🎧 Life Below Zero with Sue Aikens

This week on the show, I speak with Sue Aikens, star of the hit Nat Geo show, Life Below Zero, about life in the Arctic, from hunting to foraging and how she survived a bear attack.

Oct 30, 2023

Imagine living 500 miles from the closest town, relying on your grit and skills in hunting, fishing, and foraging to find food and medicine to survive. Now, imagine doing all of this at the edge of the world, deep in the Arctic, beyond the tree line where there are no roads and no neighbors nearby to help in an emergency. Our guest this week is Sue Aikens, star of the eight-time Emmy-award-winning show Life Below Zero on National Geographic TV. Sue recounts lessons learned from her 23 years living at Camp Kavik, including how she survived a bear attack and found fresh frozen fruit by analyzing patterns in the snow drift.

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About Sue

Sue Aikens lives 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle at a remote Camp/Airport called Kavik that she maintains and owns. She has been there more than 23 years and has survived a bear attack and months in dark winter with no heat. The closest town is 500 miles away and there are no roads. She is the only population between the two. She hunts for her meat, does her own stitches, and never stops learning.

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Yours in health, Dr. Quave

Meet Sue Aikens

Dr Cassandra Quave: As a little girl, I always dreamt of going to the Amazon because of all the plant life, but I've, I never thought about the Arctic, but this really is a great frontier. What is it like living in the Arctic?

Sue Aikens: Living here, there's the thing, if you don't like the weather, wait five minutes or fly five miles, it's going to change. And it's true. It's an indicator ecosystem, which means when the planet's going to start having big changes, you're going to see it first here.

They test the fat content on the polar bears, different sea mammals to see what's in our water, what is affecting our food chain. My thermometer only goes to a hundred below zero, and it's been markedly colder. You add wind to that and you can get up to 200 degrees below zero. That doesn't mean I get to stop my chores. That doesn't mean I get to cry about it for a few days. If something breaks, you're out there figuring it out.

And so, the environment itself, when spring comes, it's very short and sweet, but all of a sudden you have this white existence that goes brown and then overnight blooms. And for two weeks it is the brightest bunch of color. But for me, the doctor is 500 miles each way, the grocery store 500 miles each way. And I have to pay somebody to shop and then 12,000 to fly it up.

I better know what's edible, what's medicinal, how to use it, and what to avoid. It's an ecosystem that never stops gifting me with new things.

Sue's Diet

Dr Cassandra Quave: That's incredible. I want to get into your diet because this is a show about food, and I know that you hunt and forage.

Let's start with the spring, because this sounds like such a fun, short but beautiful time. What types of plants do you find in the Arctic? To eat or to make medicine from?

Sue Aikens: There's all kinds and I grow, okay. I grow a lot of my own. I don't have trees here. I'm 200 miles above the tree line. I do have willow, however, and the willow plant you have salicin acid in it. As humans, we go acetylsalicylic acid and we mass produce aspirin, but it's a pain reliever. It's a blood thinner. Good for your joints, but for me, I can strip that bark, soak it.

I've got, there's birch plants. I've got birch leaves. There's a lot that you can do with that plant. It's high in vitamin C. Out here people think that scurvy is something that you hear about in your "Aaargh" the old pirate days. You make it scurvy, but it's an actual real thing for remote people.

You need to make sure you are getting your vitamins. Where are they going to come from? And nature will always provide for the Eskimos and the native peoples, that whale, whale blubber is high in vitamin C. Most people don't know that.

The Pine family, the Spruce family, a hundred percent edible high in vitamin C, antibacterial, microbial, and viral. The inner bark is a source of food. If you can't find any other food, chew on it, you're going to have a movement later on, you're going to remember, but it will fill the beak and be healthy for you.

The willow high in vitamin C and it's also an indicator for me. I can take that bark if I can split that bark with my nail and peel it.

You're right in the middle of the good weather. The plant is not worried about winter coming in. And then often one day you're going to try to put your thumbnail in and take a little piece off and it's going to be held so fast and it may be 75 degrees up here, but that plant has been around a lot longer than myself, the DNA has.

And it's going it knows winter's coming and you better start looking for your, what can I use for a vegetable?

You have chamomile? I have a lot. I was attacked by a grizzly. You can see some of the scars here. I don't know if you can see it or not, but you can all along my neck and skull.

I had to, so you can still feel where the teeth went into the head. But I, to say the least, the bear tore the hips out of the sockets multiple times. But arthritis, now I'm over 60, so arthritis is a major concern. I have some relatives of the Balsam Poplar and they're probably 20 miles away, up towards the headwaters of the Kavik.

And, but I can harvest those in the winter. I can harvest some of that plant and it's just ripe with the sap. And I can make my own Balm of Gilead. Okay. Go ahead and read The Bible. And that's an incredibly important sav, almost worth its weight and gold.

Dr Cassandra Quave: Wow.

Sue Aikens: And I don't profess to know everything, although I'll keep talking like I do.

But I've never been a person afraid to ask, what do you use this for? I see you're chewing on something, but I always thought that was poisonous. What the hell are you doing? And it's if you take the seed out, then you can use this with it. And I've got away, I am about, as attention deficit as it gets, will I always remember to take the seed out?

