When

you're got into this work and got into school and all that, like the whole time that you know that you were real bright, like that you had like a book learning ability. I mean, you had to felt so feral and wild, right? Well, there is that. like to, to come back to it, were you surprised to be like, Oh, I can be in these classes and get A's on my tests and write papers? Well, or did you feel that that was there all along? I

didn't really know. So there were several of my friends that told me there's no way you're going to be, keep up with these, know late teen early 20s test taking machines you know yeah and and uh but i ignored it and uh and i did just fine my dad hung out with this my dad was fought world war ii

and a lot of his bodies were all world war ii guys and there's a guy that lived across like across our lake and then over this isthmus and across the next lake and he had been a pilot during world war ii but he was kept in a pow camp he got shot down was kept in a pow camp you know the famous aviator charles lindberg yeah this guy was charles lindback um he was telling me that when he got home from the war, he just assumed he'd go to school on the GI Bill. And he said that he went and sat there one time. And right off the bat, he's like, there's no way. And just walked out. Like, couldn't do it. Couldn't do it, you know. That's what's hard for me to picture, like, that you went off and got, like, undoctrinated. And went wild, but then came back and got redoctrinated. Yeah. I suppose that's, that's true. I don't

know. I, it was a wild time, but it was, it was really hard to, to come to grasp, uh, the, the, uh, the change coming into town. And I struggled for a while trying to figure out what, what the hell am I going to do?

Yeah. Because you're living like, you're living like kill a rabbit, eat it. Yeah. Catch something, sell it, cut a tree down, make a house. So many efficiencies. Yeah. Also you're playing this long game, like, oh, if I do this for four years, I'll get a tech position, and then maybe I'll get a job.

And the things that you have to do in school, where you're like, okay, I know this doesn't matter. But they're making me do it anyway. I don't know who will ever ask me this as long as I know. Whereas, like, jump back to last year, if you didn't

do what mattered, bad things could have happened. Yeah.

Yeah.

But I imagine just doing homework wasn't necessarily what the, the challenge or what the ERC was, right? Like what was the biggest thing that you sort of, that you had to come to grips with or face head on when you made the change? Like just in general in life, like what was it that confronted you that really made it difficult?

that that's a, that's a good question. I, I guess, you know, that, that had been my identity for so long being out in the woods, uh, coming in, it was like struggling and our, our older boy, he struggled with it too. Did he? Oh yeah. Yeah. He, he did. And, uh, he, he just saw himself as being the woods person that, uh, that he was. And, um, he got over it. Although he, see, he's, he teaches, um, he teaches applied math at university of Colorado, Colorado Boulder. Right. And on his webpage, it says, uh, Jed Brown was, uh, born and raised by wolves in the Alaska wilderness. So he encompasses it. He likes it and likes that that was what he did for the first pretty much eight years of his life. And he and I had gone out sheep hunting and things for several times. And that's all really fun. Yeah, I guess, you know, when I realized that if I'm going to get into a job that I'm going to like, I got to go through this, the university. And once I kind of came to grips with that, I just, I would just go there. I'd just do it. And it wasn't all that hard. It was just, I mean, there was time element to it, but. Was

it tough being around people all the time going from like not seeing people for months to being around people every single day? I

don't, I don't really, that's probably, probably true. Um, that, that's not something that I remember as, as a, as an issue though. Gotcha. I did, we did get a place that was kind of, uh, you know, kind of by itself and there was woods around it. And I really liked that. And we had a bird feeder right outside of this window. And so it was definitely a good place for me because I would come and decompress if there was decompressing to do. So

was it all fisheries research after that first job at the fish wheel? Yeah.

