This one's been in the water for a while.
- Ho-ho-ho. - Right about there.
Look at that.
That's ugly, isn't it?
Start scraping.
My dad has an old sawmill
that he cut all the lumber for his house with.
Since Morgan and I moved in,
we have all these plans for additions
to the house, outbuildings.
So in order to do it,
we have to have our own sawmill.
Everything that we do is preparing us
to start building our empire here right quick.
A little downhill.
And hopefully, we'll be a good addition
to the community.
Those are heavy.
I definitely see a lot of the younger people,
myself included here in port protection,
really working to make this home.
We're constantly learning from the old timers
that are still here and still active.
It's constant evolution
and if you stop that forward progress,
then you're not gonna make it.
A trip to the hardware store.
So this is the pile?
So what are we looking for for this project?
Well, we need to make a, a stand
that's gonna hold the targets that it will spin,
and I know that there's a couple of good pieces
of galvanized steel around here someplace.
Our last bear hunt was a bit of a fail.
I missed the bear.
I'm just maybe a little off
with my shooting right now.
So we want to get a gun range going
over in whiskey cove.
And we're gonna make sure our guns are sighted in
so that we can go out and find a bear to shoot.
There's one right there,
and I think I see another one sticking up right over there.
Now, we need something thick.
There it is, right there.
Grab, grab that
I think that came off the bottom of somebody's boat.
Nice.
Your rifle's one of your main survival tools out here
as far as harvesting red meat.
So, it's imperative that your tools and your equipment are
up to snuff.
So getting this shooting bench built
is gonna help basically the whole community.
I think that we've got everything we need right now.
Sweet.
Okay, seeing it come together already, aren't ya?
- Yeah. - Bam, bam,
pipe across, targets hanging down.
I can already hear them ringing as we shoot them.
- Ping. - Ka-ping.
- Yeah. - Yeah.
Cool.
Ninety percent of, welding is prep.
Go ahead and hold onto that end of that.
I've got tasked with building the shooting bench
while they're building the shooting target.
Breanna's really eager to get back into welding a little bit.
So, I will be doing the woodwork
while they're doing the metal work.
We need to get pretty close, so you can see.
Then I'll do one side, and then I'll let you do the other side.
Okay.
I'm really grateful that Sam's willing to help us
and just teach us a little bit about what he knows.
You can see that little molten puddle there.
Yeah, I do.
I'm just doing a slow circle,
and you watch that wire feeding into it.
Try to keep it, like, at a 45-degree angle
- or so, you know. - Yeah.
I think welding is gonna be really cool
to just learn something new.
I accidentally
think I just...
- What's that? Yeah. - I just...
- Yeah, go ahead. - Bled out some, okay.
- Well, no, go ahead and snip it off. - Okay.
You want to start out with about a half-inch long,
and you want, you want to keep that torch pretty close
to the molten puddle.
Gosh dang, I didn't mean to do that.
That little thing is real sensitive.
Being comfortable is 90 percent... yeah.
Boy, that's not really gonna sit
in the ground at all, is it?
Ooh.
Holy!
- Yeah, that root, right there. - Damn.
It's the worst place in the world to dig.
I gotta cut this root out.
At this point, you know, we're just trying to build a deck
and have a landing platform for the sawmill
and get a solid foundation
to set up a giant piece of equipment on.
What the hell?
Sorry.
You just threw a whole clump of dirt at me.
I think it's right there.
So I don't actually know
what the sawmill is gonna weigh,
but I'm guessing it's probably over
a thousand pounds at least.
So, this deck definitely has to be strong
so that if I do drop a log on it,
it doesn't just collapse.
Find out.
I hate digging this country.
This whole end of the island is just kind of
giant trees growing on rock.
There's really no dirt underneath it.
Here.
Leveling this thing is gonna suck.
Living out here in the rough and wild,
we're not strangers to isolation.
So, having a tight knit community is crucial.
We're all people with a common vision,
pulling the same damn direction.
Pretty slick rig there, curl.
Fifteen hundred is not too bad.
Really?
We're at the very end of the road.
This road is kind of our lifeline
to the outside world.
Long hundred miles of rough logging road.
You can only go over to the road
at a certain time of the year.
In the wintertime, we won't have a road
because it'll be snowed in.
