View Full Version : Greetings from SE Alaska bush
Hello everybody!!
My name is Mark and I live in the rain forest of SE Alaska on Prince of Wales Island..
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i live a simple subsistance lifestyle.. I hunt, and Fish, garden and gather and store most of my food. i cache rainwater in large water tanks for my house.. i have electricity, and running water, satelite internet and telephones.. no cell phone service. mail comes via float plane to our boat dock when the weather is ok and the stars are aligned.. i am a reloader and make my own bullets, and powder. here are miles of old logging roads on this island. the island is big as islands go.. about the size of Puerto Rico. there are about 80 people that live in our tiny village of Naukati Bay. we have a church, and a school.. a small fire department.. no fast food for a couple hundred miles and a days travel, no restaurants within 100 miles. perhaps some of you have seen that show on National Geographic called Port Protection??? that is filmed on our island a few miles away.. so was most of the episodes of Alaska Bush People, but that show is a joke and so unreal....
so I basically live the simplest of life.. i plan on posting lots of pics and short videos of my life.. hope all of you are ok with that....
have a great day
Mark
AlaskanGuy
I lived in Alaska from 53 to 77 and the whole state is lovely. Visited the SE coastal towns before commercialism hit and they were like an old western movie set. One of my favorite books when younger was about a family who lived on the Aleutians and raised cattle.
Would love to hear your stories. Oh, my first job involved having to contact people all over the state and I had to consider just how to do it. So many only got mail when the planes could land, either on water or ice.
:welcome: Loved the photos! Please continue to share them. I live in southern Ontario, visited BC several times over the years seeing the wilderness of the west coast. Always wanted to explore Haida Gwai at some point.
Very curious about the weather in winter and life during that season or are you shut off until springtime? How is the electricity generated?
Nice-looking place! Actually, possibly weather aside, your living situation doesn't seem very different from living in the uppermost northern Minnesota woods.
So what do you do for income? And what are your favorite activities when you're not working and/or subsisting?
I would love to hear your stories and see your pictures! Keep them coming....!
Welcome!
dado potato
8-4-19, 9:14am
Welcome, Mark.
I am curious about a couple things.
Do you share your indoor space with anybody, or a companion animal of some kind? (I have a wife of 20 years and a hearing-impaired cat. They both like me to brush them.)
And on election day, does your community use voting machines, or are paper ballots flown in and out? (Here there are voting machines that print a record of each vote, while the voter is interacting with the touch-screen. So the voter can see that the votes are all correctly recorded on the paper spool.)
Welcome Mark! What a beautiful place!
AlaskanGuy
8-4-19, 12:16pm
wow... lots of questions....
ok @sweetanna3 mail still comes to us that live remote like it always has, float plane when the weather is nice. which isnt very often...lol but the satelite internet has made bills and such so much easier as long as you have patience with deliveries and such.
@Razz.. we have a generatorfor our community.. and it runs all the time, and believe me, we pay for it.. there is a move right now to switch to hydro and lines are being strung, power poles laid in the legnth of the island on what we call the main line, a road that runs north and south on the island.. the hydro station is about 80 miles away and i am hopeful our tiny village can tap into it also.. many here do not have power... cost is 5 times what most pay in other places cuz there are fewer folks to pay for the infrastructure required to deliver it. winter time we dont get a bunch of snow, but get lots of ice.. the ground freezes and it rains, providing a slick situation for about 6 months.. average winter temp is around 30, with cold snaps, and warm ups, but the ground stays frozen till spring. the dirt roads are especially slippery, i have chains and 4wd with studs, and still slip and slide.. i keep a winch available at all times.
@steve.... I am retired from the hospital business for almost 20years now... i am on a fixed income though in that retirement.. i gave up my career about 20years ago when My autistic son was diagnosed and I found myself a single parent of a special needs kido... i am under 60 years old, but live with a pretty severe spinal injury.. i broke my back many years ago... i am pinned together with harrington rods and pins... but I do not let that rule my life. to answer your question, i enjoy all parts of my subsistance lifestyle.. those activities are my hobbies.. and they also provide. i enjoy putting 15 cords of wood plus up for heat.. i enjoy hiking 5 miles through a swamp to harvest ducks and geese, i enjoy picking mushrooms and canning them or drying them.. i enjoy casting bullets, making powder, helping my neighbors, serving God in our tiny church.. i love life, it is a hobby. durring dark winter, I have been known to Binge on a video game my son got me hooked on years ago called skyrim when I was recovering from yet another injury.
@dado I do share my space.. we have ducks and chickens, but also have a dog that I adore, and an inside cat.. the dog i have trained to do certain jobs lime tracking injured game and protecting the animals.. the cat also has a job to keep pests out of the house... which he relishes.. but is indoors only.. outside animals dont survive long here, and I love my kitty. my youngest son lives here as well. he is autistic, and will probably be with me till my demise.. he is 22 and a real great guy, and helps so much in our tiny village. the other day i had 5 calls before 8am from folks looking for him to help with projects around the village. also, our ballots for voting are collected at the school and counted, then a plane takes them.. we all vote absentee...
i will start a thread with pics and video links and such if you guys are interested. i take an Ipad mini everywhere I go for navigation and so on cuz I hate getting lost in the deep dark forest... or out on the water.
AG
Teacher Terry
8-4-19, 1:06pm
Very interesting and beautiful pictures!
i enjoy putting 15 cords of wood plus up for heat..
Wow... how do you do that with a spinal injury?!
I have moved to VT with DH, and our close neighbors are rural Vermonters, which means that if there was ever a nuclear event, these guys would be able to build a bomb shelter in about 2 hours. They are extremely self-reliant and independent and resourceful and I'm so happy I'm here to learn from them and even just watch them! My neighbor comes up with 2x6s and barrels and constructs another section of a dock, and when I ask him how he does that he says in a very typical self-deprecating way, "Oh, that's just redneck stuff." One of our neighbors spends a week in his woods just felling wood for the winter.
I am in awe of people who don't need to hire electricians and plumbers and carpenters and landscapers and car mechanics because they can do it all themselves. It's so inspiring.
Prince of Wales Island!!!
I have several friends who tell me I should move there some day, I've been planning to come up and visit sometime in the next few years.
Welcome!
I'm imagining that maybe this is somewhat what your life is like?
https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews/videos/2236601639965347/
AlaskanGuy
8-4-19, 10:37pm
no pike here.. more like this.. catherine
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and of course the spinal thing....
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@ rosarugosa
thanks so much for the welcome..
Wow... how do you do that with a spinal injury?!
well, pretty much I get up in the morning, decide I am gunna do it. do my God time, make breakfast for me and my son, and haul my azz out the door .. lol takes me about a month to get the firewood taken care of.
everything still works catherine, just somethings I pay for more then others later in the day. so I curl up in my chair when required, whimper and whine at the dog, she wags her tail, and life goes on the next day... lol
Hi Mark, Welome!
Your life sounds very interesting! We heat with 4 cords of wood, I can't imagine having to get 15 cords together for winter! :-O
rosarugosa
8-8-19, 12:33pm
Mark: Are you familiar with the personal finance blogger, Donna Freedman? She also hails from Alaska, although it sounds like she is in more of an in-town setting than you are. I follow her blog, Surviving and Thriving at http://donnafreedman.com/.
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