Probably not. Yeah. We'll pass on that one.

What Nature Provides in Alaska

Dr Cassandra Quave: That, that's my question too, is so how did you learn all this? Is it just through chatting with people and trying things or through reading books? I know a lot of our listeners are interested in trying to come up with to build strategies and foraging and making medicine.

Sue Aikens: I think one of the most important things that we can remember as humans, as good people always remain teachable. If you know everything already, what is their left to learn? Leave the ego at the door somewhere. If people say, I come with so much baggage, set that Gucci stuff down because it's not doing you any good. Examine it. That was fun to wear. Leave it because you can't take it with you. It hinders you.

I had a very unique upbringing. I was brought to Alaska and then abandoned here and, without going into a lot of details, it became very important for me. And it's my inquisitive nature, I think in pictures, I think in movies.

And I would always ask, what are you doing? I spent time in Fort Totton, North Dakota as a child also, and I would ask Pat Pat White and Wasu Duta medicine men from there. And I would ask them, what are you doing? What did you use for this? What about that? And so they would just let me tag along, but I've never been afraid to ask somebody tactfully enough.

Which sometimes is hard for me, but what do you know that I can learn? Can we barter? Bartering is huge up here. It is difficult to be a remote person and make a ton of cash, but maybe I have something you would like or knowledge base. And that is worth something. So how can we trade? That's great.

Seal oil, it's a huge cure-all for a lot of things. Good for your digestive system. So many minerals in it. I collect sea moss and make sea moss gel. Went to the Arctic Ocean in the middle of the winter and got salt water. I've got a lot of different flavors of it. Got a lot of sea salt. Yeah, sea salt.

And if you wait like here the first your water your ocean water, a lot of salt, a lot of H2O, that H2O is going to freeze faster than the saline will. So, if you wait long enough drill, deep enough, you're going to have a very high quality salt product. And it has so many nutrients in it. It's got what I think a hundred, 101 of the 102 that they worry about.

But, go ahead and drop a couple. It's got a lot. But I make my own sea salt and then I flavor it for different things. Maybe aromatically. If you wake up in the morning a little shot glass of water and chew on a couple of those crystals, your hydration is guaranteed. Your nutrient content is instantly upped.

The doctor is 500 miles to town and 500 miles back after my appointment. That's $12,000 each way. There's not much I want to see a doctor for that. I'm willing to give him 24 grand. Yeah. So, I need to learn and maintain my base of knowledge.

Attacked By A Bear

Dr Cassandra Quave: Incredible. I don't know if, I'm sure this is a painful subject to talk about, but I'm sure many people want to listen to your story of surviving a grizzly attack.

How did you, number one, how did you get away from this grizzly and how did you treat these very, I'm assuming, very deep wounds that left these scars along your shoulder, in your head?

Sue Aikens: I can talk about it some. It's, you're right. It's not my favorite subject. If I keep it more in the third person, it's not as bad. This is a a number of years ago now, and out here I have two sheets of paper in the other room and the fish and game and the feds keep track of some of the bears, the grizzly bears and they keep track of all the polar bears, but and I don't have black bears up here. I'm far too north.

I'm only a few miles from the Arctic ocean. But a bear, if you get attacked by a bear, you did something in their language that incurred their wrath or their attention.

And you have got, a bear can do its charge at 60 miles an hour and sustain that for miles. You have no time.

There was a juvenile male.

The girls, you got a young Randy male bear just like a, a tween. And there are parts of their bodies that are noticing, Hey, girls aren't always creepy. I don't see many cooties anymore. And the only way the girls are going to mate with him, he has to be an alpha, they're not into the beta thing. It is all procreation of the best part of the DNA.

So this bear, he was maybe anywhere four to seven, maybe five to seven. And he kept burying caribou on my helicopter pad and destroying things. And that is a sign he wants to take hot as a bear. Go from beta to alpha. You gotta subjugate a larger bear in alpha or you've gotta kill 'em and steal their property, their section.

Then you've gained status. The old guy was obviously getting old enough that you were able to kick his butt and all the girls will suddenly go, "Oh my gosh, what a man, what a bear." And so this is what he was doing.

The bears see me as an alpha. I've been fixed for almost 40 years now. And so, I don't really emote a lot of, I don't take hormones. I don't do any of that. I went psycho for five solid years and Eddie and I looked at each other holy shit, how did we survive that?

But I don't put off a lot of the male or female pheromones anymore, but I do maintain my ground. If you're a bear and you're looking at it, all these buildings are dens that they never have to dig. And no matter how clean I am in camp, it still smells like food. A bear can smell from 10 miles away.

Okay? So, this bear was burying his stuff, giving me my eviction notice. And I went out there, I asked the state, I said, how do you want me to deal with this? This is now a huge problem. And they said, burn the carcass or send it down the river, but get it out of camp. Be careful.

And so, I dug it up, went down and dumped it. And this bear just lost his mind. He was blowing up the brush. He's doing a big show in the middle of the river, so I knew where he was at.

And over the course of, let's say a week or so, he kept doing, we had our run-ins. I had to go do my show of force.