I'll probably go over to the road system
two or three times a year at the most.
That's the car graveyard.
And these cars are there, you know,
because they're pretty much wore out.
People, they'll just take the old, derelict cars
and let mother nature take care of it.
Hey, hey, stop, stop, stop.
What's up?
This is the rig that brought me up here.
I haven't seen this old girl in, like, 20 years.
Yup, I remember
when you blew into town in this thing.
Rolled up in her a quarter century ago,
just packed to the gills, two skiffs on top.
I remember when squibb first got here,
I was over in the parking lot the day they pulled in.
They looked like the Beverly hillbillies
coming down the road there.
He looked like he was coming here
to stay awhile, that's for sure.
Doesn't seem like it was that long ago
but, man, it's been a while.
She's been sitting over here
just being reclaimed into the forest,
but it's a, it's a nice reminder
of how long I've been living prosperously on the sea shore
without a need of a truck or a car.
That's why I don't make it down the road so damn often.
Yeah, right, no wheels.
Come on, junior.
Let's see if we can go find ourselves a trout.
Sounds like a plan.
Before you know it, it's gonna be trying
to land fish for real, for money and chow,
so, this is a pretty nice spring shake-out.
Keep the rust off,
get the gears rolling, get our heads straight.
Nice view going through here, man.
It's beautiful place.
Pretty significant winter.
The trail looks like it's in pretty good shape so far.
So far so good.
Crap.
I spoke too damn soon.
Wow.
Yeah. Check out that monster, man.
Yeah, look at the size of the Boulder
that's got tossed up in this huge root here.
- Yeah. - Wow, man.
I mean, like, you know, I'm six-foot,
and I'm less than a quarter of the way
up the, up the run here.
Every bit of 20 feet.
- Yeah. - And then some.
Hit a little on the base of the tree
and just slammed it over this way.
You imagine hearing that when it came down?
Man.
It made a hell of a racket, I'm sure.
At least it only dropped a little hemlock
over the bridge instead of that big spruce,
we don't have to climb over, but
yeah, right. Absolutely.
Whoa, a little trail maintenance to do here.
Let's see if we can at least get this limb off the boardwalk.
There's a tremendous learning curve
when you're trying to establish yourself out here.
People that lived here their whole lives
pass on vital information on how to make it here,
and some people will retain that information
and they'll succeed, and some people won't.
That's just the way this part of the world works.
Hopefully, we can get this done
before it starts raining sideways on us.
The phone lines in the back bay are completely out.
Fake floor.
Veronica asked me if I could help her
try to assess whatever issues there are.
I like having Veronica here.
She's a real go-getter, she's excited about things,
and she's got a pretty beautiful spirit.
You know, when I first tried to inspect the line,
I was out here on my own
and I had, like, falling nightmares
for two days in a row.
So this looks like a relatively new blow down.
There's definitely like a small kink
in the wire right here.
If that's my line,
that would make sense for the static.
This could cause something.
We're used to a handful of those.
My phone is completely disconnected.
The entire thing needs to be replaced.
Here in the back bay, it's one of
the only phone lines out here.
So if a neighbor gets injured,
it's really invaluable to have
an actual phone connection
and, you know, make the phone calls we need.
I mean, if it's been strong for 20 years
with this being cobbled together, you know,
it's probably time to get revamped.
It's really important to be able to connect
to the rest of the village when you need to.
There are only a handful of places
that have a working phone line,
so what we are doing today
will benefit the whole community.
Yup, auntie litzi and the neighbor
were always the technicians before,
but now it's time to... step in
to being helpful around these parts.
About 20 or so years ago,
my auntie litzi and another neighbor
laid the phone line from town
to out here in the back bay.
Coming out here and seeing the way
that my auntie litzi lived, it's kind of mind blowing.
I didn't understand all the different trials
and tribulations of living out here.
I mean, she was out there
fixing the phone lines in the snow
after a storm sometimes.
It just gives me more admiration and respect for her
for what she accomplished out here.
Starting to see where it opens up
and where the wind's been
a little bit more frantic, it looks like.
- Yeah. - A little bit, I don't know.
There's an awful lot more daylight.
This is it, Veronica?
Yup, this is the top of the blow down.
It's, cliff drop down from here.
Cool.
