Arctic Homestead: 10 years living off the Alaskan wilderness

Yeah, he kept asking like, what would happen if we went up there? So we didn't necessarily start out intending to live all that remotely. We were just looking for access to resources, mostly food like salmon. We knew we wanted to be on a big river. Some of your moose hair in the water. When we moved here, we tried to really zero in on how to live in this spot with these resources and trying to figure out how people have done it. People have lived here for a long time and raised families and eaten good food and had good lives. We also wanted to find somewhere that we could get in and out of without using airplanes if possible. So the place that we ended up finding is probably seven miles as the crow flies from the nearest people. For the most part, we have what feels like a pretty big chunk of the world to ourselves. Along the river, it's about 20 miles to the next village where there's people living year-round. So it's fairly remote. This is our sun lodge cabin. The inside is really simple. We have a homemade wood stove. A couple boxes for wood. There's a small solar system. The batteries are in that box. A very simple sink and hot drinks area. Easy kitchen. Table which you can use for playing games. We have a bed and some books and some more games. It's a really nice place to stay. Some of my favorite things about staying in here are just that there's nothing that makes noise aside from the wood stove. So you're not going to wake up to weird beeping lights or anything mechanized. I really like the simplicity of what we put in here. You get one cup per person, so it's pretty hard to lose your cup. It's easy to keep track of things. And then there is electricity, but it's enough to charge your phone and lights. So you're not going to be running any big devices usually. You usually can spend some time actually reading the books. We lived in here for about seven years. And our friends lived in here for another almost year. And then we also use it for guests in the winter. So it's had a lot of people sleep very well. Everything in this cabin is from within a mile of here. The floor we milled with a chainsaw mill originally. And the rocks are all from the river. The plaster we mixed up. And in the original build, I think we spent about $1,000 to make this place. And there's been a little bit more since. It had a spruce-bile floor for years. But it's a really cozy spot. It stays nice and warm. And Celia really likes it. Do you like it? Do you like it in here? Do you want to get out? Yeah, baby approved. So when we bought this property, it was pretty much raw land. There was the remains of one plywood fish cutting table. And a ladder in the woods. We were living in a wall tent because we were camping here and fishing. The first place that we really built was at the fish camp. And we've, over the past decade plus, built everything that's here by ourselves. I guess we had sort of finished up most of our fall subsistence goals. Like getting fish and getting moose. It was nice weather at the end of September. And we decided to see if we could start building something. Log cabins are kind of your quintessential structure around here. But not everywhere that you want to build a cabin has nice cabin logs. And so we don't really have nice cabin logs on our property. That kind of thing gets you thinking, well, huh, what other kind of structures can you build? Realizing that we would only have probably a few weeks to try to slap something together, I just tried to simplify it to be the most simple way to enclose a space, basically. And so there's just four main structural posts. The poles that surround it make up the walls. That has kind of a piecemeal front wall made out of logs. The main structure is just smaller spruce poles, which are pretty easy to get. Yeah, the nice thing about using spruce poles for walls is that you don't really have to notch them or carve them. I mean, it's nice to get the bark off of them, but there's not a whole lot of modification you need to do to them. The spruce trees around here grow really straight. We dug it into the hill about, I guess the back wall is about six feet dug in. It was a giant hole, basically, we excavated. But that seemed like a really good way to make use of the relative warmth of the earth to make a more even temperature in there. It has been great that way. I think it was under $1,000 total. It was like $7.50 for the vapor barrier. And $40, $50 worth of nails and spikes and stuff. Traditionally, we would have covered the poles with birch bark, lots of layers of birch bark, and then sawed. But it was October, which it's pretty hard to get birch bark to peel then. Yeah, and the windows we got from a salvage. It was, for us, I think, the perfect starter home. We were in there for about seven years and did not get sick of each other. We actually decided to get married while we were living in there. Yeah, it's a pretty small place. Now I go in there and I'm like, oh, God, I'm glad we don't live in here