Camp Hailstone | Life Below Zero
My name is Ignacio Stone. I'm married to Edward Hale Stone. We call him Chip. I'm Edward Hale Stone, master of systems, hunter. I'm a subsistence gatherer, fisherman. I'm married to Agnes, and I have five daughters. I tried to get them all involved in everything: from caribou to seals in the ocean, to fish in the river, to birds flying overhead, to digging stuff out of the ground.
We got to be kind of nomadic and change our camps, going where the animals are, or where the fish are, or where the plants are blooming, or the berries. Sometimes we have to go where the weather tells us to. So, we're spending the spring here in Kowalik because this, to us, is the place to be. The warm temperatures and long days allow the Hale Stones to live off the land. In Kowalik, they'll spend the summer harvesting the area's vast resources in order to survive the harsh winter ahead.
We've got some important things to do. We're gonna have to set up the tents, we're gonna have to set up our kitchen, gonna have to go get some willows and grasses to make our beds—just generally set things up the way we like them in the summertime and be here until August.
Okay, we gotta start moving. The weather is coming towards evening; it's gonna get cold and start getting moist. One, two, three, let's go! All together, it's up to you. I need Michael; you need you can—yep, hold on to a rope, babe. That's all you got to do. Yeah, it's bulky, is what it is.
Okay, okay, stop you guys! Oh, those are caribou! Look at that, we missed them. It's a pretty tough sell. I think we probably should just stick with the job we're doing and hope they come a little closer. Let's keep going. One, two, three, go!
If I wanted to go after caribou, that would be a considerable effort and a considerable amount of time to go up there, to run something down, and carry it back here. That would be exhausting, and then to have to put up the teepee in the tent, that would be even worse. So, the whole idea is that once we got the teepee and the tent up, then I can run off. I can go get firewood; I can go chase caribou; I can do all that stuff.
Keep going forward, love! Be careful; it's deep over here on this side. Alright, warned you! Getting our tents up is the number one thing. We have our tents up, then we're able to operate, stay dry. Without a good place to stay, no fun!
There we go, right there! Okay, whoo! Well, it's gonna rain, you guys. Let's get this up and let's make a place to cover our stuff. No, we gotta fix—it's important to have shelter as fast as you can. We've got rain coming and we have tons of work to do.
But what we do is we cover our bases first, so that if anything happens to leave that home... Pretty good job, girls! Looks like you'll be set here. It's gonna hold for thrush this summer, so we're gonna just knock off for the night and we'll start out in the morning and see what we come up with.