Looks like a lot of carnage.
We want to be pretty cautious of these areas.
They're not what you'd say secure or safe.
It'd be nice to not have
to risk life and limb to fix the phone.
Yeah, yeah. Shouldn't have to try
to kill yourself to make a phone call.
We've had some extreme wind storms
coming off calder mountain,
these small micro-bursts, extreme winds,
it could be a hundred mile an hour winds rip through here,
and they knock the tops out of trees.
And then that's the cascade effect,
and these trees just kind of keep toppling down.
But there's been a lot of fresh breaks just recently.
I'm looking at fresh bright wood there.
The fact that there's any signal at all right now is,
is actually kind of surprising.
Should we go through the blow down now?
Yeah, now that we got the, the marker ribbon.
We're gonna just end up following litzi's path there.
The wisdom of the elders.
- Yeah. - Alright, let's do it.
If you're lucky enough
to actually be traversing the trail,
it's common courtesy to do your part
to try to make sure it's maintained.
And this will make it a little bit easier
to manage the boardwalk.
Alright, back to the trail.
Come on, hound, show us the way.
Nineteen pilings.
Ooh, yeah.
Nice.
Nice solid foundation there.
Did that help?
See how that looks.
Let's see.
That'll work.
, yeah. I like it.
What I'm building here is a shooting bench.
It's gonna be fairly straightforward.
You know, a table with four legs
and then just add a seat on to it.
We're not gonna try to make it too complicated or anything,
just kind of keep it simple stupid.
Try this a little differently.
I'm just gonna belly this,
roll down the hill for a minute.
So I don't exactly know what our tactic should be,
but maybe one person pulls the cable
and then somebody else comes behind
and tries to, you know, prop it up on stuff.
Look.
Boat's even floating pretty high.
Haven't had too much rain lately.
That's good.
- Junior. Come here. - Come on, load up, buddy. Load up.
There is nothing nice about this stuff.
Cat, you cannot be here.
You are gonna get this all over you.
You're not even supposed to be at our house.
Yeah.
- Yeah. Look at that. - Yeah?
That's the good stuff there.
Just a bucket o' creosote.
Get a lot on, don't be shy about it.
I never am.
Is it like a water sealant?
Yeah, if you don't do this,
eventually you will end up
with the tops of your pilings rotting out.
I learned it from my dad.
One of the first things he did was
have a sawmill and get it set up,
and that built everything for him.
So, getting this giant sawmill over here
is gonna hopefully do all that for us.
Every step is just one more move
towards building my empire for me and Morgan.
This is exciting though.
It's, yeah... I mean, it's the next step
before we actually start putting the beams on.
I know, we're actually really close.
Yeah. Well, do you wanna go take a look at your dad's,
now that we've built this?
You said he's got the same exact make
and model of the sawmill that we're getting, so
yeah.
Yeah, I haven't really been up there
since I started building this.
I just had the dimensions, so...
- Yeah. - Go take a look.
- Yeah, let's do it. - Alright.
Mama.
No, no, no, no, no, that has creosote on it.
Mama!
Yeah, we, we're probably gonna have
to take a tool with us when we go over there,
a shovel and something because we're,
we want this to sit pretty level.
- Yeah. - We might wanna pack
a couple buckets of gravel up or something.
Right.
Yeah, just stand here
and you can either go this direction
- or that direction. - Okay.
See, you're traveling too fast.
Yeah, I did travel.
That's, I, you, you, you're,
you don't need to be in such a hurry.
Yeah, I know.
I have that problem with everything.
Just keep a constant rate of speed.
A little slower, but you're doing good.
Pleasantly surprised with myself
learning how to weld by Sam.
I was kind of nervous at first
but, you know, he's a really good teacher.
- You got the idea. - Yeah, okay.
Yeah. And when, we'll, we'll do more...
- Okay, yeah. - As time goes by.
In the process of building this metal rack
that these spinning targets are gonna hang off of...
And just, yeah, just hold that like that.
It's gonna give Breanna a, a good chance to,
actually maybe acquire some welding skills,
which in my mind
everybody should be able to weld.
Men, women, and children.
Bang!
Alright, now I can kinda get a judgment here
on how long this needs to be.
You know, I'm a lefty,
and I shoot, kind of, like this here.