anymore. It's funny, I get nostalgic. I'm like, oh, this was such a nice time. Well, things were simpler then, for sure. Yeah. As much as we love the Sun Lodge, in thinking about starting a family, we began planning the Bluff Cabin, which is what we're living in now. It took us about three years to build it. We've been trying to use mostly wood that we found out here, because it's expensive and challenging to freight materials in. We did bring some stuff in, but for the most part we just let the place dictate how we would build. We tried to build in a way that made sense, and utilized local materials and our abilities as best we could. Today we're going to move this log up there using this gin pole. It's just tucked in. Really, basically, we have to drag it to the wall. The log's in the air. We lower the boom to move the log out, away from the cabin. The main reason that we made the cabin 20 by 20 instead of, say, 16 by 24, or some rectangular shape, was so that all the logs were the same length. Then I could pick any log out of the whole pile, instead of having to just have to have half as many logs to choose from. That's one of the hardest parts about log building, is just planning ahead. You want to start with the biggest logs at the bottom, and then gradually decrease as you go up. At the same time, you want to maintain the same level on each wall, and not notch them in too deep. Every log has to be thought out in relation to the next three or four logs in order for it to work out, which is pretty challenging. It took about a day of work to do each log, and that involved getting the log up on the wall and positioning it, and then scribing a pre-notch to level the log and get it to sit directly above the position it's going to be in, and then a final scribe, and then carving all that out, insulating the groove, and popping it back in place. We were also putting some pins in as well, so there was quite a lot to each log. It probably took six or seven hours of solid work to do a log. I think there's about 70 or 80 logs in the cabin, maybe even a few more if you count the roof. Hey, it is the end of July 2018, and this is a quick tour of where we're at with our cabin. Importantly, David finally cut a door in it. It worked really well. We also had to get the gin pole out of the root cellar. It was formerly eight feet down there. So we did that. Hallelujah. And now it's tall enough to finish the cabin. And then you can see the first floor joists are all in. Oh, we have one more to put in, but there's basically a first floor. I made this really big ladder, which soon isn't going to be big enough, but for now it's doing a really good job. We'll work on the second floor. David's working on the first log. The second one is in, so now we're second floor 11. It's the 22nd of October, and we are packed up pretty much. We've got 15 rounds on the cabin, which is on the second floor, so about my height. We're going to need two more rounds in the spring. And then we put a temporary roof up, so hopefully it'll stay a little drier this winter. The other thing about building with logs, some of the logs have a more twisted grain, so wherever you have a really twisted log, you don't want to have it anywhere where there's going to be a door or a window cut out. How'd that feel? Pretty good. Because that'll basically allow that log to freely wind up as it dries. Each log has its own future in mind when you're looking at them. You tend to put the twisted ones lower on the wall where there's more weight and also where there isn't going to be a window. So that leaves even less to choose from when you're trying to pick a log. This is our cabin. It's one room, so it's really easy to do a quick tour. This is the stove we use for heating, and the stove we use for cooking, because it gets way too hot. This is our medication we use for coping. This is the kitchen area. I spend a lot of time cooking in tents, so I still have a good habit of keeping everything in glass even though there's nothing to break into stuff here. The sitting area, futon, the torrential bed, the south-facing windows, and that's our kitchen table. It's the first table that we built out here, and we just keep using it. It's getting a little bit small. It's got a lot of good stains on it. The meat grinder. I like it. It's kind of fitting in with our experience. Stairs going upstairs. We have our bedroom up there. The cabin, it's 20 foot by 20 foot and two full stories, and it's built using a full scribe method, which is, you know, it's a log cabin, and by scribing and fitting each log to the log underneath it, it maintains a tight fit, and you don't have to go around and shove moss in the cracks every year, and it's pretty low maintenance and very tight and also really beautiful. One of my favorite things about living in Alaska is that we still have such extreme conditions and seasons. The seasons, they really determine what you can and cannot do or what you should or should not do. The winter's less daylight. You only have around four hours of daylight at the