So I got into the, I got into the, um, the honors program as, as an undergraduate and in the honors program, I did work, um, out in Cole Bay. I did a small mammal survey, uh, following after, um, Murray's worked in the 1920s. And that, that got put into what they call an honors thesis. The honors program paid my way, essentially. They paid my tuition, which was a good thing. But also, there were classes you had to take in that, that were, I don't know, maybe a little more philosophy. and, uh, um, anyway, it was, it was, it was a good thing. And, and so once I went, once I got into that fish job, though, I've had that same job the whole time. I mean, I wasn't hired permanent initially. It was a, it was a technician, but, but the she fish work, um, there was a fellow, John Burr that worked with a fishing game department at the time. And he came by to see us at work down there. he said you guys really should do something with these sheep we've been working to try to figure out where they go and where they came from for a long time and and we were doing telemetry work with the uh with the chump salmon as well not only the spaghetti tagging but a telemetry program with it. And so we just, with towers, um, that were, you know, up in the drainage. So you could tell when they swim by these towers, they would get a record. And, uh, and so that's what I did for my master's degree. And, um, and I, I, I, um, put out radio transmitters three years in a row and also did that otolith chemistry and was able to show that these fish spawn in this big braided region of the upper Yukon flats, right in the main stem. Nobody had a clue. And, and then when they finished in mid-October, they head back down to sea and, uh, and spend the winters in the estuary or perhaps nearby coastal areas. I don't know. No one knew what the hell they did. Nobody did. And

like in brackish water, like high saltwater content.

Yeah.

Really?

Yeah.

I didn't know that. That's crazy.

Yeah. And, uh, and, uh, and those, they go down there feed all winter. Whereas there was a lot of them since then, you know, telemetry programs with the she fish. A lot of them just sit in the Yukon. And I have this vision of them with their pectoral fins in the gravel and their mouths open facing upriver and just spending the winter that way. Not

feeding, just sitting dormant.

Yeah. Yeah. And so, um, so that was, that's one of the, one of the papers that I just sent off to a journal. We'll see how they, how they accept it. You know, they sent it out to review and, and everything, but, uh, but I think it's, it's an important piece because not all the populations do that. You know, spawning populations of the she fish. Some of them don't go to sea and some of them do. And why? Who knows? But that's for somebody else to figure out. But so so that's what I did initially for my for my master's degree. And and because I had done otolith chemistry work, the professors up there, anybody else who wanted to go into otolith chemistry would get me tagged to be on their committees. And so I've been on, I don't know, 12 different graduate committees with people doing otolith chemistry work. And I think largely because of that, the university gave me an honorary doctorate a few years ago.

That's cool, man. Yeah.

So, yeah, I got a PhD, so to speak, more or less. I

got another question for you about living in the bush versus coming into society when you're on the bush like i'm trying to think how to put this you know being alive now in in today's atmosphere you become very aware of all the cultural conversations right and and you become aware of like how you i who you identify as you know you're like okay i identify as you know an american identify as a member of my family i identify as a member of my community right when when everything's so stripped down like the way it was, and you're not aware of all the, like every little thing in the news or every little societal fracture that's going on, every blow of campaigning, like the presidential campaign season, right? Where do you sort of land in terms of what you are or what you identify as? Do you feel like, well, I'm an American. Where do you land at what you are? Are you a community member of the Yukon? If someone says, who are you? What are you? What would you have said? You mean now? No, no. Sorry. When you were living in the bush, like what would you have said if someone asked you sort of like explain yourself to me? You're a what? Yeah. I, I, um, it was, it was much more,

um, as a, as a resident of the woods. I remember my brother came and visited me one time, flew in on a ski plane, and we mushed around. It was in the winter. And he said it was during Reagan administration, right? He's going like, how can you sit out here, you know, when the real world, there's so many things going on. And I says, I think this is the real world. That's how I felt. This is the real world. I didn't know that Reagan was president, right? I have no clue. That's kind of what, that's what I'm getting at.

And I didn't care. Yeah. It didn't affect you. No.

And

I mean, maybe it did, but I didn't know. It did in a macro way.

Yeah. Like it did in a macro way, meaning oil prices. These things would come for you. I

didn't buy any gas because I didn't have any motors.

