Subsistence Hunting on the Ice Above the Arctic Circle

Huge thank you Cassidy Daniel for sharing her story with us on the show today!

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Transcript

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Buckle up for one of my favorite episodes that I've done so far. It's always fun when I know the other person on the side of the screen. And today we have Cassidy Daniel joining us. She is from a community that lives and hunts on the ice. Traditionally, she. It isn't living there right now, but maybe her dream is to move back to her hometown or to her husband's hometown. This is a story of her childhood and summers up above the Arctic Circle. I think there's a lot that we can learn from it, but the biggest thing that I took from it is actually the similarities that we all have as people who care for the land. I truly hope you enjoy. Thank you for joining me on another episode of the Global Stewardship Podcast. Posted a bit late this week because Cassidy and I actually recorded this on Tuesday, and I knew that I wanted this to be the one I post this week. So thanks for waiting and being patient. I appreciate each and every one of you. Let's dive right in.

Audio Only - All Participants: 0:51

literally one of my biggest regrets, from my time in college was not spending more time with you and getting to know you I have actually mentioned you online at one point, like there was this girl at my school and when I met her for the first time, she introduced herself it was in our Old Testament class. We were playing two truths and a lie. It was our introduction to everybody. And one of your truths was that you had killed a bear. I just remember thinking, okay, this girl, is so great. And I had just, I didn't grow up in a hunting community but I was just getting into that, spending more time outdoors, wanting to understand where my food came from. That really stuck out to me that you knew where your food came from. I was a kid. And I know I mentioned you online the first time that my family ever harvested our first bear. I was like, I'm doing what that girl did. We ate it for the first time. That was really cool. So, you're that person finally on the podcast. Could you share a little bit about who you are and where you're from? Yeah. Um, that's awesome. But I never would've thought, I've also was like, dang, I wish I got to know her more.'cause I think it's really cool, what you do, farming because mm-hmm. We're not, like, I didn't grow up doing that. And I think in my opinion, a lot of natives, Alaska natives are kind of like that lifestyle. Like it'd be so cool to form, but we can't really do it here. But, um, anyways, my name is Cassidy Daniel. I grew up in Tbu, Alaska, so it's Northwestern Alaska, I think it's 33 miles above the Arctic Circle. Yeah, like you said, grew up. Off the land, um, subsisting and catching fish, caribou, seals, bears, moose, pretty much anything that we could in our hands on to fill our freezers, yeah, that, that's who I am. What does it look like there throughout the seasons? What is your town like? How does it change throughout the year? Is it super dark already now? So we can visualize it? Yeah. So if we're starting off in January, um, very cold, very dark, I think we. By January we're gaining light. So December 21st is our winter solstice, and that has like three hours of daylight. So it doesn't even, I don't even think the sun comes up. It's just kind of a dusk, like the whole day. So, so there's many months out of the year where we go to work in the dark, come back in the dark. That's why you've heard of the sad, the, uh, seasonal effect disorder. Because it's always dark and it's kind of depressing. Mm-hmm. But that's just what I've always known. So yeah, that's what it's like in the winter months, just very cold, like negative fifties. It can get wind chill of like negative 70 blizzards. We're inside a lot of the winter for obvious reasons. If we are outside, it's. If it's above negative 20, negative 20 is pushing it, I think it is just dangerous at that point. But, we're outside and we only have three hours of the day to go out and do something otherwise we'll have to do it in the dark. And then we get into springtime and we start gaining light more and more every day it gets a lot warmer. The sun, I think reflects off the snow or something. And so we just get this crazy tan. Like if you go up there in the springtime, one, you'll see everybody is out, even though it's still 20 degrees because it feels so much warmer compared to what it did in the winter. Um, the sun is out, everybody has the glasses tan. We still only get our head and neck will be tan and like our hands, but the rest of our body is not because we're wearing jackets still pretty much. And, um, amazing. We go ice fishing, uh, that's probably one of my favorite times is springtime. And that lasts between, I think I would say April to mid-June is our springtime. And it's, it's funny'cause it's very different than the lower 40 eights seasons, but I think a lot of the, trends or the store stuff follows the lower, lower 48 season. So it'll be like springtime and it's like March or February or something and it's still so cold and dark out and the same way, like everything's flowery. