Life lessons in the Alaskan wilderness | Alaska: The Next Generation

Gotta have a subsistence lifestyle way to live out here. We eat from the sea. From the birds. Not really other ways to, uh, get food around here. Salmon only comes once a year and, uh, gotta try and the time they come around. Argh. Come on fish. You see anything? No. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Set our first net and we weren't catching anything. We’ll just keep going upriver until we get the salmon. Pretty much a small window. Hopefully, we'll get some salmon.

I see my boys, they’re gonna be another steppingstone for our culture. That's all I am and that’s what I’m passing down to my sons. It’s a little torn up. All right, you guys keep an eye on it. Gotta look around when you’re coming up the bank. It might be from grizzlies, you know. This is your Grandma Christine’s cabin. Door is still locked. Holy cow. Damn. Squirrels came in. If it was a bear it would be demolished in here. Start picking stuff up, grab a trash bag.

We've been having some tough luck all fall. We haven't really seen very many moose. The story I was told when I was a kid is everybody's got a bag that they carry around with them. And inside that bag is your luck. And all year, you’re supposed to work on that luck and add to it. Put a little bit here and there. Helping somebody out. Paying it forward. Little squirrel never hurt nobody.

Well, let’s get this wood stacked up. The more we do, better chance we will have. It is very important to me to get better luck ‘cause I love hunting and I love seeing stuff. It just gives joy to me and excitement. Already looking nicer, boys. We should play in that place. My late brother came down by himself and he built this little cache style house. It’s kinda like a little tree house, the kids like it now. Yeah, that's what my late brother made right there. This is called the boys club. No girls allowed.

Boys come on! Let’s go. Get your life jacket. All right boys, I feel a lot better about leaving camp. You know, we left it a little better than what we found it. So, I feel like, you know, we added some good luck to our bag. I feel, you know, we have a better chance of seeing something out there now. Let's hope and pray we see something on the way home boys.