Alaska Twins Live Off the Land 150 Miles From the Nearest Store | National Geographic

This is a very physically demanding way of life. There's been times where I've been skiing for eight or ten hours through deep snow and stopping to maintain traps. I'm really tired and I'm hot and I'm sweaty, and I know that I'm just one sprained ankle away from literally dying. And that's a risk I'm willing to accept.

When we were little kids, we always wanted to go exploring and find out where this river went. People in town seem like they're more interested in who or what is going to school and whose birthday party is coming up. We just want to know what kind of bird is that, and where's the best place to find moose.

We are trying to preserve the old way people used to live on the land because there's not very many people who can do it anymore. Most people seem to think it's a choice, but it was never really a choice for us. This was always our home. We inherited this trapline in 1975. It's basically a hundred miles of trail bounded by rivers.

So we will travel about 15 miles a day from one camp to the next, and every quarter of a mile along the trails we have traps set that are targeting whatever furbearer is in that particular area. We mostly catch Marten, but we also catch Lakes, Fox, mink, and occasionally wolves and Wolverine. We caught very large numbers of Marten in the 1990s. The crash came about 2001.

Since then, the Marten haven't managed to come back, or I think it might have to do with climate change. It's really difficult when our lives are so closely tied to the seasons, to the climate, and to the land. We always hold back some of the fur that we catch to make the hats and mittens and mukluks. They keep us warm in the wintertime when we get temperatures of 40, 50, or 60 below, or very high winds.

Some people think that's inhumane to catch an animal in a trap. It's really no more cruel for an animal to die in a trap than it is to be crushed in the jaws of a wolf or die over a period of a month of starvation. That is life in the bush.

We really feel very strongly that we are deeply involved in the whole cycle of life and death. Subsistence is a huge part of living in the bush because you have to go 150 miles by plane to get to the store. The most important things in our life come off of the land, whether that's something to eat or to build your cabin with or to feed your dogs.

There's too many people living in towns, and they work all day long and they move a pile of paper from here to here. We work all day long and we have a quart of water, we have five gallons of berries, or a moose in the freezer. So it's a much more tangible reward.

We've learned an awful lot in the last 55 years, and the people who lived here before the white men moved in knew the land so much better than anybody who lives here now. It's humbling to think that we know even a little bit.