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And then, we get she fish in the springtime. That's really fun. That's when we go bear hunting. Bear hunting I think. Is more, more predator controlled than anything. They eat seals and fish and so they're not super tasty. But they, yeah, do eat a lot of our caribou and a lot of our MOUs. So we try and get some bears every year. We get seals in the springtime. Birds that are migrating up. And then we go into our summertime, daylight all the day. There's no dark. It's pretty, it can range in temperature, it can either be like 30 degrees or sometimes it gets up to 80 degrees, 90 degrees, um, which sucks because we don't have air conditioning. So. We just have to kind of suffer. We have to for that time, like no wind. Yeah, because we were like, no air conditioning, but it's hot. And so that's when you'll see people like really out like shorts, t-shirts, just on the beach having a good time. And our hours are pretty different too, I think, than the regular, regular lifestyle because I, because the sun is up. So late, so two, 2:00 AM will feel like 10:00 PM or even 7:00 PM It's like we usually stay up really late and then wake up. Um, yeah, your circadian rhythm is so different. That's really fascinating. Yeah, it's really interesting. Um, and during the summertime we, my family actually hosts a bible camp and so, we get like people from down south who come and help out and even from Anchorage and they're waking up at like 8:00 AM People aren't waking up until 11 or 12, so they're kinda like, what do we do for three hours? They eventually catch on and they. Get onto our sleep schedule. But yeah, that's summertime. There's fishing, salmon fishing in the summertime. Usually that's our main like subsistence thing. Um, and that's pretty much like we catch a salmon that we use for the whole year, because that's the only time to get it is within those few months. And I, I don't think there's much more subsistence besides like late summer, which is July. We start to get berries and so there's blueberries. There's what we call icks, which are cloud berries. Um, they're the little orange ones, right? Yellow orange. Yeah. They're, they're so good. What do they taste like? Oh man, I don't. They're very sweet, but it's not like a sour sweet, like blueberries, especially like the tundra ones are like, you, you have that like sour reaction to them. Mm-hmm. These ones are sweet and maybe like syrup. I don't know how to describe it, but yeah. One of those, you have to try it. Yeah, they're really good. And I think. This is probably wrong, but it's somewhere along the lines of one cup of those is, has the same amount of vitamin C as like eight oranges or something like that. So a lot of our foods are like jam packed with nutrients. I'm sure God made it that way because we don't have farming capabilities we can't grow a lot of vegetables or things like that. The land is not barren. Like there's stuff there, but it's not, there's not as much like vegetation as other warmer places. So fall time is berry season. That's our main thing. We try to pick as much berries because again, that's what we'll have for the coming year. Fall time is also caribou. It's starting to get colder and darker. We're kind of preparing for the dark, cold winter months. So we get caribou and seals. I think those are my family's main, main ones is caribou and seal. But it's really interesting too because I think our lifestyle, might be different from people from the lower 48. Because winter it's so cold and dark. I think life just slows down a lot. Um, so it feels very slow and like relaxing. Whereas in the summer we're so busy getting. Food to put into our freezer that it just feels so fast and busy and we have so many hours in a day because of the daylight and all that stuff. So it's nice, I think to have a season of slowing down and then a season of just fast paced, getting all of our stuff together. So. Rhythms of life. Yeah. I don't know if it's similar there or if it's kind of all year round you're doing stuff, but that's how it's, yeah. I think people have to be a lot more intentional about those rhythms of the seasons because it's not so drastically required to do them. We were just talking about that on the farm this morning. Our farm team was reflecting on. As farmers we're doing that. But we host people here year round that want to be farmers but they don't have their own farms yet. And so this is their first season ever experiencing life outdoors full-time.'cause