Well, that's not a bad spot right there.
That looks nice. Smooth.
Yeah, it does.
Well, this thing should be,
should be good, it's a little bit front heavy.
But it'll, once we put something down there,
it'll be fine.
It's gonna work.
I'm excited to use it.
Feels sturdy.
Feels like we can shoot on it.
Sweet!
Gotta go get the boss's approval now.
Alright.
Separate that.
I have a plan to spool this cable out.
It might not be a good plan.
I'm hoping by attaching this spool of cable to my backpack,
it's gonna peel out behind me nice and easy
and leave plenty of slack for the entirety of the walk.
The plan is we're gonna walk down the trail
to the blow down, repairing the line
and laying down 3,000 feet of the new phone line.
We're gonna do this all the way to the house box
here in the back bay,
which should be the final splice,
and it will be the moment of truth.
Back when the phone was working,
I was really grateful
that we had a phone line out of the house.
My neighbor was injured last winter,
and they have no phone line at their place.
So, a big part of that whole rescue
was making phone calls
so we could get a hold of the right people
to get them out of here
to get medical attention in town.
I need to separate these wires, so I'm gonna cut it now.
There.
Alright, this is the line coming from town
and this is gonna be the one I test
to make sure we're connecting all this fancy new line
to the existing connection that actually works.
I have a test phone here in my handy bag.
If it works, I should get a dial tone,
and then can commence splicing the new line.
I'm so nervous I hope this works.
Please.
That's a problem.
I'm not getting a dial tone.
Dear god.
- I'm having an issue. - Okay.
Either I've connected this phone incorrectly
or it's just not working,
and the problem is further down towards town.
Did you try touching your tongue to the wires?
No, you know what?
That might be a good instance to try this, yeah.
Alright. We're gonna use auntie litzi's trick.
My neighbor told me that auntie litzi used
to test to see if the line was working
by putting it on her tongue kind of like some people do
with a nine-volt battery.
You're so smart.
Well, no, if I was smart,
I would have brought my electrical tester and read,
read the voltage coming out of the wires.
I'm gonna test the neighbor's line. Please, please, please.
Okay.
- Something's wrong with that phone. - Okay.
This works!
This looks corroded.
So you see that, it's got green.
Nice catch, dude.
So, this may have gotten wet
or something last time you were out here.
- My tongue stings. - I'm sorry.
No, that was great.
That was very encouraging
because now I don't think I'm losing my mind.
Do we have another one of these?
I do.
Okay.
Please work, please work, please work.
Clear dial tone, yeah, okay.
So we know from here to town,
the line works, and it's a good starting point.
We can start pulling the line back to the back bay.
Excellent. Alright.
Once we get this first spool connected,
that's 500 feet,
the next splice will be at the end of this spool,
and that's where we're gonna test it again
just to make sure everything's all good
on our brand-new line
that we're going to end up stringing
all the way to the back bay.
Alright. You ready?
I think so.
I'm the cable guy.
So far so good.
Okay.
Take a look, kind of, what the dimensions are.
Yeah.
Let's see if we can figure that out.
This'll be interesting.
So, we wanna take some dimensions here?
Yeah, just to kind of refresh my brain a little bit.
Okay.
'Cause that gives us
sort of a rough idea how wide the whole thing is gonna
from here?
Yeah, anywhere around there.
So it's a, six and a half.
- It's a little over six feet. - Okay.
Looking at my dad's mill,
I think we're gonna be okay on size.
I think we've hit the, basically,
the bare minimum for space that we need to do this.
That's just the way it is, kind of built,
you know, within the confines of the forest
and done the best we can, so...
It's gonna be a miniature version
of what he has basically.
I've never actually seen a sawmill in action.
- No? - No.
- Well, soon enough. - Yeah.
The biggest problem again is that
the one we're grabbing has been laying in the brush
for about 25 years and... so excavating it?
Well, that's not the problem.
Because it's been sitting in the brush for 25 years,
I don't know if we can get these bolts out so...
Well, it depends on what condition it is,
'cause I still haven't seen it yet,
so we'll just kind of see what we can do with it
and if we can even get the bolts off
and then until then just plan
for taking it apart and transporting it.
Yeah. I mean, we'll get it apart one way or another, so...
