The Metabolism of Freedom

Preface:

Whenever discussing whether or not to consume animal flesh, it is important to compartmentalize the discussion into three subjects: ecological, human health and ethics. It is too common, in my experience, to explain a particular point in one category only to have “yea, but what about…” thrown into the quagmire. This whack-a-more approach is frustrating and unproductive. 

Each of these three topics deserve our attention, our scrutiny, our deep contemplation, and the resolution thereof before venturing onto the next. In this essay, I attempt to address only one of the three, the one I find most important for our emancipation—human health. In an ongoing book project, I thoroughly address the other two—ecology and ethics. I also provide more research, evidence, references, and context for the topic of this essay—human health and the metabolism of freedom. 

The Metabolism of Freedom

-Bjørn Olson

In my early 40s I began to develop diseases of civilization. For years I had been progressively gaining weight, after long trips in the car or on a plane my feet and ankles would swell, and my previously broken knee was always inflamed, often hurting terribly. While on a strenuous backcountry cycling expedition in the sub-Arctic of Alaska, these discomforts reached a new climax. 

I have lived an active and adventurous life in Alaska. Backcountry wilderness expeditions are a cornerstone to my identity and have been since my late teens. Traversing vast landscapes at human-speed has served to inform my environmental and social activism. 

Traveling through varied landscapes in the far north has enriched and deepened my understanding of ecology, the impacts of climate change, resource extraction, and environmental degradation. Spending time with and learning from Indigenous cultures throughout the Circumpolar region, I have developed a keen sense of what shifting baselines are and have come to intimately appreciate how destructive and disruptive colonization and extraction has been and continues to be. 

As I pushed my loaded fat-bike through a miles-long swath of soggy tundra, the pain in my knee became excruciating. Grueling effort is the price to pay for these human-powered expeditions. I had always accepted and even embraced the demanding effort and physical discomfort. This time was different. I kept my pain and doubt to myself, but when our team of four reached the road system I made up a pathetic excuse and bailed out on the final leg of the trip. 

Back home I fell into a depression unlike any I had experienced before. I felt fat, broken and exhausted. Suicide crossed my mind when I considered how unfair it would be for my partner to care for me as I became older and less capable. Losing my physical ability to undertake strenuous, human-powered expeditions at such a young age was mortifying for me. My self-made and hard-won identity was slipping through my fingers.

I decided eventually to go to the clinic for a check up. A week later the results of my blood work came back. The long list of markers that were out of range further devastated me. 

Metabolic syndrome is defined by having three or more specific biomarkers out of whack. These are blood pressure, triglycerides, HDL, blood sugar, and abdominal adiposity (belly fat). All five were out of alignment for me. More alarmingly, I was pre-diabetic. The physician seemed unfazed. For someone my age, this has become the new normal. She knew how to “treat” me. 

Rather than understanding or trying to resolve the underlying metabolic dysfunction, allopathic medicine relies almost exclusively on pharmaceuticals to “treat” each symptom. A band-aid approach that does not holistically correct the root problem but merely treats one symptom in isolation, often with terrible side effects. 

I kept the bad news to myself. I was deeply embarrassed by my perceived failure. At the time, I was a sponsored ambassador for an adventure bicycling company and had staked my identity on being an outdoorsman, a wilderness videographer, a subsistence hunter and gatherer, an essayist, and photographer. How could I have allowed myself to fall to pieces like this? A huge component of my wilderness adventure ethic was that of self-reliance, not needing others' help to get me out of the woods, out of danger. But here I was, in need of doctors, nurses, the fucking pharmaceutical industry. Gross.

I wanted to believe that there were lifestyle changes I could make to at least improve some of my ailments. Ample exercise was clearly not the issue. Some other habits or adjustments, I hoped, could be made in order to course correct away from these diseases and a lifetime of prescription medications, a lifetime of reliance on allopathic medicine, doctors, and industrial healthcare. I stumbled in the dark and began reading, researching and dipping my toes into the variety of confounding dietary and biohacking philosophies. 