you know, they come from desk jobs or whatever. And a lot of times, every winter people's reflections are that. Oh wow. I'm finding that I'm able to slow down and this is like a reflective season of life. Maybe that's how it's supposed to be like. Yeah, maybe it is. Like God makes everything for a reason and just really cool. But you know, when you're in a desk job and an artificial environment, for sure, most people have no concept of that, but I think that's really fascinating. Do you find that the rush of summer, is that super exciting? Is that stressful? How? How do people. How do other people see it? Um, I find it very exciting and I think a lot of people do too, but it can get to the point to where if you are a person who dreads winter, I actually like winter, so if you're a person who does dread winter because you can't go outside as much anymore, or it's dark and cold, then they start to think, oh, I only have a few months to be outside pretty much. Mm-hmm. I have to go camping this weekend because I can't do it all winter. This is kind of how my husband is, like, he loves camping and all that stuff, so pretty much every weekend we try to be out and sometimes that can get a little bit tiring when you're like, oh, I just kind of wanna stay in. But then you feel like you're wasting, like you feel a little guilty, like, oh, do we need to stay in though? Yeah. So, um, so. There's a mix of both. Like it's exciting to be in that time and if you have the knowledge that this is only a few months, like it's not always gonna be this rushed and busy mm-hmm. Then you kind of just like take it on. But yeah, it can definitely. Feel a little bit overwhelming if you let it get to that point. Definitely. I think this will be helpful for people to hear, especially I know I have a bunch of listeners from Montana because that's where I'm originally from. And even places like Wisconsin states where people think it's so miserably dark and cold, and even their most miserable, dark and cold is still way brighter and warmer, and it's like, wow, maybe we could actually get outside today, like during their winter months. So I think it's interesting to hear so my biggest question is, is this subsistence lifestyle? Is it something your whole community still does? Is your family like, do you guys do it more than other people, less than other people? I think my family does it more than other people, because of kind of the western influence that we've had in our community over the past. 50 years, six years. Within the past a hundred years, when the Westerners came and kind of had us go into their system of like the eight to five work life. Mm-hmm. Um, it's a lot harder for people to. Go out and do this stuff. Um, also because a lot of our elders were sent off to boarding schools, and so they missed the important knowledge of learning how to do this stuff. And if you never really learn how to do it, and then you go back and you don't either, either you don't have anybody to teach you or you're too busy with your day job to go out and do it, then it's not gonna get passed down. So. I think between the knowledge not being passed down and the fact that people need to provide for their families with money, I think it's declining the amount of people that we see, regularly subsisting. So yeah, my family has been pretty fortunate to have my dad who learned a lot of this stuff, um, from his dad and who actually went out to be intentional to learn from elders about how to hunt and how to be out on the land. So his children, which is me, my two sisters and my two brothers, we've been very fortunate to get to learn a lot of this stuff, because I think a lot of people our age. Just have, almost have no idea. Or they don't even really get out like on the water or like on the tundra throughout the year. And like our town is, it's a mile wide and two miles long, so they pretty much stay on that, like that spit of land the whole time and they're not able to go out. Exploring the rest of the Arctic because they just dunno how, and it is very dangerous. So you kind of have to know how to do it, or have somebody to take you. But yeah. Yeah. I feel like my family does do it a lot more than other families in the area. It's not uncommon that we do it, but we just. Practice it more, more often. Yeah. What are some of the dangers? Do you have any crazy close encounter stories? I've, I have really only been out with my dad because, because I don't trust myself yet, I guess, to go out by myself. I have been out by myself a couple of times, there was this time my parents were out of town and I'm like, I'm just gonna do it. I'm gonna go out on my own and I'll be okay. I know what to do. I've done it so many times before, and I did, and my snow machine got stuck like two times. It was winter time and my parents were outta town. I didn't even, it was so bad. I didn't even tell them that I was