could literally be watching us at any moment.
I need to stay sharp, I need to stay strong out here.
CHRIS: Making it really tough with the fresh snow and the
rain, I can't see any prints anywhere.
I feel like I'm chasing a ghost.
Hang on, hang on, hang on.
JESSI: Freaking myself out or somethin'.
You know what I mean?
CHRIS: Do you see something move?
JESSI: This tree's cracking.
CHRIS: Okay. Whoo, that got me!
JESSI: The wind is still hitting the trees and these
trees are huge and they're rubbing together and they're
making these cracking noises.
And every cracking noise, you know,
could be this bear stepping on a branch.
CHRIS: Here's the river and the riverbank's that way,
and I can start seeing it through here.
There's a big ridge that goes up and bears love to den up
on those ridges.
Let's keep moving.
I'm on high alert here.
MICHAEL: Think about how life could be if you're not feeding
all these expensive, unsustainable fabricated
ways of life.
Think about how nice that would be.
All right. Another load.
So I've been building up all of these dilapidated building materials.
And so I have about 200 yards to go through the woods here.
This is not enough snow to get a good packed trail,
but it's enough to make things slippery and to make things difficult.
We made a transition into early winter,
and this happened a lot quicker than last season.
I thought maybe I would be able to get these pieces down
the hill on four-wheel drive, but I don't wanna risk sliding
sideways and T-boning my truck into a solid birch tree.
And so, I'm gonna use, uh, a skid sled to start movin' all
these house pieces down the hill.
And so I'm gonna build this skid sled real quick so that
I could skid all these pieces 200 yards down to my building site.
The standard skid sled is still a very useful device
all over Alaska.
And then I have this 26-year-old snow machine
that's been sittin' for a long time,
not worth nothin', runs like crap.
I'm gonna tune that thing up.
Whoo! That was a knot.
And then I'll pull this sled down the hill.
Easier said than done. But you know what?
You gotta make do with what you got.
All right.
Now, I got everything set up on this skid sled.
I'm gonna go ahead and lash it.
You know, I'm taking cordage and lashing all the joints together.
Lashing is a very old fashion way of building something to
have flex, and there's a reason for that.
Flexibility in a brittle cold environment,
it will survive a lot better than mechanical fasteners.
If you ain't living with a headlamp on your head all
winter, it pays to have some flood lights.
But right now, this is a pressing moment where
I'm just so close to getting this skid sled done,
and it is my goal to finish this on time.
Look at that, lightin' up the night.
No building project is ever as quick as you envision,
but I gotta keep pushin' forward,
I gotta keep this freight train on schedule.
The temperature swings up here in interior Alaska are crazy
and it's a very dangerous environment,
so I'm gonna finish out this sled strong so that first light,
I can hook this thing up and be ready to go
down that hill.
ALEX: I came out here with almost no planning.
I knew that as long as I was persistent,
I could just kinda get through with grit.
If nature wants to kill me, it'll just kill me.
So this is the, this is the biggest one.
Today's a new day, uh, it's an opportunity to,
uh, do a little better than I did yesterday.
Uh, yesterday, the big tree I fell got hung up.
I don't want a repeat of that 'cause,
uh, not only is it dangerous, it's also just really
frustrating to waste so much time.
So today, I'm gonna, uh, take a little time and,
uh, make sure I got a clear, kinda drop zone for my trees.
It's not gonna get hung up on other trees.
I don't ever cut trees like this because there's
not really any reason to.
It is dangerous, it is sketchy,
it's unpredictable.
But the job's gotta get done one way or another.
This isn't something I can say, "Ahh, forget it!"
Well, then the tree's gonna crush me.
All right. Those are set, they're really tight.
I'm gonna go start cuttin' on it.
This tree, you know, I can just tell,
it don't like me.
You're going down (bleep).
Before you kill me, I'm killing you.
Yeah, I'm a competitive guy.
If something is going against me,
it's you versus me.
I don't care if you're an inanimate object.
I love the tree, I respect the tree,
but he's gotta come down and he's making it a pain in the ass.
(cracking).
Ah-ha!
Better than I expected.
Whoo!
I got a little brief victory here.
I can pat myself on the back, but now it's time to do it all again.
Uh, this time the stakes are higher because my last tree is
one that's leaning directly over my actual cabin.
If this one isn't done perfectly then I stand to
basically lose everything.
Okay.
(chopping).