darkest time. And then when spring comes, it's just such an enjoyable ride to watch everything coming back to life and make plans for your garden. So it's the beginning of July, and this is what our garden looks like after about a month in the ground. We try to grow things that are pretty hardy and do well in the cold, so carrots, beets, and parsnips, kale and rutabaga, cabbage, and then broccoli, chard, zucchini. Those are the kind of staple crops that we have. And then up here we have garlic, rhubarb, strawberries, mint, peas, and beans as well. It's just really a big part of our lives is just watching the seasonal changes and being a part of them and participating. It's interesting you start in the middle and I still don't do that, although maybe I should. There's lots of regulations about hunting and trapping that define when we can look for certain resources throughout the year. It's really great to be able to preserve food because you don't know exactly what you're going to get. It's not like you can get the same amount of each food each year. Surviving kind of based on the resources that the land has to offer and your luck and skill in acquiring them also has made us be a lot more flexible. We have lots of different meat sources. Every year we try to get a moose because that's kind of like winning the lottery. That's a big close-to-home meat. But if we don't, we have beavers that are also close to home and snowshoe hares and grouse, and we can go bear hunting. And if we're really desperate, we'll travel north and try to get some caribou. So there are lots of plan A, B, C, all the way to G sometimes. We just try to make a plan that makes sense for us being together as a family and trying to burn as little gas as possible and just get really good, high-quality food as close to home as we can. This is our garden in the fall time. We have a small calendar on our wall that our lives are much more ordered by the seasons. For instance, right now it's fall, and on our whiteboard we have a whole category of things to do before there's snow. There are lots of harvest requirements that have much more to do with the weather. We just went and picked lowbush cranberries, and those you want to pick after it frosts but before it snows and they get covered. So there are all these little time windows that we're trying to manage that are much more based on condition. Yum? Yum! It's actually pretty enjoyable to orient your life around all these different natural phenomenon and try to take advantage of wild edible things when you can get them and preserve them. With the freezers and the ability to dry food and canned food, we can really preserve a lot of food for the entire year. Oh, and the root cellar is huge. This is our root cellar. The door opens from right in the middle of our cabin, and we've got these ship's ladder stairs you can go down while carrying stuff. The great thing about a root cellar is that you can store a lot of food without a lot of packaging, and you can store stuff, at least in this one, for a very long time. We've had potatoes that go for a year and a half and are fine, and it's just pretty ideal for things like sauerkraut, long-term storage of grains, that kind of stuff. It's dark and a consistent temperature. So, just looking around, on the top we have leftovers and things that need to be eaten quickly, including chocolate, and on the back wall we have a lot of condiments and spices, birch mead, cabbages from the garden. These side walls are jams, bone broth, herbs that we've dried, and canned goods. And then on the floor we have all these different buckets that have different types of grain, popcorn, that kind of stuff. And then totes, which are full of root vegetables packed in sawdust. And potatoes just in a bag, like having a giant walk-in refrigerator. Which is a pretty great thing. Those two big pipes in the back, that's our vent to the outside, so that's how we cool it off. Right now they're both open, so we're trying to make it a little cooler in here. But it generally stays a pretty good temperature. In the fall it's the warmest, and in the winter, obviously, when we let our cabin freeze, we try to insulate the top before we do that, but so far it doesn't freeze. So it's nice to be out here and have most of what we need just around us, so we don't have to spend very much time driving, which I really don't like. We're really pretty set up. I could more or less do whatever I wanted to do. If I wanted to work on a project I could go out and harvest some materials. So we try to make most of the things that we use on a daily basis. I've for years tried to get away from plastic. You can see that knot right there, because I banged on it it came right off clean. That's right, you twist to make the hole. And also, because we bring all of our materials in, we have to bring garbage out. So we really try to avoid buying things that have a lot of packaging, because we can directly see how much trash we're producing. So we have made a lot of the things that we use on a day-to-day basis by