going, oh, no. The only person I told was my little brother who was like, gosh, he must have been like 10 at the time, or something like that. I'm like, if I'm not back by and we don't have service out there or anything. Yeah. So I'm like, not back by 9:00 PM Call, search and rescue. That, that was my safety is that my 10-year-old would, would call suture, would remember to look at the clock. which I don't know why I left him home alone, but it's fine. I think my grandma was watching us or something and I didn't tell, wanted to tell her because she would worry. But yeah, my snow machine got stuck and. There's some lighter snow machines and there are some heavier ones. And this one was definitely a heavy, heavier one. So I think it was more stuck, I, if you can't get out, then you're stuck out there. There's no way to get home. You can walk, but it's like miles and miles. Thankfully I was able to get out and it was actually pretty cool. And I, I always think about this time to where it was like the first time out on the land on my own. And even though there was trail markers, there was this raven that was in front of me the whole way home, just up above me into my right. And I was just like, oh my gosh. It felt like, yeah. I was being washed over. I was like, oh, thank you God for saying this little thing to remind me that I'm not alone and like you'll be okay. Yeah. But yeah, there've been other times, like this time, my dad was with me and I had shot a moose. The day before. But it was starting to get dark and we could not find it. So we just ended up going home. We're like, we'll come back tomorrow to the same area and track it. The only problem was it was there was gonna be a blizzard the next day. So we only had like these two hours to go Wow. Find this moose. So we went to this spot. We were like looking at its tracks. We found some like blood spots, but then they stopped like we could not find the moose for the life of us, I don't think. I think I just like nicked it or something. I don't think I really went mm-hmm. Super badly. So it's probably still running out there, but. Anyways, the blizzards started coming in and my dad, he knows the area behind town, like the back of his hand. Like he can, he can probably navigate it blind. And he was like, I'm gonna let you drive in front of me to just get the experience of driving in a blizzard. And the trail markers are probably they're not very far apart, like maybe 10 feet apart and they have the reflector on them, but you could only see the next trail marker, like it was that blizzardy to where with your lights, you could only see the reflection from the trail marker like 10 feet away. You think you're doing good and then all of a sudden my snow machine started going to the left, maybe, but I lost the trail marker and oh, no crap. Like if I don't have that trail marker, there's no way I can get home because I don't know what's in front of me. I don't even know which direction I'm facing at this point, like mm-hmm. I was pretty scared. And then I was like, dad, you need to take the lead. And so he like was like, okay. And so he like went in front and he was like, this is that pond that we trapped the otter in, remember? And I'm like. No, no, like actually I don't, I remember this is the bluff that like we go over and like this is the patch of grass. I know like he, he was explain like, and these are things we could see within like 10 feet. And he knew exactly where we were based on those 10 feet and how to get home from that area. That's amazing. Yeah, I know. And I was like, man, if I was out here by myself, I would be probably dead. That is such a humbling experience. Wow. Yep, yep. Yeah. Those will definitely learn and grow. Yeah, for sure. yeah, so both of them scary times. but of course I had things to help me get home. And yeah, in the wintertime and in the springtime, it's always very dangerous because the ice, I've never really experienced falling through the ice or anything like that, just because I've been taught to be very careful. Um, but unfortunately, actually within the last week we had three hunters, fall through and two of them passed away. Oh, no. Yeah, so. That stuff happens. Usually every year we get people falling through the ice or some sort of casualty just because of the harshness of winter and the land and, now being like the ice is harder to read because it freezes and unfreezes mm-hmm. Um, so it's really unfortunate and sad wow. How many people are in your community? Do you know? We have, I think 3,500 people the last time we checked. Yeah, so that's Our Town, which is the hub of tents surrounding villages. And the villages can have from 100 to. 600 or, you know, however many people. Mm-hmm. And we're all pretty connected. Like we can drive from a village to town between villages, with snow machine, otherwise you'll have to access them by boat, like through the river systems. Are