Sifting through mountains of research and sage advice from the vast spectrum of doctors, researchers and dietary gurus became my charge. Everything I read seemed to have at least some merit but there were wild contradictions between each of the camps. I soon encountered what anyone who researches diet and nutrition discovers: there is a profusion of contradictory information.  Why is it so difficult to discover what a human being should eat to avoid becoming fat and sick? No other animal needs a decoder ring or a life coach. Why should we?

For many months I read one book and peer-reviewed paper after the next. Slowly, I started to develop a new fluency in biochemistry, nutrition, fitness science, the history of nutrition “science,” the fringe biohackers conducting N=1 experiments on themselves, hormetic stress, fasting science, and on and on. I found a rabbit hole and jumped in with both feet.  

A few puzzle pieces slowly started to fit, and then a few more. Eventually I stumbled upon a dietary intervention that seemed specifically efficacious for people in my situation. After some fits and starts, I committed to the protocol. 

My motivation was simple: I wanted to lose weight, fix my broken metabolism and steer myself away from developing diabetes without taking medication. This was not a philosophical or political quest. I merely wanted my health and vitality back. 

Two years later I returned to the clinic to have another metabolic blood panel drawn. I already knew that I had lost 35 pounds, that my knee no longer hurt, my ankles and calves no longer swelled when I sat for more than a couple hours, that I could go harder than I had in years in the backcountry, that the mysterious and massive rash that I’d lived with for over 20 years had disappeared, that the skin tags around my armpits had vanished, that my mood was more stable than it had been in my entire adult life, that I was no longer an insomniac, and that I felt 15 years younger, but I had no idea what the blood work would reveal. 

Aside from still having slightly elevated blood pressure, all the other markers of my Metabolic Syndrome had been corrected. I was no longer pre-diabetic. This material, and diagnostic truth hit me in a profound way. 

The strategy I employed to regain my life and optimal health was radically different from the mainstream advice. The outcome was so profound that it shook me to my core and forced me to confront other long-held beliefs. What started out as a quest to regain my health soon morphed into a philosophical and political worldview, too—a radical, anti-civilization worldview.

Online, I became aware of many thousands of people around the world who were following this unconventional advice and resolving conditions far worse than my own. People with full blown Type 2 Diabetes (previously thought incurable) were no longer diabetic, getting their blood sugars back into healthy ranges and off their medications. People with severe auto-immune disorders were getting healthy for the first time and were, again, doing so without medications. Obesity, skin conditions, mood disorders, food addiction and disordered eating, inflammation, libido, gut health, reproductive health, restoration of regular menstrual cycles, mental health, cancer, and many more conditions were all being greatly improved or, more often, entirely resolved by adopting this simple, whole food dietary philosophy and way of eating. If a pharmaceutical company developed a drug half as effective, it would certainly be the most prescribed and profitable drug in the world. 

The more I learned the more inspired I became. An underlying question often returned: why had it been so difficult for me to learn this? How and why would something so efficacious be so difficult to discover? The more I learned, the more angry I also became. All the conventional, mainstream advice is dead wrong; a profit-driven agenda to keep us addicted to civilization’s food and kept alive with its medications. As an anarchist, I realized I had liberated myself from perhaps the largest obstacle standing between me and my autonomy—my birthright to live with vitality. 

Growing up in rural Alaska, our closest family friends were Siberian Yupik—indigenous Alaskans originally from Saint Lawrence Island in the north Bering Sea. As a child of back-to-the-land hippy parents, I remember thinking, how did they survive without grains, fruit or vegetables? Weren’t these crucial for human health? Some 30-years later, as I continued to see my health recover, my childhood question came back to me and I realized that a life-long blinder of cultural indoctrination was being peeled off. I had been civilized nearly to death. What else had I been conditioned to believe that might be causing me harm?

Assertion #1: every modern non-communicable disease, from cancer to heart disease, type two diabetes, Alzhemier’s Disease, and mental health disorders, to name a few, can all be corrected when we stop and ask ourselves what kind of species are we? How did we evolve? What were the conditions that shaped us into the creature we are? What can our physiology, our metabolism, endocrine system, and physical features tell us about who we are and what we need to eat (and not eat) in order to thrive, to be optimal? 

Once we grasp the broad picture, we can begin to implement a variety of practices and habits that realign our unique physiology back into proper alignment, back into what our Paleolithic genes are still expecting from us along with our relationship to the environment.

