Wood Yearning Life Below Zero

2m read

·Nov 11, 2024

Coming with me, getting a boat, dog. I'm gonna go down river. I'm gonna go get firewood, and I'm gonna take my chainsaw. I'm gonna hunt and kill trees, and I'm gonna come back here with some tree flash. Come on, good girl.

The hailstones spend their summer in Kowalik, gathering resources for the months ahead. Harvesting firewood is essential to providing camp with heat, drinking water, and food preservation. Logs here come from about 20-25 miles upriver, and by the time they get down here, it takes them a few years. This what I call a mighty fine log. This is a good dry piece of knotty twisted wood that has really no carving value, no splitting value. If you split it, it wouldn't split and make two halves; it wouldn't make a big twist like a rifle barrel. So this is gonna be firewood.

My chainsaw fired up! We need firewood all the time to keep ourselves warm, dry ourselves out, because we've got caribou to dry up. Pretty soon, there's gonna be seals, and skins and oil to put away, and whatever else we gather on a half-caf. Firewood is just part of the process. The only time the girls ever take any notice of my firewood-getting abilities is when there is no wood. Then they remember!

Come on, dog, join me! Some nice-looking logs you have there. Can't have too much firewood. My next step is putting up a meat rack. Around here, they call it mini something, and we need a place where you can hang meat up off the ground, away from the dogs. We're not to tie the dogs up soon and keep the wind and the breeze on them and the flies off. Let's just get her done.

Who Owns The Statue of Liberty?

Cyrus the Great establishes the Achaemenid Empire | World History | Khan Academy

View All

Entering a Salmon Graveyard | The Great Human Race

Getting deeper, huh? 5,000 years ago in the Pacific Northwest, the seasonal salmon runs sustained huge populations of early humans. Oh, is that a dead fish? But this bounty was only available for a short window of time each year. Look, there’s even skin e…

Winter’s White Gold | Port Protection

Growing up out in this part of the world, virtually all the old-timers put up their fish in jars or cans. My uncle had a tin can, or my dad’s mom had a tin can for quite a while. There was a way of life back then; we gave it a little bit of olive oil to t…

First Look: The Long Road Home | The Long Road Home

♪♪ KELLY: Memory is a powerful thing. ♪♪ There are some events that stick in the mind… forever defining the difference between before and after, and instantly redefining everything that matters. For the soldiers and families of the Army’s 1st Cavalry Divi…

Voodoo Market Reveals Wildlife Trafficking’s Grim Reality | National Geographic

So if you care about wildlife crime, you have to understand culturally how a country thinks about wildlife. You know, and, uh, one of the unique aspects of Togo is the voodoo is real and alive here. This fetish market is known around the world. They told …

This Taxi Driver Has an Amazing Life Story You'll Want to Hear | Short Film Showcase

I’ve been cab driver in Chicago around 12 years. I do the job like 12 hours a day. Every day I work because I have four kids. I have to support my kids and my family, and all the time I thank this country because they bring me as the refugees to this coun…

Universal Basic Income Explained – Free Money for Everybody? UBI

What if the state covered your cost of living? Would you still go to work? Go back to school? Not work at all? What would you do? This concept is called a universal basic income or UBI, and it’s nothing less than the most ambitious social policy of our t…

Wood Yearning Life Below Zero

More Articles