you guys all, like, would all of those villages have been originally from that place? Or did people gather from further out? Yeah. I think the people that are there now are in the same line of those who have would've been there hundreds of years ago. And I'm sure it's changed, they probably had different names for the villages or they probably had a couple more. And also the thing is we used to follow the animals, like their migration patterns mm-hmm. Throughout the year. And then when. The Western system came, they kind of just set us in one spot all year round. And so that's a little bit different. So I'm sure there are a lot of like mixed families, which I feel like that, like we're all very connected, I think, in that way. Yeah. You were talking about the people back then. And also I've been thinking with the snow machines, things have definitely changed over time. How has your community traditionally related to the land and the waters for food and medicine you've already kind of touched on it, how fewer people are doing it now, what are some other examples of ways that has been changing over time? I mean, relating to the land and the food that it provide was everything because I think our lives and the way that. Our people traditionally lived was around food. Like I said, we'd migrate with the animals or go to different areas depending on what food would be there. And same with the seasons, it's a direct effect, I think. Mm-hmm. The weather and the food and the land and waters onto our lives. And in the modern day, I think our life up there is still very affected by that stuff, more than what it would be to someone from the lower 48. For example, we kind of depend on what we're going to do for the day, depending on what the situation outside looks like. For subsistence it's like, oh, it's windy today, so we can't go out, we're gonna have to do this thing instead, or, oh, we plan to do this thing today, but the winds have died down, so we need to go out because we don't know when the next opportunity is going to be. Mm-hmm. So I would say it's a pretty direct effect, um, when you're living like a highly subsistence lifestyle. Yeah, What are some of the. Environmental changes that you guys are seeing you know, you had mentioned the ICE have you guys noticed anything with the animals or the berries? What, what all are you seeing? Yeah. So for one is the ice. so it forms later. In the fall and goes away earlier in the spring. So we're having a longer summertime than we used to have. Um, so that affects a lot of things, especially because. The time it takes between the ice forming is a longer period of time. So before the ice forms, we can go out with a boat, we can do all that stuff. And then in that time period to where it's unsafe, between the boat and the snow machine, we can't really do much, besides on our spit of land. That has changed it a lot. It's a longer time for it forming to where we can't do anything in the wintertime our ice doesn't fully freeze anymore or our ocean doesn't fully freeze anymore like it used to. seals. Walrus. My community doesn't really get walrus much, but I wonder if we used to, but seals specifically, they stay where the ice flows are. And because in the springtime those are further out from town than they used to. That makes it more. Dangerous and costly for us to get them because we have to. Gas costs a ton of money. Yeah. Gotta go further. Mm-hmm. The ocean is different than it would be in it's called ttab abuse sound. That's the body of water that's right in front of us. So the ocean has different conditions than the kasab abuse sound would, so it's a little bit more dangerous. It's affecting a lot of things. It's affecting our caribou herd. In the summertime we have a lot of mosquitoes and I think those probably wreak havoc on our caribou herd a lot because it's just a longer time for them to mess with them. This is what I've heard, but because of the ground freezing and unfreezing all the time, it forms this like icy crust over the tundra and I've heard that it's harder for them to get their food, which is lichen and things from the tundra, um, because they like are having to really. Work to get to their food because of this new, icy crush that is over it. Yeah, the fall storms are a lot worse than they've ever been, I'm guessing, every year it seems like the water is getting higher and higher which is going to eventually affect our infrastructure, and there are some communities that they're starting to erode away pretty much. So they're having to fully relocate those communities. Oh, no way. Yeah. One of them is Velina. And then, I don't know if you've heard about it's not my area, but it's Southwestern Alaska. It's, uh, Kip Nook and Quig are the two that were really affected, but they had really bad storms from. This typhoon, I think. And there were houses floating away. Wow. Most of the houses just