There are several high impact levers we each can pull on to course correct ourselves away and or recover from these non-communicable diseases of civilization. None, however, are as powerful and efficacious as diet. Once the proper human diet is implemented all the other levers fall more easily into place. These other levers include proper human exercise, sleep and wake cycles, exposure to proper light, grounding to the earth, face-to-face interactions, hot and cold exposure, exposure to microbes, being a silly goose in the woods, holding and playing with the babies, walking, sprinting, lifting heavy things, hunting and gathering, staring into the fire, slowing down enough to observe the creatures, the plants, the seasonal changes, and so much more.  

What is a proper human diet? In the simplest terms it is a low carbohydrate diet that includes all of the essential nutrition that humans require to avoid deficiencies and rebuild tissues. This nutrition must also be in its most bioavailable forms. The essential nutrition for humans are as follows: essential fatty acids, essential amino acids, essential vitamins, and essential minerals. Without these, we become malnourished and diseased.

There is no such thing as an essential carbohydrate/sugar. Our bodies can and do produce all the glucose (sugar) we need, and it produces it in an exquisitely perfect ratio. Only a tiny fraction of the body absolutely requires glucose, the rest of our cells run best on ketones. Furthermore, ketones are anti-inflammatory and most diseases of civilization are a product of inflammation of one kind or another. 

It boggles the mind to read contemporary human health statistics. For instance, 74% of Americans are overweight and 40% of them are obese. A meager 6.8% of American adults are defined as having optimal cardiometabolic health! 23% of Americans suffer from serious mental health issues and more than 30% suffer from anxiety. Nearly 40% of Americans have pre-diabetes and roughly 1/10 Americans have Type 2 Diabetes (the diabetes caused by diet and lifestyle). Childhood type 2 diabetes, once rare, is also becoming increasingly common. Almost 11% of Americans over 65 suffer from Alzheimer’s Disease—a 148% increase from 1990 to 2019 of a disease that basically didn’t exist 100 years ago. The list goes on and on. 

Each of the aforementioned conditions and many more of the diseases of civilization can be corrected or greatly reduced by implementing a proper human diet, a diet that we morphologically evolved from eating. For anarchists, being liberated from the otherwise near certainty of contracting a disease, the premature entropy and diminishment of capability, inherent in civilized life, must become central to our liberatory projects. 

The sugar burner metabolism that most of us are conditioned by, is the metabolism of the slave. Grains, legumes, sugar, and plants loaded with defense chemicals (aka pesticides) are all cheap to produce, heavily dependent on fossil fuel fertilizers and are fundamental to civilization now and throughout history. The sugar burner metabolism enslaves us in another particular way as well. This dietary approach does not fulfill our need for the essential nutrition that we require, which keeps us hungry, and it lands us on the blood sugar roller coaster, causing us to eat every few hours. We have unwittingly traded our vitality for corporate profit, which leads to disease, which leads to more profit ala the pharmaceutical industry. 

In many Indigenous cosmologies, the hierarchy of responsibilities is as follows: first, care for one's own wellbeing and health, next comes the responsibility for family health and wellbeing, then community, then the wider world. Like the oxygen mask on the airplane, take care of yourself to be of service to others. When we are not operating from a foundation of strength and welfare, we are unable to bring our sharpest selves to the table. Being healthy and optimal is not merely an egocentric proposition, it is also ecocentric. We will never be liberated if we fail to understand fundamental truths about our species and its long, fascinating history. 

We are not free if we are sick. We are not free if we are dependent on the pharmaceutical industry. We are not free if we choose to buy and eat the industrial, chemically manufactured colonizers food and die the slow agonizing ways most of the civilized population now does—years of slow deterioration marked by loss of mental and physical ability. Undomesticated, land-based tribal people do not suffer and die the way the civilized do. This is the liberatory politic I believe we must embrace if we desire to save ourselves and the biosphere. 