ourselves. Partly out of necessity, partly because of the economy, and partly because it's just a really enjoyable thing. It's very satisfying to eat out of a bowl that you made, and drink out of a cup that your husband made. It just kind of fills our life with these kind of recent memories. And it's also just a really meditative process. It's really enjoyable to carve things, so we've done a lot of that and made our furniture and made our cabins and structures and dog sleds and snowshoes. The other good thing about making stuff is that, you know, when it breaks either it's your fault, or you can figure out how to fix it pretty quickly. Baby gate for the stairs. Celia's crib. Whenever we are kind of faced with the decision about, like, okay, we need something new, we kind of go through, like, alright, can we make it? Like, can we find it used? We try to not buy new things unless it's really necessary. Or can we borrow it? Used to be a huge, that was our main tactic for a lot of years. Like, who has this thing? Can we borrow it for a little bit of time? This is the laundry machine. We've just put hot soapy water in there and the first load of diapers. I have my helper here, fully engaged. This is how you be the educator. You can have work out. You can help me with this side. Once I do this for another minute or two, you then bring them through using the ringer. This is her favorite part. And you go, boop, in the bucket. And then we'll do another load of just rinse water with all of these. Hang them up and then you'll have diapers for another day. Good toy, huh? So this is our solar array for our new cabin. It's made of eight 320 watt panels and then we built this rack to support it and it's adjustable. The angle of the sun varies a lot between summer and winter. We wanted it to be easy to, boop, do that. Winter! And then go back down to more summer angles. Hi, Celia. This is your first minute in a dog sled. Um, I don't know. Yesterday we did the high road. What do you think, Celia? We have 11 sled dogs. It's part of our little family here. They are all Alaska Huskies which is kind of a general term. It means a big fuzzy dog that will pull more or less. We're just south of Fairbanks, Alaska. My team is waiting. Oh no, my team is coming. Good job, guys! See anything wrong with this picture? Besides the sled without a rider? Get some of that white stuff. That would help. Good job, guys! We've had dogs for gosh, I think David started 15, 20 years ago. We ran into a little spot of trouble. There's a bunch of mining, tailings and activity up here. And the dogs want to go to the rocks. So we're figuring it out. They're just kind of a normal part of life up here. We use them to do a lot of really great trips to places that are off-road and even off-trail. The dogs are the most versatile. I think we've gotten down things with the dog sled that there's no way a snow machine or any kind of vehicle could do. And even skiing would be really sketchy. The dog team is just a really great way to travel. And in the winter, Alaska is, you can almost go anywhere if you have snowshoes and a dog team. So we really loved having dogs over the years. In 2014, we started our business. We were working guiding for another company, which we still do. But we decided that we had most of the infrastructure that we needed to start offering kind of unique winter experiences ourselves. So we very much on a shoestring started doing that. Have fun! Initially, we were doing shorter dog sled rides, which was fun. But we wanted to have more interaction with people. We felt like there was so much more that we could show folks who were up here trying to, you know, experience a little bit of the cabin life or wilderness living or see the northern lights. We were like, hey, we can do all of that from our house. What we have is kind of a wilderness B&B kind of feel. We take really small groups, usually about two people at a time, and we have them stay in our sunlodged cabin where we used to live. And we make the meals and serve all the food, a lot of homegrown food in our cabin. And then each day we do different activities. So it's fully guided. We do lots of dog mushing, snowshoeing. We ice fish and a little bit of skiing, skating. And we have a really epic sledding run down our main trail. We're pretty fortunate that we have been able to expand our technologies slowly. Like we started living in a tent and just carrying water one jug by a time up from the river. These days we use the dogs and snow machine to haul up, make a hole in the ice and fill a bunch of jugs and haul them up. Even now this year, our latest thing is we have a tank upstairs and so we have running water to a sink for the first time, which is pretty sweet. When I first started living off-grid, my grandmother said, oh wow, you're really going backwards. And I thought that was kind of a funny and sweet way to say that. But you know, this isn't really new or novel. It's kind of how everybody's great great grandparents lived. And it's a really good way of life. Sound effects .