Okay.
The sawmill we're trying to get
was a partnership between Sam and Veronica's uncle.
They had a shop fire,
and the mill collapsed into the brush.
With a little bit of money and a little bit of work,
we can have a badass running sawmill.
Replacing parts is just belts and gears
and bearings if we need them, and bolts.
And then we're gonna have a working sawmill.
We'll have a working sawmill.
- Perfect. - Yeah, with the work,
everything will be just fine.
Red lake, it's a beautiful, beautiful lake.
I'm looking forward to a little trout for supper.
Yeah, that sounds really good, man.
When you're out there, I mean,
you're, you're out there.
And I mean literally.
You're miles away from anybody.
There we go.
Hey.
He's a fighter, he's a... Little shorty.
Looks like it.
Yeah, yeah. Junior, no.
Yeah, that's not 14 inches
but hey, that's something.
Yeah.
Some action.
Yeah, right.
Springtime in Alaska is a busy time of the year
and if you want to go trout fishing,
now is the time to do it
'cause there's other things coming up.
The trout's in season.
It's a perfect excuse to get out there and start gathering.
Hard to get a 14-incher out here.
Hard to get much of anything.
At least if you go by my Mark.
Yeah.
Nice.
You sit. Down. Good boy.
Ooh, yeah. Come on. Yeah, come on, baby.
- That's a big one. - Come on.
Come on, come on, you
don't you spit it, don't you spit it.
He's a lively bastard.
Come on, come on, come on.
- Come on. - Come on, come on.
I know, I know. You.
You son of a gun!
He broke the line.
No.
You bugger.
I got the wrong kind of stink on me right now.
Hey, dude, I got one.
You got one?
I do.
He's, he's probably a keeper.
Probably, probably a keeper.
Son of a bitch.
Get back.
Got a rainbow trout there.
I'd say that's a keeper.
Sweet! Good job, curl.
One legal one anyway.
Well, we got something for the skillet.
Yeah.
Good job getting the skunk off us, curly.
Yeah.
One more in the boat and then we'll have a meal.
I guess the story behind whiskey cove is
there was some old boy back in the day,
probably during prohibition, who had a still back there.
And as long as I can remember,
there's been a shooting bench of some sort over there.
Back in the day, it was old Jack haney's bench,
then me and Mikey built a bench, which is about shot now,
and this will be the new bench.
It's my building.
- What do you think, junior? - Where's all the fish?
Over there?
Junior.
No. Sit.
Down, junior. Sit.
He swears every third cast,
it's gonna turn into a stick. He's sure.
Junior.
Stay, junior.
Junior, sit down.
Junior, down.
Down, junior.
Junior! Down.
Junior.
Junior!
Junior.
No.
What?
Okay.
I'm gonna take this old box so I can reuse it.
Boy.
There's water in there.
I don't even know how our phone line
was still kind of working.
Okay. See if I can go find Matt.
Hey, there we go.
Come on. Come on.
No, I caught the tiniest fish ever.
Poor little bugger.
There we go.
Wow.
Some action. Don't feel completely left out.
Sad as it may be.
Our supervisor came to visit.
I see that.
Definitely an obstacle course.
Yeah, it's gonna get better here soon.
I do want gaps in there so we don't have water settling
and sitting on it, you know,
I want it to be able to drain
and all the pine needles and,
I want all that to come off, so... Okay.
We're gonna give them a half-inch.
What we do is we put these in and you,
on either end and you push them up against each other.
Like that.
Set your spacer in there.
Hopefully, half-inch isn't too much.
Push it over like that there.
- You want that flush with the other board. - Good.
And then we screw them down.
Nice.
What?
Does that look good?
Get off the creosote.
- Is it good? - Yeah.
Okay.
It's not the rain that's gonna keep us
from working, it's the cat!
Finished that one spool of cable.
I'm just kind of getting ready to get the next one
while Veronica is gonna
get this box set up.
This is our next splice point,
so we are going to be splicing
the very first brand new spool
with the next spool.
We're at 500 feet
complete.
That's a good, that was a good strong one.
Little, little hotter?
Alright, well, I'll see you at the next junction.
Alright.
This project is pretty intimidating.
I have never done anything like this before.
Auntie litzi and the other neighbor
were the ones that maintained the phone line themselves.