The term Proper Human Diet, coined by Dr. Ken Berry, should be thought of as a carbohydrate spectrum. Each person has their unique maximum carbohydrate limit, which should not be exceeded. We are all, however, human beings. We all evolved in and ultimately come from Africa. We are all the same species and therefore all humans benefit from carbohydrate reduction or the complete elimination thereof. Every modern disease of civilization begins with metabolic dysfunction and inflammation, both are an outcome of carbohydrate overload. 

When we eat, our pancreas produces a hormone called insulin. Insulin is called the storage hormone. Of the three macronutrients (fat, protein, carbohydrate) carbohydrates cause the biggest secretion of insulin because any more than a teaspoon of sugar in the blood system is deadly. The body goes into a panic to deal with this potentially lethal load of sugar or starch, which the body sees and treats exactly the same. Insulin converts the excess sugar into a finite amount of muscle and liver glycogen and the rest it converts into triglycerides (body fat) and stores it away for later and of which there is no upper storage limit. This is how 350 or 500 pound people are made. The average American eats between 8 and 12 times per day. This is not normal for our species. This is what capitalism does to people. 

During the Ice Age, sweet and starchy carbohydrate foods were rare and generally only available in the late summer and early fall. We are hardwired to crave the taste of sweet and starch. If we were lucky, we could gorge on the seasonal berries and starchy tubers for the month or two they were available and put on a few extra pounds of body fat that might stave off starvation over the coming winter. The ability to put on body fat is seen as a curse but throughout our long history, this was a marvelous adaptation that likely saved us from extinction. 

There is now an extreme mismatch with our food and its availability. For the civilized, it’s late summer all year round now. We can eat blueberries in January and the blueberries are now made from corn syrup, often called gummy bears or snickers or pasta or oatmeal or any number of high sugar/carbohydrate foods that simply weren’t available to us during the Paleolithic—the vast expanse of time that we evolved in. 

What food was available and most often consumed by humans throughout our deep evolutionary history? What food did we eat that led to our unique metabolism and endocrine systems? What food led to us having big brains, small intestines, (compared to other primates) and shoulders that can hurl a ball or a spear over 100 miles an hour (an attribute no other primate has)? What food were we eating that led to us lose our body hair and the ability to shed heat through our skin? What were we eating so much of for so long that led to us having a stomach PH of 1.0 to 1.5? What is the one food that existed everywhere that humans migrated to? What is the single food source that contains all the essential nutrients required for optimal human health and that also contains no anti-nutrients or toxins? What is the one food that is 100% bioavailable and is the most nutrient dense? What food provides the perfect ratio of Omega 3 fatty acids and Vitamin B12 that are critical for brain function? What food do religious institutions like the Seventh Day Adventists insist we not eat because they (rightly) claim it leads to healthy libidos and sexy-time thoughts? What is the ancient food that our species has always eaten but is now, we are told from on high, to avoid or entirely forgo, that is most vilified and claimed to be the culprit of the modern disease epidemics and climate change? What is the food that if properly managed restores denuded industrial agriculture lands and draws down atmospheric carbon dioxide? If you guessed tofu, you’d be wrong. 

Assertation #2: By realigning our diets and lifestyles to as closely as possible match Paleolithic habits and practices, we solve an enormous problem. With clarity of thought, a balanced endocrine system, renewed strength and self confidence, and a fine tuned metabolism, we can see more clearly the root causes of planetary and human suffering. Otherwise, we are shooting in the dark, working with an incomplete data set.  

Once someone becomes “fat adapted” and off the sugar burner metabolism of civilization, a series of remarkable things begin to happen. Namely, we come off the blood sugar roller coaster and can easily go and go between meals. Unless you have experienced it, this is more liberating than you can possibly imagine. We become less bloated because every gram of carbohydrate is bound by three to four grams of water. Gut health and digestion almost immediately improve once one eliminates the sugars and carbs that both irritate the gut lining (often leading to leaky gut syndrome, leading to autoimmune diseases) and we stop feeding the bad microbes that cause indigestion, flatulence, bloating, and multiple daily bowel movements. Once the body becomes efficient with using ketones for energy, every mitochondria in our body becomes more efficient at producing ATP, the molecule essential for cellular energy. The list goes on and on. 

Fat is hardwood logs for our metabolic furnace; carbohydrates are kindling. Clever marketers have convinced us to re-up our food intake every couple hours. Topping off our blood sugar a dozen times a day is not how our hunter-gatherer ancestors survived the Ice Age. 