You do the same things they do. You blow up the brush, you're very vocal, you stomp you, you growl, you huff and chuff, and then you drop your drawers and you're going to go to the restroom. because that's how they mark. They're scent driven. However, without leaving a lot of scent, I just take straight ammonia. The more ammonia, the more alpha and put it down.

Dr Cassandra Quave: Ah, okay. Okay.

Sue Aikens: And that's that he really has to make up his mind. Ooh, this one's maybe a little tougher than I thought. Sorry, ladies' kitchen next year. I'm going to go get Bob. He's 90. I can pick him off.

Dr Cassandra Quave: Yeah.

Sue Aikens: But he just took the bait and I knew I was going to have troubles with him. My river. Like now my river is frozen over four or five inches in ice already. For me to get water out of the river, I am not allowed. I can't just drill a well. So I have to get it out of the river, pump it up to my Waterhouse. I treat it, I have to filter it so many times. It has to be clean. And I wanted to get one more pumping of water before I was done for the season.

And I looked around, I put on a couple of Carhartt suits because you want to, it's cold and I'm going into the water. I have to get a hole, pick up my pump, two hands, couldn't see the bear anywhere, set the rifle down and went to work.

He was hiding in the cut bank and...

Dr Cassandra Quave: Oh no!

Sue Aikens: He grabbed me and pulled me up into the tundra just south of where I'm talking to you now, maybe a hundred yards, maybe not quite that far.

And he did what I call an alpha push and they extend their claws and they're looking for any reason where you're going to put back pressure. It's if some punk kid keeps dinking you in the shoulder and you finally go, stop if I do this, that's stop. All right, we're going to town.

And so, in less than no time, you have to figure out what in the world did I do?

I challenged him and he accepted it. He challenged me. I said go to Hades. And he said, Nope, I'm coming to Kavik . '

So, he tore this part up. I, like I say, you can still feel where the teeth went into my head here and there. He pulled the hips out of the sockets. He would rough me up and push me and then knocked me back.

He went down over the bank, came back up, bluff charging multiple times. An older bear or a sow would've just killed me and went, done. I want it, I take it. But he wasn't an educated bear yet.

And by the time he didn't come back up. I had trouble seeing because I had so much blood, but I did not remember that I had a rifle down by the river. I just tried to make it into the dining hall I got in here. Bears have an enzyme that, it's not like a Komodo dragon, but it is in the fact that if you don't get it all out, it will continually erode and infect. Oh yeah. So this...

Dr Cassandra Quave: oh, yeah.

Sue Aikens: Markup here. I did the best that I could. I cut it, scrubbed it. My dining hall was set up a little, that's where I am right now. Was set up a little differently.

I grabbed the air to ground radio. I called for help. I said, this is Sue at Kavik. I've had an incident with a bear. I need some help. And one of the oil fields answered and said, "Hey, this is a secured channel."

And I'm like, it's 1 22 0.9. You... .

And they, and it's now been like 15 years, and they've never talked to me again. And and I'm like, Sue, you gotta quit swearing. Damn it.

Dr Cassandra Quave: You’re saying, “I've been attacked by bear. Come and help.” Who cares what channel it's on.

Sue Aikens: And then I got, we had analog phones back then. Now it's all digital. And I tried calling the troopers. I got their answering machine. I didn't know that their plane had problems and went down. They were all right, but they couldn't get me in. By the time they did, it was closer to Spring. And they're like, oh, she, so they said we didn't know that you had serious issues. You sounded so calm.

And I'm like if I'm hysterical, what's that going to solve? But I called two other people. I don't remember calling, but I had to get everything cleaned. I keep my own suture kits. I sewed this up. It was not very pretty. I later had another accident, and I asked the doctor, I'm like: "Can you just clean this up? Yeah, thank you."

And but this one still infects here and there. This here. I just try yourself up. You have to take your hair; you have to do things. They're hearing it.

Dr Cassandra Quave: Sue, you did this yourself. You got no medical care in the end. because nobody can pick you up. Is that what happened?

Sue Aikens: I'm not there yet.

Dr Cassandra Quave: Don't, oh, okay. Now I'm on the edge of my seat. I'm like, oh my God.

Sue Aikens: But I put on other clothes. I knew the bear was still alive, and he gave me a very serious eviction notice if, and I knew I, I got the hips back in the sockets. I put two gun belts around my hips and tightened 'em as, as much as I could. I grabbed another rifle. I just announced over the radio that I was going out to take care of this bear somebody, I need assistance. Then I went and found the bear. He was in the place that he always brought, was blowing up the brush. I shot him. I GPS-ed it. No idea why I did that.

But on the way back, the hips gave out, I drug myself into the dining hall and it took 10 days before somebody found me. I was taken to town, and they sent me, they said, you're either going to Portland or Seattle, where do you want to go? And my then spouse's parents, he was helping his mom, and he was in Portland, Oregon. So I went to Portland, Oregon. And later of course as I had some spinal surgery, they did what they could to get the hips back in some therapy.

And I am not a big fan of a lot of the opioids. I'm not a big fan. I have to have my mind. If you cloud my mind, the rest of my life is not worth it.

So, I had, I was telling Eddie, go get me some pine. Go get me some willow. Are you hearing me?