When I'm taking on a big risk like this,
I just kinda mentally prepare myself for the worst,
and then if the worst case doesn't happen,
then I'm happy.
Oh, but, if you're not comfortable with the worst outcome,
then you shouldn't take the risk in the first place.
I put a little too much tension on it, I think.
I need to give it the finishing pull.
There we go.
Whoa.
o.
Whoa.
Whoo!
That went good.
I got the three biggest danger trees down now.
And they all, it all, it all went good.
I kinda got a double whammy with this one.
I saved my cabin, and also, I got pretty much all of
next winter's firewood.
Just right here waiting for me.
Now, when I'm sleeping, when there's a wind storm,
I don't have to sit there and just keep my fingers crossed
that tonight's not the night that a tree falls on me.
So, you know, it's a moment to, uh,
breathe a big sigh of relief and now I can just
get to work rebuilding my outhouse.
BRITTANY: You want to live out here,
you definitely have to embrace the winter.
Everyone has to learn how to survive in the atmosphere that they're in.
All right.
So kids, you ready to learn something more?
GILBERT: Yeah.
BRITTANY: Do you see how there's smoke going up?
Yeah?
So what you want if you're out in the bush and trying to get
someone's attention, you want to create as much smoke as you
can, because that is going to save your life.
ELOVIE: Like a... KALEB: Yeah.
BRITTANY: And then you see how dad was just shaking it?
That helps create more smoke too.
KALEB: Like flipping an egg in a skillet.
That's the move.
You want to come flip the egg?
GILBERT: Yeah!
BRITTANY: What we really want is a lot of smoke,
that way people know that,
"Hey, we need help! We need help!"
We have smoke. Okay?
GILBERT: Okay.
BRITTANY: Coming from the city,
I definitely have a lot to learn.
Kaleb grew up around a lot of these things,
so he intuitively knows how to do many things.
GILBERT: Whoa!
KALEB: Now we got some smoke!
BRITTANY: Or he was taught at a young age,
and I love that we get to teach our children.
And it's really awesome that I'm learning these things.
KALEB: If you guys, if you guys ever get out in the woods
on your own and you're lost, build a great big fire with
lots and lots of smoke, and someone might fly over and see
it and they'll be able to tell someone where you're at,
and they'll come and rescue you.
GILBERT: Oh.
But then how, because they wouldn't be able to land?
KALEB: They'll tell someone by the radio.
BRITTANY: That's something to consider is,
like, you need to find the places that are the best way
to get rescued, too.
Like, survival is number one, but being found is number two.
All right. Gilbert, what did you learn today?
GILBERT: To survive and...
make shelter and a fire.
BRITTANY: What did you learn about how to light or make smoke?
How to make smoke?
ELOVIE: Shake the fire. BRITTANY: Shake the fire!
ELOVIE: Shake it, shake it! BRITTANY: Shake it, shake it!
All righty, shall we have some lunch?
BOTH: Yeah!
BRITTANY: Yeah!
MICHAEL: This living within my means,
this developing a rural landscape from scratch,
there is a lot of gain from this pain and that is independence.
All right.
Now I'm just gonna line this thing up and do a little mini load.
I'm gonna take probably a half load right down there.
Bumpy trail, barely a trail, six inches of snow,
200 yards down.
And so, I gotta go slow.
I gotta use a light load.
But it looks clear enough.
I think this is gonna go really well.
All right.
Let's see what we're working with here.
First load down the trail.
Once I get all the pieces down there,
life's gonna be a lot easier,
'cause then I can put together my home.
All right. Here we go!
From sun up to sun down.
I don't mess around.
This is the plan today, moving all this stuff down to the building site.
I don't have enough snow.
I'm hopeful that these first few runs are going well,
but I'm, I'm a little reluctant to be skidding stuff
without enough snow.
But I'm gonna try.
Whoo! First load.
Without issue.
All right. The next loads are only gonna get bigger and crazier.
All right. Here I am on this run.
This is the biggest piece yet.
What the (bleep)?
This skid has collapsed.
Wanting to act a fool.
Rushing a little too much.
This sled (bleep) suck.
MICHAEL: Everything was going good.
This was a great load.
Sometimes when I get to, to working,
I get in that mode and I forget stuff.
Lashings loosen up, the runner just caved on one side.
I'll have to support that some more.
I'm gonna go ahead and prop this up,
get the weight off this side,
and get that runner upright.
And then, I'm gonna scab another piece of wood that
will prevent it from moving that much.
That ought to limit that.