Becoming a fat burner rather than a sugar burner almost automatically leads to intermittent fasting because when our body is properly nourished when we eat energy and nutrient dense foods we don’t require as many meals. There are far too many benefits of fasting or intermittent fasting to dive deeply into within this article. But, briefly, the benefits include cancer prevention, recycling of damaged and mis-folded proteins and senescent cells, correction of insulin resistance, reversal of type 2 diabetes, gut health, brain health, liver health, immune system boost, and it’s a powerful anti-inflammatory, to name a few. 

For the sake of brevity, I will focus on and address just one benefit to fasting: mental clarity. In numerous studies it has been shown that after someone reaches a state of deep ketosis from prolonged fasting, their mental clarity and ability to focus greatly improves. For the thousands of generations that our species lived as immediate return hunter-gatherers, this special, evolutionary adaptation allowed us to become exceedingly sharp witted when we needed it most: when we were without food and hunting fleet-of-foot and intelligent game animals.  

When we enter a fasted state, our remarkable livers have the ability to take fat (triglycerides) from our stores and to break it apart into its constituents: three fatty acids with a glycerol backbone. The liver converts the fatty acids into ketone bodies, which are the cleanest fuel source for humans and that, unlike a triglyceride, can pass through the blood-brain-barrier. The glycerol backbone is converted into glycogen (sugar), which only a few cell types in our body actually require (certain brain cells and red blood cells). This is the optimal, high octane ratio of energy substrates for peak human cognition and functionality, and fasting is the surest way to achieve this as is a ketogenic, high animal fat diet.

There are countless misconceptions about life in the Paleolithic or in contemporary hunter-gatherer societies. Most people still believe, for instance, that people only lived to be 35. This misleading number is arrived at when all the people’s ages at death are compiled and then is calculated by analyzing mortality rates across different age groups and then extrapolating those rates to predict the average remaining lifespan for a group of people. If you lived on an island with Bill Gates, the average income on your island would be tens of billions. Life expectancy is not the same as life span—how long someone lives if they survive the vulnerable years of infancy and childhood. The maximum possible lifespan of humans remains unchanged throughout our 300,000 years.

Since the Agricultural Revolution and the emergence of civilization(s), the majority of humans have been malnourished, overworked, enslaved, mentally unstable, and diseased. Even the elites in places like ancient Egypt ate grains and developed Type 2 Diabetes—a disease unknown to hunter-gatherers. An archeologist can, at a glance, determine if a fossil was from the Paleolithic or the Neolithic age. The former is taller, more robust with straight teeth and upright spines. The latter shows signs of osteoporosis, has malformed jaws and is shorter. What’s more, humans have lost 100cc of brain matter over the last 10,000 years. Civilization is poison to people and the planet. 

A more interesting and valuable thing to consider is healthspan—the period of a person's life during which they are healthy and free from significant illness or disease. Viewed from any angle, healthspan of the civilized is a grotesque aberration when compared to the healthspans of extant hunter-gatherers. 

As an anti-civ green anarchist, I rely on anthropology, archeology, evolutionary biology and other disciplines to uncover secrets about humans and human nature. Mutual aid, non-dominance, gender equality, and more can be justified with a deep understanding of extant hunter-gatherers, primitive and or Indigenous cultures, and evidence left behind in the fossil record. Green anarchy is the science of anarchy and freedom. It is our map out of the maze that civilization has placed us in. 

Understanding how exquisite and unique our own human physiology and metabolisms are is a fundamental key to understanding how to unlock the doors that keep us sealed out of our liberation. We are a product of evolution, forged in the Ice Age. To deny that material truth comes at a great cost to our lives and prevents us from understanding our niche within the beautiful, biotic community—the web of life.  

As we march headlong into the Anthropocene, the coming Hot Age, we must take as many lessons from the Paleolithic and from extant hunter-gathers as possible. H. sapiens survived and thrived because we were anarchists. We survived because we ate species-appropriate food and we knew that the best way to store meat was in the belly of our neighbor. 