And I'm used to eating clean meat. I'm not used to ststores. Yeah. Now I love food. I'm a big time foodie, even on the show. When I'm cooking things I'm out there with a torch in the field taking off the hooves of the caribou, getting their foot joints and their knees. And I'm making aspic, and I'm explaining this was actually go to the depression. People were preserving their food in aspic, you have those really funky looking salads with, they're beautiful, you have chunks of carrots and chunks of this and chunks of meat. People nowadays go really? And I said, it's like head cheese or anything. Yeah. It's a preservative method.

And if I can say where we're at in the planet now and where humanity is being somewhat inhumane to each other. There are widespread repercussions where I think it wouldn't be a bad notion that people relearn how to preserve without using electricity, how to make medicine, because who the heck can afford a doctor?

And but with the bear it, it ended up I was actually working with somebody else and here I bought the place from an old friend and so it became a workman's comp case and they put you in front of a panel of doctors and they're like: " Bear attack. Yeah. We don't hear that very often in Oregon. Should we even believe you?"

And I hold onto that thought. I picked up my phone. I called the guy that I was buying the camp from. I said, I need to come back home. This is what's happening. And he got upset about that. And I said, no. Do you have a problem with me coming home? And he said, I want to tell these guys to go to Hades and I'm coming back.

My life is there. I don't belong with these people. And he goes, do you think? Do you, can you do it? And I said, I don't know that I can't. And that's the only thing that I guarded against. So he said, yep, I'll get a plane ticket. And I said, fine. Hung up the phone. And I said, you people should be ashamed of yourself. You should be. Yes, there are people that take advantage of things, however, probably not like this. It's yeah's a bit of a saving a dollar that you're keeping the medical field from progressing to a human field.

But anyways, off, off subject.

New Best Friends

Dr Cassandra Quave: I don't know, you don't know as much about my work yet because this is our first-time meeting, but I feel like we need to be talking a lot more it's like my...

Sue Aikens: I have all kinds of stuff that I make and I'm like this hippie.

Dr Cassandra Quave: I love it. I love it.

Sue Aikens: If you go into my kitchen, I've got like crystal balls and I've got all kinds...

Staving Off Infection with Medicinal Herbs

Dr Cassandra Quave: I'm so impressed. I'm so impressed that you staved off infection and were able to sew yourself up good enough to last those 10 days on your own and not get, a serious infection. Did you use any herbs when you were treating those wounds while you were waiting? Or was it just all like kind of disinfectant solutions?

Sue Aikens: When the hips gave out, I knew everything. Like any injury, 12 to 72 hours, you've got some swelling going to happen. Yeah. Before I totally became incapacitated, I threw water bottles on the floor, chips. If you look, I run a business. That's the only way I can be here. I have water. I have some goodies, I have teas, I have all kinds of stuff. I can hunt for the meat that I eat, but I cannot serve it to a client or a guest that's hunting for profit. You cannot profit from the death of the animal. You shouldn't. And so that's a law. But I threw as much as I could down. I also threw, like I have, it's hard to see, but it's pine oil.

Dr Cassandra Quave: Nice.

Sue Aikens: I take any kind of a carrier let me see.

Dr Cassandra Quave: Oh yeah, I see the pine needles. Yeah.

Sue Aikens: And I have some Dragon's Blood in there and whatnot.

Dr Cassandra Quave: Nice.

Sue Aikens: And moss the moss out in the field. Grab some of that when I was dragging myself back, the moss in the field. It's antibacterial, antimicrobial when I go hunting, like you see I have a bandage here. And you nick yourself. I'm skinning it. I'm taking care of all the meat that I can, making my bone broth. But if you nick yourself or you have the blood, get that moss from the ground and the lichen and start wiping it off.

Dr Cassandra Quave: The lichen, those lichen has good, some of them have very good anti-microbial properties. Yeah. Yeah. That's incredible too. You're one tough cookie. I'm sure you've heard this many times. Some people say I'm, but I’m not, I'm not as tough as you.

Camp Kavik

Dr Cassandra Quave: That's amazing. So I was wondering, paint us a picture of what life is like at Camp Kavik. What does it look like when you step outside of your door? You said the river is nearby. In a typical day throughout the year, is it usually heavy with snow around you except for those warm months? Like what's life like, your day to day?

Sue Aikens: There is no typical, that's one of the first things I try to qualify for people. It is a very volatile ecosystem, capable of just wild changes the way it's even set up.

There's no earth here, there's no dirt, so to speak. So I have to import or create my own dirt, or I have to do hydroponics. And I try to mimic the arctic. Nature doesn't get it wrong too often. So how do the plants and everything grow?

How it works here. You have permanently frozen ground. You got X amount of ground that is just ice, and then you have round rock on top of that, maybe some silt. And then you have your peat layer and moss, and your plants above it. And that peat is an insulate layer that keeps the frozen ground frozen and the heat up here, and in the winter it's going to keep this at a constant and a hundred below up here.

I can have the biggest storm I guess I've had, I don't get it's classified in Arctic Desert, we get eight inches of precip, supposedly. No matter what form it falls in.