They were some tough chicks, man.
Just another reason to admire the person that she was.
If I can honor her by maintaining
what she started, that pleases me.
The whole system seems to be working adequately.
That cable worked out perfect.
There she is, there's that blow down.
This is the beginning of the hard spot, I believe.
After this point, there's no established trail,
just a gray cable laying in the woods
with who knows what laying on top of it.
It doesn't look like much from here,
but once you get up there,
it's a little chaotic.
Ooh. I'm okay.
All good.
I think from here to that first log on the beach
is like 75 yards.
We're gonna get the rack at the 95-yard Mark,
post up that spinner as far back as we can get it,
and do some shooting.
I'm feeling pretty at ease about shooting my gun
even though I haven't shot it in a while.
You'll be shooting at the short target first
just to make sure our guns aren't, like, too far off.
I'm feeling better this time.
I feel, like, kind of enough time has passed
that maybe I can pick that gun up and it,
I'll just go right back to where I was.
So I'm, I'm to the right a little bit.
Okay, yeah, so you just have to bring it over.
Okay.
Four clicks, I think.
We weren't successful with our bear hunt last year,
but we're not quitters.
It's something that I've been working at,
and I just want to be able to check
a bear off my list now.
We adjusted the wind age,
so now I just want to see if I can hit the bullseye.
Good shooting, Breanna. You're doing good, man.
I know.
Yeah, you hit the bullseye that time, man.
- There you go. - Yeah, I just hit the bullseye.
I feel good. That's, I'm gonna kill something with that.
Let's see if we can make the pendulum swing.
- Yeah. - Yeah.
Let's see what we're doing here at 90 yards now.
I think I'm feeling up to it.
- You guys? Yeah? - I'm feeling good, yup.
Woo!
- Spun round and round. - Yeah, it did.
There you go.
Bingo. Drilled that.
Sweet.
Baller, dude.
Yeah, I shot down there,
I made one swing, so I'm feeling good about it.
That was fun.
Bullet in the chamber.
So now it's Oliver's turn.
Headphones on.
Sam, Breanna, and I are all planning
to go out for a bear hunt.
Last year, we didn't get to connect the dots
on getting a bear, so we're making sure
our guns are dialed in and everything's working good
so that we go out there and pull the trigger,
we'll actually hit something.
There you go.
Twang.
- Sweet. - Yeah.
- Everything was spinning. - Yeah, we like that.
Well, I mean, we've all hit it now,
so that's cool.
Yeah.
Everything's come together really quickly actually
and a lot better than I thought it would.
Granted nothing is straight or square,
but it's level, you know, and it's strong
and I think ultimately that's all that matters.
So we're gonna put a deck on it and,
yeah, then we're ready to bring the sawmill over
and, set it up and start working on it.
And this is getting really real.
That looks like a pretty straight line.
Yeah, looks good to me.
- That's it. - That's it.
Carl's been dreaming of a sawmill for many years,
and it's a huge thing for the both of us.
We've got a lot to do around on the property,
and a sawmill is gonna help us.
We're building our home, we're building our empire,
and this is something that's really exciting for us.
- Ooh. - Ooh, man.
Boy, that was a good one.
Find somebody? Yeah.
That's a good one. That's a big one.
Stay down, dude.
Feels pretty good anyway.
There we go.
Come on board, baby.
Get him inside.
Ooh, come on.
Alright.
Fast.
Stuck to the back of your arm.
Hey, that looks like a 14-incher.
It's definitely.
Barely got in here too, man.
Yeah we're there.
- Nice. - Sweet.
Well, at least we got something to show for our troubles so far.
Yeah.
We're still pretty early in spring,
so the real hard fishing isn't quite here yet
but it's a good time to shake out the gear.
So when the iron's hot, we'll be ready to strike.
What do you think about going in and sparking up a fire?
Put some feed under us.
Yeah.
Food sounds good right now.
Alright, so we got a plan here, Veronica.
Basically I suspended this spool,
make sure it spools out nice and good.
While I go up this blow down,
we're gonna pull those lines
using the old line just over its old route
over the top of all these trees.
- Yeah. - Basically
the wire should peel out of this just like that,
- go right on up the hill. - Yeah.
Lots of water coming out of that.