Un-Domesticated

Un-Domesticated

-Bjørn Olson

It’s an hour before sunset and I am sitting between two spindly coffee trees with a larger tree stump in front for a blind to partially hide behind. The brim of my grass hat is pulled low to block a solitary pin hole of sunlight that beams through the canopy of a tall mango tree. Leaves rustle in the breeze blowing up the hill from the ocean a thousand feet below. 

I am at the edge, the western border, of my family’s coffee and fruit farm in Hawaii. It’s the least managed and unkempt area, what the permaculturists call Zone 5. Beyond, everything is feral—the plants, the birds, the animals. 

Every species that I can see has been introduced by humans and yet it is all wild and free–undomesticated. This is my favorite part of the property. I have come here to listen to the jungle wind down for the day, to calm my mind, to meditate. Resting on my lap is a .38 caliber lever action rifle. I am also here to hunt feral pigs.

A pair of stunning Kalij pheasants follow one another and half heartedly peck at the ground. The male is dark black and bluish grey with a shocking patch of crimson red around its face. We are aware of each other, but as long as I keep a respectable distance, they don’t seem to mind my presence. They go about their business, meandering through the uneven row of banana stalks pecking at the ground as they go. Like a pair of young lovers, they never stray far from each other, pair-bonded until death do they part.  

Brought to Hawaii in 1962 as game birds, the pheasants escaped and have found their niche on this garden island in the middle of the Pacific. After a few more nibbles, they take flight directly above their foraging grounds and prepare to bed down for the night in an old growth mango tree. They rustle for a few minutes up in their branch and then all is quiet again. 

The feral pigs are most active at night, but I prefer to shoot them with light to see by rather than by flashlight in the dark. Proceeding the pheasants by over a thousand years, the ancient, sea voyaging Polynesians brought the first pigs to Hawaii on their canoes. These first people also brought chickens, taro, sweet potato, and a whole host of edible and utilitarian plants to cultivate on the nearly-life-devoid areas of the volcanic islands. These ancient Hawaiians brought with them a highly stratified, resource intensifying culture with horticultural knowledge of how to terraform and cultivate.

For over a thousand years, the pigs remained domesticates. The highly favored protein sources of the ancient Hawaiians remained constrained to the curated, human-made sanctuaries—well-fed and tended, fattened for slaughter. 

I hear a squeal in the tall cane grass field just a few hundred feet ahead of me. Most likely a sibling rivalry. The sun has set but there is still a half an hour of twilight to see by. They are coming. I take off my grass hat and raise up on one knee to peer over an old, crumbling rock wall. I rest my rifle on a stone, peer down my iron sights and wait. 

The first pigs that came from Tahiti on the canoe voyages were a small variety called pua‘a. By the time Captain Cook arrived, nearly a thousand years later, the pigs remained little changed in their stature, but by that time the forests and jungles had grown considerably. 

In a paper titled, Pigs in Hawai‘i, from Traditional to Modern, the authors state that “Captain Cook brought European pigs during his first voyage to Hawai‘i, and many other introductions of European and Asian swine followed. Over time, the Polynesian pua‘a interbred with and were mostly displaced by these larger animals.

As feral pig populations grew on all islands, they began ranging more freely in the forests. Concurrent but independent introductions of earthworms and introduced plant species, such as mango and guava, provided reliable protein and carbohydrate food sources and helped expand their range. Omnivorous and without any non-human predators, pigs began to thrive in the native forest and successfully established large populations. Within only a few generations, any escaped domesticated pigs reverted to a feral form, retaining the large body size of European swine, but severing their dependence on human beings.”

Severed dependence from human beings, going feral, escaping captivity, systems of dominance, and being free is the sweet music of anarchy-–the beautiful idea—that is never far from my mind, and what I am striving for in my own life. These pigs, the jungle cats, the parrots, and many of the plants in this corner of the world figured out how to escape the maze. They chose freedom over captivity, agency over convenience, instinct over command. I love and cherish the pigs for what they are and for what they represent. 

An all-black, medium-sized female emerges from the cane grass. I can hear others below her but she boldly walks into the open, sniffing the ground for fallen mangoes and earthworms. I pull the lever back on my rifle and still my breathing. The afternoon sea breeze is in my favor and she does not smell or see me. There is just enough remaining twilight to see my forward sight and I train it on a spot just behind her ear. I squeeze the trigger and she drops without a sound. Perfect. 