However the planet is changing it. And people like, oh, you believe in climate change? You believe in global warming. And I'm like, you live at the fossilized banana leaf. If it hadn't have been a tad warmer here and there, everything is always in a state of flux. And if you can't roll with it, you're going to get flattened by it. Pick your poison.

Yesterday it was beautiful. It was probably 30 degrees. I think I got up to 29 or 30. I was running around my t-shirt. I have to fuel, there's no tree line here. People are like, why can't you do what the others do and chop down trees for your fuel, for your, there's no trees. I'm like, because there's no trees, man. And I could chop down some willow, but you would be stripping an ecosystem to try and make it through one winter.

I get usually 10 months of winter, nine to 10 months. Used to be that the last person I saw was sometime in August and the next one was in June. And so I have a lot of months. I'm playing around by myself yesterday. What kind?

Here comes the wolf pack straight through on my helicopter pad in between me and the dining hall. And that's only 60, 50, 60 yards away and a big black wolf he stops and he looks at me. He's over 20 now and he's just as robust as he was at 10. And I'm going into my 24th year here. And he just looked at me and I looked at him and I'm like, chill, dude. I've got a fuel hose, you do your fur thing. I'm doing mine, man. Good luck.

At any point you are reminded you are not top of the food chain and it's not really a contest. I have my little piece of camp marked out. Going with the Foodie Pharmacology thing in my lifestyle, it is incredibly important to understand how the prey, how and the predators understand food.

Anything that is scent driven, like a bear, a wolf, a wolverine if I want to dissuade them from coming into camp, it's a long process. And I used to go through about 400 pounds of coffee a year. I did. I'm big into my coffee. I have every coffee maker known to man, and then some I've created a few.

And I like good coffee. Life is too short not to have good coffee. Same with the teas. But I take all those grounds and I offer people, I do a lot of baking. I used to make wedding cakes and deliver 'em in small planes for any of the villages. And you're talking a 400-mile trip here. There you go. Good luck. Hug each other, be kind.

But I take all those grounds and a bear's nose can smell, like I had said, from 10 miles away. Sometimes more polar bears are even more. So, if I'm dumping coffee grounds out, they're acidic. Even if I've used the parts I like, they are still acidic.

So, I start sprinkling them all over my perimeter and on the pad and around my buildings, and I put bleach on the buildings. And that smell. It will not stop a charging bear if you have enraged them or done something incorrect in bear talk y, you're going to tango. Yeah. But if they're walking by, a bear's going to go, baaarrff? Ooh, how do they, you smell bad. How do they live in that outhouse? And they kinda give it a wider berth. Once you have several, five, six years of them with a path that goes the other side, you've now created a safer zone. Not safe. You're always, you're not top of the food chain.

And I chose, when I came here, I had a 400-mile trap line before, I haven't trapped an animal in 30 some years, but I decided I had enough fur and there's no reason I eat everything I trap.

And there's no matter what the animal is. Unless it's a certain part, like a polar bear liver, there, there's, you can adjust soak, change how you handle it and you'll be able to consume it. But that's the highest form of respect a hunter can do. Yeah. Other than looking at the species and saying they're wrong.

There should be no hunting of the species at all. They're allowing something which will decimate that. And your ethics is the other important thing you need to bring. And those are endangered too. But don't even remember where I was going with that. Oh, yeah. Oh, we were talking about your yeah.

Understanding how they eat, the caribou I made last year I made a blind and I have, I name everything. I name everything. So, I'm, I painted, I created this on an old PVC pipe, this portable line that I could carry with me in the winter. It's all white. I go walking around with my, I have crazy hats that I wear that kids give me.

If any animal is going to see that and go, ah, a caribou is going to look at you. They know anything God makes that plentiful is on a really low place on the food chain, . And so people say they don't have good eyesight. I disagree. They look for characteristics from far away. They're going to look to see is there hardware above its head above?

Okay, that might be one of us ugly cow, but it is a cow. And then they'll look and say, does it have a white mane, some tan coloring, and a black dorsal stripe. Okay, it does. It's one of us needs a beauty, beauty day, but it is a caribou and it's not as alarmed and doesn't run. So that's what I based, okay, their sight, their vision on my thing, and it worked beautifully.

Now I'm getting ready to do another one, but it's for a bird in mind. Now, if you think about it, a bird's eye view, it's very sharp, very crisp, very three D, they're able to look in a more full dimension. Where the caribou are more two dimensional. And I'm doing another kind of a blind, which will envelope me entirely, but it will have three D qualities that I get from the tundra because they're going to, if they see something two D, they're going to be like, I'm sorry, that's like flat Stanley not buying it.

But if you can add some texture and utilize their own vision, they'll be like, George wondered what happened to you. And they'll feel more comfortable, which gives you the time. I have a store, I have a Safeway that migrates. So if I don't make the most of what's here you better get used to licking the tundra.

Berries Below Zero

Dr Cassandra Quave: Yeah. That brings up another question. I know you hunt for a lot of your food, you gather plants for making teas and medicines, and I don't, do you get bilberries or cranberries that far north too? Like for those kind of fresh fruit?

Sue Aikens: Sorry I used my ears and I'm hearing clink clink. And I'm like, what the hell is that?