Eventually, it would be that you got a letter saying you got to move off the land. That is, in a macro sense, all this global stuff is impacting you. When you're out there, that stuff falls away and you're a guy in the woods. Yeah. You're not all pissed off about who's using what bathroom. Not even a little bit. You're a guy in the woods. Not even a

little bit. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I've tried to bring it into, I mean, it was definitely a big part of, of who I am and how I think about things, you know, you know, that, that all, I don't know, some of the, some of the social issues that are so, so, uh, much conflict right now, it's like, I don't really care what somebody else does. Yeah. You know, I just, I just don't. And, uh, or who somebody is, you know, I just, try to treat people just like people. Men, women, here are straight, whatever. I don't care. It's not my business. I have a hard enough time taking care of myself. I'm going to take care of everybody else too, or try to define their problems. I don't think so.

Do you have any regrets about the timeline that you spent, how you, how you spent your life? Not

even a little bit. You know, what was weird? All my friends at college, when I said, I'm going to leave and I'm going to go and live out in the woods, they're going, oh, you can't do that. You got to finish college. You know, you're going to ruin your life and everything. Neither of my parents told me that at all. They, I don't know what they thought I was getting into, but they didn't discourage me at all. Not even a little bit. And, and I find that surprising, but do

you still do like field work where you get to go spend extended period of time, like out in the woods or two

falls ago was my last uh field project over the last uh a few years i've been uh losing my central vision it's a genetic mutation that doesn't uh usually affect older folks but it is with me so i have a i have a hard time right now i'm not driving i can't read a book i can read it on a computer with high contrast and stuff. But that last, uh, project I was, we were fishing for she fish and that was big enough. I could see it, but,

but,

um, um, but I, I wouldn't drive a boat right

now.

And, uh, and I wouldn't be the one taking measurements and things like that. And so my, my functionality in the field has, has declined to, to the point where I, I won't, I'm not going to be

going out anymore. How old are you now? 66. Give me 67 in a couple of weeks. What, give me a piece of marriage advice.

I don't really know. I just, I just, I, I treat Karen like a princess. I

haven't tried that yet. And, and that might be where I went wrong. You started out with a toilet

paper move. Yeah.

Yeah. That's not princess treatment. And the new cabin. Oh that's princess treatment yeah totally yeah no i and and

i just love her to pieces and um and always have and always will yeah i i don't know that's been your attitude it's been my attitude yeah you're not like well i'll see

next year i'll see the next year after that how i feel no that's good man dude there's a lot of people that view the world like that man

i get it but are

there any plans to live in the woods again well i don't know i don't know um i i don't think so

i mean we kind of live on the outskirts. We have a 40-acre plot of land with nice birch and spruce on it where the latest cabin, big scribe log place that I built. Let's see. I started that one in my late 40s, finished it in, uh, in, uh, mid fifties. We've been living there for.

Gotta let those things settle, you know? Yeah.

So, so I love it. I love it. It takes a little work to maintain, but, uh, got a great big sauna, maybe a wood fired sauna, which Dan, he helped, uh, get the stove for out of, um, out of Wasilla. He, he and his boss went up and picked it up. He's still feeding

yourself with wild

fishing game? Good question. Yeah.

Uh, yeah. To some extent. Yeah. Yeah. I went moose hunting this year, but we didn't, we didn't get anything, which is rare. So, so my, my, uh, moose hunting adventures have been to go up to that same place where we lived up on the candy oh cool and uh there's just some good lookouts and open country and and you know when you live in a place for long enough you know where the moose are crossing and you know and so we've always seen sometimes several bulls and uh and uh we go up a couple of my buddies and and i go up there. And we've never come back without a moose except for this time. And we just never saw a bull. Do

you guys call? Yeah,

we call.

Can you

rip a call for me? Okay. So I have been around when cows call. So this is a real call. And it is very similar to a, to a, um, a cow, regular dairy cow, uh, ball. That's a, that's

your call.