The small-holding, commercial farmers in this region generally despise the pigs. They root up lawns after heavy rains in search of earthworms, they girdle fruit trees, uproot coffee, cause erosion, and make a mess. The pigs interfere with the market and in a market driven society this is an injustice that can not stand. Humans grant themselves extraordinary privilege to tear up, modify and destroy the land-base. Observing these traits in other species, however, causes frothy anger and outrage. 

Thinking like an ecosystem is the mantra I repeat in my mind throughout the days I work on our farm. Who needs water? What needs more light, to be pruned, pulled or replaced? Can I get from one patch of land to another without overly disturbing the beautiful spider’s webs? Can I plant things that improve life for the other species who also call these five-acres their home—the worms, the bees, the butterflies, the birds? 

On my morning walks I am often dismayed to discover new pig damage, which often takes hours or sometimes days to repair. In other instances, however, the pigs uproot and overturn heavily overgrown areas, break up the soil, add their piss and shit fertilizers, and improve areas; work that would take me days, they accomplish in one quick raid. For good or bad, the pigs are part of this novel ecosystem and I want to learn to live with them rather than despise them.  

In Tyson Yunkaporta’s book, Sand Talk, he uses a splendid word to describe what the original instructions were for pre-civilized, undomesticated human beings. We are, when at our best, custodians. Our unique consciousness allows us to project, to imagine the future and the outcomes our actions can have. Our evolutionary gift as H. sapiens is to use this intelligence to serve our interests while also being mindful of the interrelated dependencies of all the other lifeforms we share time and space on this planet with. 

The feral pigs have no natural predators here on this cultivated island. On our small, family farm we help to grow the coffee, the fruit, macadamia nuts, avocado trees, a vegetable garden, herbs, and a whole host of ornamental plants. I cherish and admire them all, but the food resource I value most is the rich, succulent and nutrient-dense feral pig. Nothing we cultivate comes close to matching this meat and fat. 

In order to avoid nutritional deficiencies, humans must consume essential fatty acids, essential amino acids, essential vitamins, and essential minerals. Wild and feral pigs have all of these in abundance; a superfood that nourishes and replenishes our bodies and brains. 

In our globalized, energy and resource hungry society, sustainability is a logical fallacy. There are too many negative externalities in this sort of arrangement. Perpetual growth, it has been said, is the ideology of a cancer cell. Our technological, industrial global civilization also fosters no meaningful relationships with the resources we consume. We are all unconsciously longing for connection and a sense of belonging, the very things civilization and capitalism have stolen from us. Connection and purpose have been replaced with competition, individualism, dualism, consumerism, and a whole host of entertaining distractions, psychotherapists, and drugs to drown our sorrows in. 

Nothing has taught me more about the concept of custodianship than taking my turn three months a year tending to my family’s five-acre farmstead. Learning to cultivate things that are good not merely for me and my family but also all the other-than-humans who live here and who deserve to eat and thrive as well. Our health and well-being are bound to theirs. This is a relationship, not a transaction. 

After I finish butchering the pig, I dig a hole in the garden bed. I place the skin, guts and the head inside and cover it over with a couple feet of loamy dirt. In a few weeks time I will transplant sweet potatoes in this spot. The potatoes will love and devour the nitrogen and other nutrients from the pig carcass in the ceaseless cycle of life and death and more life. 

The following evening my family and I gather around the deep dish cast iron pot and begin serving dinner. The pork has been simmering on low for hours in a mineral-rich bone broth from a previous pig. The meat, fat and connective tissue fall off the bone and into our bowls. French winemakers have a word that defines a region's unique flavor. The word is terroir. This meat has tremendous terroir: the macadamia nuts, the volcanic soil, the avocado, the rain, and the wild spirit. All of this and more is in each succulent bite. 

This meal is much more than mere constituents, flavor and essential nutrients, it’s a sacrament to the land, to freedom, to anarchy. I am seeking my own path out of the maze, out of civilization and domestication, and into a primal embrace of an unmediated life. The pigs, the jungle cats, and all the undomesticated plants and animals on and around these five acres remind me that primal anarchy is not only possible, it is preferable. 