Dr Cassandra Quave: Uhoh? What's going on? ?

Sue Aikens: Yeah. If anybody is, I do have some bears that are down by the end of the runway, so it is possible they come up. I do, I get bilberries, I get blueberries, I get cranberries high and low bush.

Dr Cassandra Quave: That's great.

Sue Aikens: Most everything was about this tall on the

Dr Cassandra Quave: Yes. Tiny

Sue Aikens: Now because of the climate differences, things are growing really tall and we've had some major earthquake activity and that opened up more springs.

So it’s an exciting time here. It is not the first time it's happened, but it is happening really rapidly.

And I was going to bring up one of the things the Army does a thing called the Cool School and they teach some of their military. We're going to drop you off. You don't get any food. Survive. Poof. It's 30 below zero or whatever, and they drop 'em off. And good luck. You gotta make it to this point. How are you going to do it? Yeah. Where's your shelter? What are you going to do? You have, pack of bubble gum and a shovel.

And I would take, when they would be here, I would look and I say, what do you notice if you're looking across the smell? What do you see? And they're like snow. And I said, bring it in. What do you notice? A lot of drifts. Perfect. And I give them a picture of what it looked like in the summer, what it looked like in the spring, in the fall, in the winter. And I said, so here's your berry plants. Our winter comes in so fast, the berries freeze solid right there, and they're still there.

Wow. So look, again, tell me if you can see a difference in the snow drift. You can. This plant will create this kind of long drift. This plant will make a hump, and then one, these plants will be like this. So once again, look at the good picture where all the berries are all cute. Look at what it is that's red right before the fall. And then bam, it went to 20 below. Where's your food? And they were able to go out. And based on the shape of the drift, you can find some of your food source.

Dr Cassandra Quave: That's incredible. That's incredible. It's like fresh flash, frozen.

Sue Aikens: Yeah. And even in the spring, when I get a bird, I open the gullet and I look and I'm looking to see how big are the twigs that it's eating? Does it have berries? What is it consuming? Because that will tell me where to find them. Okay. If they have the little rocks in their system, they always pick the same calcium carbonate chips. So, I take those out, clean 'em, throw 'em in a jar.

Then when I want to go hunting, I'll find a likely area and I'll take a little handful and I'll scatter 'em. I have no idea how they know to look on a white background. They're finding white rocks. You go, but it's that 3D thing again. And they all come in and I don't have to stress my body at 40 below trying to find them. I brought them to me using their own system against them. Yes. But I'm working with who they are instead of forcing myself to be dominant.

Dr Cassandra Quave: Yeah. This is incredible. As you're speaking, I'm thinking about you have all these visionaries that talk about life, in outer space, colonizing Mars. And yet why would that many I haven't,

Sue Aikens: I will offer up. I'm just putting it out there.

Dr Cassandra Quave: I know. It's I'm just like wondering have they thought about, what it's like to live in extreme environments like where you're living. This is probably one of the most extreme environments on earth. Unless you're like in the middle of the Sahara, maybe those would be good. Two competing, places how you survive both.

Sue Aikens: Yeah, exactly. They're both deserts. They are both. Limited on when and how much of the water they get. And like here, when everything melts in the spring, huge flooding.

It cannot go down into the ground. Like you, if it rained like heck down in California, it would soak into the ground. because you have dirt. We don't have that. It's ice. So, it's going to go rushing to the lowest point, which is generally our river beds. And it can't go down again because of the ice. So, it'll bust sideways and I'll have a five mile wide channel for part of the year, and then it goes back down to these little thin straggly pieces.

How Do You Get Around In Kavik?

Dr Cassandra Quave: Wow. So how do you get around outside? Are you like hiking? Are you skiing? Do you like, what's the best way that you've found when you're out and about?

Sue Aikens: It depends on I've, okay. I've been at CG in my thirties, forties, fifties, and now I'm in my sixties.

So, I've been here a while. When I was younger, you're hiking everywhere. Life happens, and I break myself. I don't bounce anymore. I break, I bend. Yeah. . So, there's one episode where a, a barrel of fuel falls off the pallet, but it's highly explosive. So, I have to run down there, pick it up, it's 585 pounds and I pick it up back on. Oh my gosh. Wow. I can't do that now.

I can certainly, I still have a tremendous amount of strength, but I need to work smarter, not harder. I have skis I have snowshoes. I did one episode and they were the ugliest snowshoes you've ever seen. But I talk about how this is what you're looking for. You're going to have to warm it up because it has to be pliable. If you can't do that, do this. And you explain the mechanics of if you have two feet and you're walking, all 200 pounds of me is going to post hole. Once your foot gets caught, every predator that watched you is going to come and have dinner. Yeah. Don't do that to yourself. Flatten yourself out and put more distribute or weight better.

Same thing if you're on the river. It starts to break change. If you're standing up, you've got too much weight in one area, lay down and roll. Get the hell away. Talk and roll.

Dr Cassandra Quave: Wow.

Sue Aikens: But I ski, I this, it depends on the conditions here. It takes absolutely no time. You can think it's beautiful, it's sunny, it's this.