And so, I think that should be the last piece of the puzzle
before this free sled is actually working well for me.
All right.
We'll see if that will limit the flex.
Thinking this might work.
Life is a fine blend of pessimism,
optimism, and realism.
And so, it's up to you how you wanna blend your life.
Just like new, but not really.
For me, I like to be on the most part, realistic.
Optimistically, I would say that this should be the last repair.
Realistically, probably won't be.
Pessimistically, I'd like to say,
"Screw this sled!"
But you can't just throw your hands up in the air and walk away,
'cause Alaska is never gonna change in regards to
how challenging the environment is.
You gotta keep your cool, figure it out,
and keep moving.
All right!
I got a good blend today.
Little bit of optimism.
Sometimes, when you feel like life is so terrible,
you just gotta remind yourself how thankful for life you are.
If you got a full belly, you got warm toes and warm
fingers, and your body still works,
be happy with what you have, get through that problem,
and keep trucking.
Wow.
Did that just happen?
Did I just haul a massive piece of floor with no crazy conundrums?
Did that really just happen?
Dang.
A little bit of adversity, and now everything is just
as smooth as silk.
I'm feeling like a million bucks!
I'm gonna keep hauling loads, man.
Everything up here gets tested by the Alaskan environment.
I can't wait to get all of this stuff up.
Whoo!
Whoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo.
In time, before the real cold, cold spells,
the 40 and 50 below stuff kicks in.
It'll be a nice feeling to jump into a new, cozy home.
But there's still a lot of work to be done before
I get to that point.
ALEX: For us as a species to survive,
we can't think that we're above nature,
because we're not.
It's gonna come back to bite us in the ass in a major way.
This is a shooby magic.
It's gonna be the world's best outhouse.
So today, I'm gonna kinda finish out this whole little
ordeal by rebuilding my outhouse.
So, this is my front and back walls,
kind of like the frame of the house.
And then those two big plywood sheets,
I'll kind of just tack on to either side,
which kind of gives it walls.
And that's basically it.
I could spend, you know, weeks planning the perfect outhouse,
and just make something beautiful,
but what's happening in here is the same either way.
It doesn't got to be pretty.
We're gonna just do this bush-bum style.
Ah, it's not cooperating.
I gotta brace it first.
This is just an exercise in frustration.
If I had somebody here to hold that,
I wouldn't even need to bother with this.
A lot of times, I'll spend as much time just basically
making, like, braces and stuff to hold something that if,
uh, if I had another person, they would just be able to
hold it for me.
So, it kind of like doubles the amount of time you have to
work, which is, uh, the reason I spend half my time cussing.
(grunting).
(bleep).
Piece of (bleep).
Why can I not (bleep) do this?
(bleep) stupid.
Okay.
So that's all braced up.
Now, I can put my walls on.
This is a good quitting point.
It's about to be dark.
I made good progress on this, I just got one wall left,
and then there's a couple small little things I need to
do, but I'll just finish up those last little bits
tomorrow morning.
CHRIS: Out here, it's survival of the fittest.
You live day by day, and you live by the gun.
All right. Head up to that burl.
Now that looks like a den.
JESSI: That looks like a bear den to me, Chris.
CHRIS: Let me see your rifle. I wanna look at that.
That sure looks like a bear den to me, Jess.
JESSI: It's a big old hole.
CHRIS: Yeah, I can see frost hanging.
I'd like to know if he's in there.
He's denned up for the winter.
And I'll have to get closer to really know.
What I'd like you to do is go right out onto this knoll,
and I want you to just cover me.
And I'm gonna go up and around,
and I'm gonna go get a closer look.
I'd really like to know that he's denned up for the winter.
JESSI: Okay.
I'm gonna go straight.
You, uh, you keep an eye while I go up there, okay?
CHRIS: Uh-huh.
JESSI: All right. Here we go.
CHRIS: The first thing I ask Jessi to do is go out onto the
little island that overlooks the bear den.
Let me know, Jess, if you see any movement, okay?
What I want is her having a top view as I walk across this ravine.
I don't want that bear to sneak up on me.
I don't want him having the high ground.
So, with Jessi pointing her rifle directly into the den,
I feel a lot more confident about getting over there.
Oh, I can see the frost hanging down.
I am fearful that there is gonna be a bear in this den.
It's really warm out today.
Chances are if I start stomping around and he's not
sleeping, he's gonna come out.
I'm gonna cross.
As I head down and work my way across this small ravine,
my heart is thumping.