This is pretty compromised stuff.
Yeah, I'm glad we're getting rid of this.
Okay, so I think that's pretty much it
for me on this end.
Alright, Matt, I'll be on 15 on the walkie.
Alright, I'll,
let you know if I break my leg or anything.
We're not taking chances.
This is rough country
to have to go back and forth in a whole bunch.
These parts of the forest are, they're just wild.
There's no path. There's no visual.
You don't know what you're walking into.
If you don't know your way around these forests,
those things can get you into real trouble.
We just up.
You see how it goes under that tree right there?
- Yeah. - Yeah, we want it to go over that.
I was supposed to fix that when I cut the line.
Just disconnect that, we're gonna do something
a little different here.
- Are we, are we free? - Yeah.
I think it might work.
This is just a little ten-ounce fishing weight
to make sure your fishing gear
will drop down to the bottom.
I'm gonna just repurpose it and use it as a counter-weight
so when I throw this wire up in the air,
the weight of it is gonna drag it back down.
So I'll just tie this end, and I'll just throw my balls.
Okay.
Up we go.
Pretty fun.
- My god, it's working. - It's working.
Yeah, Veronica, you read me?
I'm here, what do we got?
I'm at the top, looking at our,
pink ribbon that we spliced in.
That's awesome.
I'm gonna jump up to the next spot,
where it goes over a bunch of limbs
and is about 20 feet off the ground
and get this done.
This is very exciting.
Matt's gotta finish pulling it up along the top
until we're to the end, and the rest of the trail
is a breeze compared to the blow down,
so very exciting.
I'm glad Veronica asked me to help with this.
It's really exciting to see somebody new here
that really wants to take initiative.
She's a real go-getter.
One.
You can definitely see litzi in Veronica.
That's good.
And it's nice, you know,
when Veronica laughs, I can hear litzi laugh.
You there?
Yeah, I copy.
Well, I got it all spliced,
but I was curious to know if you'd want to give it
a juice test?
You know, we were, we were right on the same page.
I was just fixing to do that
as soon as you gave me the word,
so, I guess here it goes.
Feel free to leave the mic open so I can hear.
There's gotta be a better way to do this.
Did you check both the blue and the orange?
Yes, I surely did.
Yeah, that one was hot.
That's got a lot more bite in it
than a nine-volt battery, I tell you what.
I was just saying the same thing.
That's awesome.
That means we got phone line past the blow down.
I'll be up there shortly.
Okay, copy.
This is pretty much it.
We just got a couple more spools to run,
and we're home free.
You should be able to talk on your phone
to your heart's content.
That's it.
We did a thing.
This is a huge thing.
My parents actively pursued this life,
and we're constantly learning from them.
Morgan and I are on the same page there.
I really, really enjoy working with Morgan, you know,
building a life, you know, basically what we're doing.
You know, not just figuratively,
literally building a life.
Feels good to get out there, you know.
It gets you prepped for the, the upcoming season
'cause we got lots
of different species of fish to gather,
and things are about to get real busy here.
It's an ongoing thing through spring and summer.
By the time you hit October there,
you better be ready, or you'll be feeling it in February.
Alright, we ready to try that telephone out?
I hope we didn't just shock our tongues for nothing all day.
Let's see if this thing works.
Alright, I'm opening the line.
Here we go.
That's it. We got it.
Yeah!
I always have something to learn from the people
that have lived out here, Matt's no exception.
I'm taking ownership of the things that need to be done.
I'm feeling much less like a guest
and more like a resident.
- Yeah! - That did scare me.
Yeah, whoa, that was sweet, dude.
That was sweet. Blew it away.
It's nice seeing some of the kids come back
and move into this neck of the woods.
Bullseye.
I'm gonna do the best job I can
to pass the torch to him,
you know, teach him as much as I can.
I feel confident that if we do run into
an eligible bear,
we will, bring him home hopefully.
That's how you do it.
- Okay. Don't look. - Not looking.
Don't look until you get over here.
Okay.
Keep your eyes down.
- Come over here. - My god.
- You ready for this? - Yes.
Ta-da!
- My god. - You like it?
I don't know.
I mean, I don't even know what to think.
Yeah.
Looks kind of like a big pile of rusty metal?
Yeah.
Captioned by point.360