And boom, you've got zero, zero. You've got no miles of visibility, nothing. You look like you're in a glass of milk and you don't know north, south, east, or west. I'm also, I'm in a location where the magnetics and the electronics don't always happily get close to each other and and it can knock out my GPS.

So you better know some dead reckoning. You better be able to always know when is it too much? When have I just boned myself. I've bought vehicles now and I saved my money and got myself a Sherp. Did a few things for them and got a reduction in price. It's an incredible vehicle. 72-inch tires at maximum.

My biggest goal in life is to be the warden of Kavik, help the Arctic survive. If this goes down, the rest of the ecosystems are not going to survive in bad shape. Yeah. And every single part of it is important. So the vehicle that I have has between a half of a PSI and three PSI maximum at full inflation.

So you've got at three PSI your average vehicle is 28 to 35 PSI per tire, I am a minuscule amount of that.

So, you can bend the plants, but you're not killing them. I even, I took my dog's toy and put a ketchup bottle in it and ran it over. My dog was traumatized.

He's like, why did you do that? Because I, a show of people, you could run it over and you're not going to kill it. He just took it back like psycho.

Dr Cassandra Quave: Oh, that's good.

Sue Aikens: But, so I have different tools. It's like anybody if you're a housewife in a city or anywhere, pick North Dakota and you have kids that are into football, and then you're going to go do bingo and you go to church on Sundays or whatever your bent is in your tool arsenal.

You're going to have different outfits, maybe some accompaniments. You're, you might drive the Lexus to the school board meeting, but kids get in a minivan. We got four games to watch, so you have the tools you need to perform the job.

I have snow machines. I had what I used to call Little Red. It was an Argo, a type of a machine. It was so great, but they discontinued it. No more parts. It's done. I'm going to work with one of my grandsons. I'm going to teach him mechanics so that we're going to learn. How do you take a full block engine and put it in a little tiny machine? Just because you bought it and they designed it, doesn't mean you can't change it. Bust out the welder, get the gasoline away from it. Now we're going to make a bigger cage and we're going to you, but if you change the power coming out, you have to change the transfer of that power. Yeah. So, I think it's important that boys and girls learn how to cook. Learn how to take care of yourself and others.

It's always kind to be kind to your mind, your mental health is as important as anything else is. But then learn how the mechanics, learn how to do plumbing. Learn how to, how are you, if we have mass floods, earthquakes, whatever, or this inhumane treatment that we're all doing to each other.

What if our water system goes down? How do you purify it? These are things I think are key to be teaching our youth because you don't know what the future holds. And I'm not somebody that's, oh my gosh, I've gotta prep because gee whizz, we might die. No, we're all going to die. Nobody gets out of this gig alive.

But let's do it as wisely as we can. And if you don't remember the past, you are going to repeat it. Let's make sure it's something worth repeating.

Dr Cassandra Quave: That's amazing. Yeah. This idea of living in harmony and also having some sense of self-resilience and self-reliance is I think it skills you said that many could learn from. Yeah.

Sue Aikens: And people, oh you have been told, oh, we always, you're so nice. We thought you hated people. I said, I never hate, I said, I never said I hated anybody. I don't want to live with y'all. I like, I'm gregarious. I have a wide vocabulary. I speak seven languages. But that doesn't mean that my forte is living long term in a big city.

People Who Come To Kavik

Dr Cassandra Quave: Yeah. I have to ask you, tell us about the types of visitors that come out, because I'd imagine that Kavik is like really a, an amazing resource for scientists, for people trying to understand the Arctic. Do people come out?

Sue Aikens: That's really where my bent is. Anybody can come for any reason. It's like a twisted bed and breakfast. It's an old oil camp that I turned into sort of a bed and breakfast.

The flying is an insane price right now, which, I'm working on how do I rectify that? So, it's available for more people to come out. But the scientific community, they need a place to land.

And I think there are enough people out there more worried about making a 90% profit or 800% profit margin. If we can get the science out that improves the life and the education, then go for the 10% because it means a lot. Yeah. And that's what I do is, if there's another gentleman and his wife, they come out and they do some science with the fish and we've had a lot of fish things going on, and, but they just don't have the money.

And so, I said, I tell you what, you come out I'll drive you around in my vehicle. I'll help get you here and there. What can you afford? What can't you afford? Okay, you eat with me, I'll deal with that. If you got some funky diet, I need to know about it. I don't mind. And people that, because I hunt for meat, and I have dead animal decorations around.

They're like, oh, you probably don't do the vegans or the vegetarians. And I'm like, of course I do. It doesn't matter to me. You know what people, how they want to eat. I respect everybody’s life choices. I can't feed them game. I can, if I'm cooking myself caribou steaks and you're here, I may say, Hey, do you want to eat with me?

I can't charge you. It's a gift. I'm gifting you with, Hey, look at this. Look how clean this meat is. Look how wonderful this is. Bear meat. The first time that I, after the accident, it took me a while, a long while before I would defend the property here, but I didn't actively go out and seek entangled.