got completely flooded and wrecked, and they had to fully evacuate those two villages, they have to move them to Anchorage, so Yeah. Like families being relocated that's a whole different place. Wow. The villages that were affected, you have to take an hour flight to Bethel, and then maybe another hour, small flight to the village. Wow. Yeah. That's a whole change. Yeah. It's huge culture shift too, I'm sure. Oh, for sure. Yeah. And all of their belongings ruin. Yeah. And they can't take them their whole lives pretty much. It's wild. Wow. That is crazy. Yeah. So what kind of hunting and trapping rights do you guys have that other Alaskans don't? Is it regulated at all or how does that work? Um, for at least marine mammals, only Alaskan natives can. Hunt marine mammals. Like seals, belugas, those are the main ones that we get in our area. Walruses if they're there. And for the big game like caribou and moose, um, residents can, I'm sure there are some like specific to tbu, but I think. If any Alaskan resident can go up and hunt, they have regulations in terms of it used to be five caribou per day per person. So, wow. Get a lot of caribou. That'd be a big day. Yeah. You, I mean, I can't imagine anybody really getting that much caribou. Like we've always gotten a lot because one, we had a big family. But two, we. Provide for elders in the community who can't hunt for themselves. So sometimes we, we get a little bit extra just because we know that there are people in need who aren't able to get those food themselves. But now it's actually because our caribou herd is declining, we're only able to get four per, I think it's four per person per year. I think is what it is. Hmm. So I mean, from five per person per day to four per person, that's, yeah, that's a pretty drastic change. But it's still reasonable. Like, I don't know if you know how big caribou are mm-hmm. But it's like maybe a little bit smaller than a horse. Right? Yeah. Do you know how many pounds of meat you usually get off of one. Oh gosh, I don't actually, it definitely fills a good bit of the freezer though. Yeah. Yeah. Like my husband and I, it's just us two and one would be enough for a year, but we usually get two because we barely buy beef. Mm-hmm. For sure. Lot of caribou and moose. Um. The year. How many freezers, does your family have, like your extended family? My parents in Coby, they have, the one attached to the fridge and then they have two chest freezers downstairs and then like a standup freezer. a lot, It's a lot of freezer space. Mm-hmm. They have a decent amount of food and if you take into account like the food that we get from like Anchorage, like chicken nuggets easier stuff to get right, we store those in there too. We actually have different designated freezers for native food. And then not native. We have the same thing on the farm because we, you know, we do hunt. Certainly we've got a wild game freezer, and then we have like the chicken freezer that we raise the chickens and we've got pork freezers and then there's like one freezer that's kind of like the junk freezer that's stuffed that we got from other people or the grocery store. Or saved from other farmers.

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So what kind of things do they sell in the grocery stores in the Zebu area?

Audio Only - All Participants: 32:53

I would say it, it sells the regular anything that you would see at a regular small town grocery store. So like mm-hmm. It has different types of meat, in the freezer. It's a lot of processed food, I think for those families who don't subsist or don't have access to, food from the country, then they eat a lot of processed things. It's really hard to get fresh produce. Yeah, I'm sure. Yeah. So like all the vegetables. They're usually like not the best quality because they have to be shipped from all the way. Who knows where actually, literally, yeah. So those usually aren't the best quality. So when I'm home, I feel like I don't eat a lot of vegetables or anything like that. We eat a lot of canned vegetables or preserved vegetables, I think more than fresh ones because of mm-hmm. Not only the fresh ones are like not very fresh, but they cost a lot too. So, oh, interesting. Yeah, I was wondering about the cloud berries. Do you guys just freeze those or do you, can those, same with like the salmon. I know now you have freezers. Do you do any of the traditional preservation methods still? So the salmon berries, we usually just freeze. We'll make like jams and jellies out of them my dad likes doing that. And then for the salmon and a lot of the other meat, we kind of do a mix of both. We'll freeze them, and bake them as normal. But also we have nickko pack dinner. So nickko pack is what we call our traditional foods. Traditionally they would just pretty much eat it frozen or raw. Mm-hmm. I don't think they really cooked anything much. We'll eat