I'm getting really close to a bear.
And not just any bear, a big, aggressive bear.
Oh, man.
It's definitely a den.
I'm gonna have to get closer.
Oh, man.
I'm gonna go back this way and go up and around, okay?
I don't want him to come out.
I just wanna see if he's in there.
Now's the time to be quiet.
This bear den is a hollow hole underneath frozen ground.
Every step I make is gonna echo through the chamber of
this bear, and I'm just trying to be as quiet as I can.
This is it.
I might be face to face with the biggest predator out here.
There's a (bleep) bear down here.
There's something in there.
The grass is moving.
Oh, man. (bleep).
Oh, man.
I can hear something shifting inside,
weight being moved and sat down.
(bleep).
There is a big bear in here.
Don't wanna wake you up, buddy.
It's in there.
I'm just gonna back away.
Oh, man.
There's definitely a bear in that den.
The best bet now is to just back off, walk away.
Let him hibernate for the winter.
I don't wanna fight that bear this close.
I don't see a big plug sitting in here that says he's in for
the winter.
This bear could come out at any moment.
He's just getting comfortable.
He's getting ready to ride out this cold winter.
But like me, he's still hungry and he might be coming out to hunt.
I don't want to mess with his den anymore.
I'm hoping he just stays put.
Just gonna back away.
Phew. Man. That was intense.
JESSI: Come up here.
CHRIS: It feels good to know this bear is inside its den,
but with warm weather like this,
he could come out at any point.
So until we start getting really cold weather,
I'm still gonna be looking over my shoulder.
JESSI: Wow.
CHRIS: There's a bear in that den.
He's trying to get comfortable to hibernate.
Hopefully, he stays in there.
JESSI: You didn't see any tracks?
CHRIS: I didn't see any tracks,
and I went up and around.
There's no tracks at all.
JESSI: If it wasn't for that storm,
I mean, who knows?
He could have gone in there yesterday;
He could have gone in there last week, right?
CHRIS: Yeah.
JESSI: Well, at least he's not out here and not tracking us through the woods.
I guess.
CHRIS: Yeah, no kidding.
JESSI: I guess nothing left but to head back home, right?
CHRIS: Yeah, it's gonna get dark soon, and...
JESSI: I don't wanna be out here.
I don't care if he's away for the winter.
I do not wanna be caught in these thick woods in the dark.
CHRIS: No. Let's get moving.
JESSI: Ready? I'll follow you.
MICHAEL: All right.
The last of the last, right here.
Phew.
Oh, I think I made a coffin, I can lay in it now.
Bury me! Ugh.
Today was definitely a bludgeoning of the mind,
of the body.
Fix the sled, move the sled. Lift this, drop that.
Holy smokes. But you know what?
You can't escape the strains of living a rural Alaskan lifestyle.
Now all I gotta do is assemble this thing just like a kid
would assemble a Lego set.
Looking forward to the challenge.
BRITTANY: All right. Hand me a stick.
Let's test out.
Whoa!
(Kaleb laughing).
KALEB: Today, my kids learned a lot.
Their little minds are like sponges.
They soak stuff up.
So, when they're young like this is the best time to teach
them how to survive in the bush.
Gilbert and Elovie are the fourth generation of Rowlands
to live here in the McCarthy Valley.
And they're not the last generation.
Someday, their kids will be here, too.
ALEX: I got the walls, the floor,
and then the finishing touch, a little toilet paper holder.
And that'll be it.
I'll have this great outhouse.
You ever just sit on your toilet and think,
"I got it made. I'm a frickin' king."
No, you don't think that until you live in the bush.
And then you think that.
That's just part of kind of bush living.
It puts things in perspective.
It makes you realize how many thousands of years of
technological progress we're standing upon.
Nice outhouse, it's all complete.
The only thing left to do is test her out.
CHRIS: Tell you right now, I'd much rather hunt than be hunted.
That's a big change.
I didn't like that feeling of something stalking me.
Having some lights on the house isn't gonna keep the bear away.
But when you have a light switch and you can light up
your entire grounds as far as you can see,
you just feel better.
It's just comforting.
Time to try it out.
All right.
JESSI: Good job, love.
CHRIS: Fear is like a weed, it gets inside of you and it will
grow and grow and grow, and it's gonna push you out of this lifestyle.
You have to prepare for it.
You have to overcome it.
You have to let fear go.
You have to go out there and face your fears.
Captioned by Cotter Media Group.