Yeah. But there was a bear that came through and he took, I had a, this is enough years ago, I had a dog named Ermy here, and she was in her doghouse. And this bear came through. She dove in her doghouse, it tore it from the chain, at the... I call my building. I live in the Twinkie. It's long and yellow and filled with goodness. It's a Twinkie. But it tore her house off the Twinkie and batted her around on the the pad. And I went out and it went and scared some of the kids charged at 'em, and I shot at the ground and here this bear runs off. So there really wasn't any choice. I had to go aggressively. But again, if you're going to take some things to life, I have a habit.

I put heart rocks. I find these rocks naturally shaped like hearts. And I had, there's a little ceremony thing I do each time and and I'll even get teary. I'm a hunter, but taking a life should be a grave decision. It should be weighed and it should carry. Yes. So I will use every single part of I can.

And do I make rugs? Yes. Do I make jackets? Yes. I, and I gift things. I have a little boy with cancer. I, a lot of people don't know a lot of the money I make from the show. I choose to. I was impacted in my life by cancer with one of my grandchildren and some other people. And I choose to help people with terminal illnesses and whatnot.

Especially children. But this one little boy, he is in remission, but he still has nightmares about what if he has to go back? What if he has to? I'm having nightmares about having to have treatments again. So I sent him a bear rug and I always do it closed mouthed. I don't, they weren't being jerks when they were alive.

They're just being bears.

Dr Cassandra Quave: Yeah. I like that.

Sue Aikens: I closed the mouth and but I sent it and I asked his parents ahead of time and so he opened it up and he's .

Dr Cassandra Quave: What? That's great.

Sue Aikens: And he said, what? It's so big. And I said and I said, now you've got something you've gotta do. This is a Protection Bear. He says, he doesn't look mean. I said, no, I shot all the mean out of him. I said, what? I said, he's a Protection Bear now, but the way this works, you go to sleep. That's when you're having your nightmares. And he's yeah. And I said he's going to go in with you. His spirit is still there, so you have to name him because theirs are strong and they are protective. he's going to protect you, but you have to give him a name so you can call him back. And he goes, can I, he's Bob. And I'm like, yes, he is. Bob the Bear.

Dr Cassandra Quave: Bob. Yeah. That's great.

Sue Aikens: So, he has him up on the wall now. But being able to, and I've I bring kids up, other kids that they're in remission. We went fishing down in Southeast Alaska. That was their dream. See whales. See eagles, fish. Yeah. And so I'm like, whatever. I know how to get another job, but what you're giving, like you say, Foodie Pharmacology, it's food for the soul. It's food for the soul. When you have the food in your soul is good. Make the body good, make the mind good. It's a three part series.

Dr Cassandra Quave: Amazing. Sue you. I just want to thank you for sharing these experiences not just with our..

Sue Aikens: We didn't look all my stuff.

Dr Cassandra Quave: I know. I need to get out there. I just need to, I need to get that $12,000 plane ticket to get.

Sue Aikens: And that's, that'll hold a lot of people. And I try to split it and I try to put people on my airplane.

Dr Cassandra Quave: Oh, good. So it's like not first stage. You may get a visitor at some point. I'll come up when the plants are in bloom. because that's my thing is the Oh, yeah. Plants. We can make some medicine together.

Sue Aikens: Oh, that would be wonderful.

Dr Cassandra Quave: Yeah. But I just want to thank you for sharing your wisdom, sharing your experiences, sharing your very personal story of this very challenging point in your life too with this bear attack and your resilience is inspiring. And I know that the folks listening are going to really enjoy this and for those that haven't seen your show, can you tell us a little bit about it? It's on Nat Geo, Life Below Zero.

Sue Aikens: Nat Geo, Disney Plus. We are now I think we're filming season 23. That's amazing. Just starting to, we had two seasons a year and now we're down to one. But it follows the lives of a few of us that have chosen remote off the beaten path, unique lifestyles that come with hardships and it follows the why. It's not scripted. They don't tell me what to do. If they did, I would swear less and kick things, less. But you get what you get. With me, I'm fairly direct. You'll always know where you stand. It won't be a, there's not a lot of mystery involved other than it's like I tell people, yeah, now that you've met me, they're like, oh, we thought it was like, nobody talks like that. And then we met you. Yeah. You're yeah. . And I'm like, yeah, there's not a lot of mystery in why I am not married.

Dr Cassandra Quave: I call you a straight shooter. I like that. I like people that are straight up. That's how I, that's how I operate too. So that would be great. Thanks so much Sue. I really appreciate it.

Sue Aikens: Oh, thank you. I really appreciate it. And yeah, we'll get you out here and but the best time for plants, I will warn you, is the best time for mosquitoes too.

Dr Cassandra Quave: Hey, I'm from South Florida. I can handle mosquitoes. Oh, there you go. Bears on the other hand, I need some help with those.

You've been listening to Foodie Pharmacology, the Science podcast for the Food Curious available here on our foodiepharmacology.com. You can also check out the full video version of this episode and others. I encourage you to do that. You'd see some of Sue's amazing goodies on the video version at our YouTube channel at TeachEthnobotany.

I want to give a big shout out of thanks to our producers, to Rob Cohen and Christine Roth for putting on a great show for you every week. And thanks to you all for tuning in, listening and sharing this and other episodes with your friends and family. Thanks so much for listening. Stay healthy out there and I'll see you next time.