it frozen. Oh. And they dried it. And we like still do dry a lot of our meat, our seal meat. I think it's mostly dried, is what we eat. I see. And then our caribou will dry some of it, we'll freeze some of it, we'll. Eat it frozen or we'll eat it baked, eat it, dried. So I like, I've had people ask me like, what are some traditional recipes? Because, you know, like in the south. Right. They're like Mexican, like they have all these like spices and like yeah, send the recipe book like raw is pretty much what it, just like raw food I guess is what we traditionally ate. Like, um,'cause we didn't have much. Like what a plate of Nicka pack would look like is seal oil as our base. So we get the seal fat and we render it to make an oil. And that's what they used to do back then too. And we kind of use that as like the dipping sauce. It goes on everything, everything gets like slathered in it. And then we'll have. Dried or baked fish or both? Um, fish eggs. Fish heads, caribou baked or frozen? Moose baked. There's also greens, like, um, Tooke, I don't know what the, English. What would it be called? But it's maybe like a sea green. I don't know. Yeah. What it's called. But it's like we find it on the shores of the water. Similar to cilantro, I think. Oh, cool. Yeah, it's really yummy. But we have that too in there. Dried seal, um, fish, seal, caribou, and moose. you were talking about the seal oil. Are there other parts of the animal that, you know, other people might just throw away we always say here, like respecting and honoring the whole animal, like we eat nose to tail. Are there any things that you guys eat or have traditional recipes with that people might think like, oh really? Uh, maybe we'll just go to least extreme to more extreme, but one is, uh, ease us into it. Yeah. Is the intestines, which I think people eat. Cow intestines and pig intestines and stuff, but we like seal intestines. Um, I, I don't think I've had cow or pig intestines, but it's like a rub rubbery texture. We just boil it, take all the stuff out from inside of it and then boil the outer tube. Um, is that what I've seen pictures of you braiding something? Is that what you braid? That's what I braided. Okay. Yeah. And another part of the seal is their flippers. This is probably the more extreme. I think I've tried it before, but we don't ferment stuff as much as we used to traditionally. Mm-hmm. Um, I don't know why. I think maybe we're just a little bit more. Scared of getting sick. Yeah, right. Used to me or something like that. Yeah. Because I'm like, I don't know how they avoided, Maybe the American like food system tries to scare you a little bit more than it they do, but it is a lost art form for sure. Yeah. But yeah, traditionally we've fermented a lot of things like fish heads, fish, eggs, seal flippers is one of them. So you just get, get the flipper of the seal. Bury it underground for a while and then eat it like from that and it's, it's pretty pungent. Um, that's cool. Yeah. People like it. Yeah. That's interesting. Is there anything that you think listeners would find fascinating that we haven't talked about or important? I will say that like I think I. Whether in the south or in the Arctic, like we have a lot more in common than we think that we do. At least for those who are like farmers or who live off the land. Even just for example, you're like, we have a lot of freezers too. Like, yeah, let do these things. Oh, that's fun. And I think, at least from my perspective, sometimes people think that we don't. Um, but we're, we're all really just trying to yeah. Know what we're eating and trying to. Live a healthier lifestyle contrary to what the system is trying to feed us, I think. Yeah, for sure. And I think that's really important and I think it should be learned, like don't be afraid to go out and learn these things and so that you can pass it down to future generations. Um, because that's how we're gonna keep it going. Like if. you, aren't learning these things, or you decide not to teach it, it kind of just stops there, which is important. Exactly. Yeah. Um, so I think the way that we can have like a healthier, country or healthier families, is by. Taking the time and it's hard work. It takes a lot of time. You probably have to do it outside of your day job. But I think the reward of all of that outweighs the cost of what, what you're giving. Yeah, absolutely. I totally agree. When. You think about your own community, I know you have eternal hope because you love Jesus. Like when you think of this earthly community, what gives you hope for the future of your community when people are forgetting some of these things? Um, I think one thing is that. God created us. He created this beautiful system where we still have all of the nutrients that we need, um, and we are able to I guess learn how to take care of the land that he's given us and vice versa, like we are able to be sustained from that. But I, I think that in itself is really beautiful and I hope that people in my community can start to lean in on that more and not only see God's power through his creation, but to see how much love that he has for us in his, what he's created. Mm-hmm. Yeah, i've been thinking this so much lately that like stewarding the land and having a relationship with creation. It's not necessarily about food all these things are important, knowing where your food comes from and protecting the land for sure. But like, there are so, there's so much that that relationship does for us and for our bodies, like even just. Getting to spend time outside. My husband, he's got a desk job. He drives into a city to work and the days that he does get to stay home and like experience sun up to sun down, like he's a whole different man. He feels so good. So certainly we were made for this live originally, so that's really cool. I guess speaking of that last question, I know you said you love wintertime, but do you have any advice for the person listening who is dreading going into winter and, just needs to be, you know, encouraged a little bit about how to embrace the rhythms of nature as they head into the winter months? I mean, I, I always kind of see winter as a time to reflect on the year that has happened before. And also to really lean into community because you don't have, I think, um, especially being in a place that is so dark and cold. so those two things I think really helped me get through winters like. Reminding myself that it's okay to slow down. And then also really pouring into the friendships that I have and the relationships that I have, as well as getting refilled, by those. I really like plants in general. Like winter, they're like dormant and they're like, I don't know much like a lot about the biology of it, but they're dormant in the winter. They're still living, but they're um. They're taking a little break. Yeah, they're taking a little break, slowing down. Just being there I guess. And then in the springtime they're preparing for what's to come. Mm-hmm. Summer bloom. And then fall time is a time to not die, like trim back. Yeah. I hear you. Yeah. That wasn't a good No, I think it's a beautiful analogy for sure. So it's so true. Yeah. That's cool. I never, I've not really thought about that. I guess there is a song, I'm sure you know it, it's called Springtime by Chris. Somebody starts with an R. Yeah. But yeah, I, I listen to that song every spring and think, okay, this is the time we're like preparing to bloom. Yeah. Very cool. Well, thank you so much for talking with me today and answering the questions that I should have asked you in college. And I'm sorry that I didn't, another amazing person to get to talk to who thankfully continues these traditions all, all over the world. Every week we get to hear from people who are continuing on really amazing things that people have been doing for so long. So I appreciate actually knowing the person on the other side of the screen for once. So thank you. Yeah, that was really fun. Thanks for inviting me.

44:58

I hope you guys enjoyed this episode today, and it was a reminder for me that when I feel the nudge to reach out to somebody, to spend more time with somebody, get to know someone that you don't have forever, that time may be limited and to absolutely go where I feel called to. Cassidy and I only ever went really on one camping trip together, and so. Of course I learned a lot about her community and her childhood, and I hope you guys did too, but that was a personal reminder for me. This episode has renewed a passion in me to continue on with this podcast. my goal was to at least do a whole year and episodes like these make me wanna do this for the rest of my life. But in order to keep doing so, I need your feedback. I absolutely need your feedback. And more importantly, I need your recommendations if you know a farmer or a land steward, if you are a farmer or a fisherman, or you have family in another country across the world who produce food or milk cows. Please send their information my way. When you click the text us button, I'm not able to respond to you on there. So for those of you who've reached out to me via that button looking for a response, I actually have no way of knowing how to reach you. And so if you do want to converse genuinely back and forth and not just send a note, I would recommend direct messaging me on social media. My Instagram is Hannah at the gardens, or you can email me. It's a tricky one, so I'm just gonna put it in the podcast description, but I absolutely need your recommendations and would deeply, deeply appreciate you taking just a second to think about somebody in your life who you know, even through the grapevine, and send me their information. I hope you guys have a great week and I can't wait to publish another episode next week.