Less is More Book Review

Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save The World an Anarchists Review

-Bjorn Olson

I recently listened to Jason Hickel’s book Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save The World while simultaneously skimming and underlining passages in a print copy. I made a prediction before I began reading/listening to the book: I guessed that I would agree with his justifications for why (if we wish to save the world and our species) we must abandon perpetual growth capitalism, but I assumed that I would disagree or find faults with his means for how to achieve this desired outcome. I was right, but maybe a little less right that I’d guessed. 

I will begin by saying that his history of capitalism is well-researched and illuminating. I believe that he doesn’t pick up the history far enough back, however, but from his starting point, 500 years ago, he weaves a powerful narrative, which does a fine job of explaining how we got into the mess we are currently in, which began with enclosure and was followed by Colonialism. I am of the conviction that if more people understood the history and methodologies of perpetual growth capitalism, that we would begin to understand that it is just a story, a myth, one that we happily lived without for hundreds of thousands of years, and that that understanding can liberate us to tell a new story, a better story. I give Jason Hickle an A+ grade for his research and scholarship into the history of capitalism. If for no other reason I recommend the book.

His history begins after the bubonic plague, when many peasants began revolting against the feudal system and re-claiming their autonomy. Important to this time in history, land that had been “owned” by the ruling elite was turned back into commons—a natural resource base for any and everyone to subsist from. “The rebels,” he says, “weren’t interested in tweaking the system a bit around the edges - they wanted nothing short of a revolution.” This is an important point that revolutionaries throughout history have made. As Fredric Douglass famously stated ”power concedes nothing without a demand.” And this leads me to my primary criticism of the book. Jason Hickle demands nothing; sadly, he seems more interested in the tweaks around the edges. A limp and reformist approach. 

By the way, spoiler alert, the peasants lost.

We currently live in a time of crazy-making, delusional thinking. For instance, in progressivist  and environmentalist circles (the circles I often find myself in) we rally behind the cause of decarbonizing the economy. Climate change is serious business and we all know what is causing it. However, concurrent with our climate crisis, we are also facing other ecological crises including planetary overshoot. To demand that we decarbonize our economy with renewable energy, without also addressing perpetual growth mindsets, is little more than robbing Peter to pay Paul. It was refreshing to read a progressivist who fully comprehends the accounting problem that most environmentalists either ignore or try to pretend doesn’t exist. 

“Whenever there appears to be a conflict between ecology and growth,” he observes, “economists and politicians opt for the latter and try ever more creative ways to get reality to conform to it. Politicians are willing to bet everything on speculative technologies to avoid facing the imperative of radical emissions reductions. Proponents of green growth resort to outlandish imaginary scenarios and clever accounting tricks to maintain the illusion that we can carry on with the status quo. They are willing to risk everything—literally everything—just to keep GDP rising.” 

This observation gets to the heart of the crazy-making world I confront daily. Alaska, for instance, is being sized up by the federal and state governments and by multinational mining companies. The staggering quantity of transition metals that will be required to decarbonize our grids, transportation, and more, the proponents for perpetual growth capitalism are insisting upon, must come from somewhere. Green energy is an oxymoron. 

On one hand, it appears that Jason Hickle fully understands the disastrous ecological implications of the green energy transition, but on the other hand he still advocates for it albeit in a post-growth context. Unfortunately, he provides no hard numbers nor does he address which areas of the world we should be willing to sacrifice for these materials. Is it Alaska?

Central to one of the book’s core thesis’ is Jevon's Paradox, which observes that when technological progress or government policy increases efficiency with which a resource is used, demand increases and the ecological benefit of the efficiency is outstripped by the newly increased demand. Improved efficiency, it has been shown over and over, leads to increases in income and accelerates economic growth further increasing demand for resources. This explains why, despite all the education, government subsidization, and the widespread adoption of renewable energy around the world, our global carbon emissions are still going up and up. Without a degrowth ethos baked into the energy transition, all we are doing is hastening the destruction of the living world. Again, it is refreshing to read someone who understands that there really is no paradox here—it’s how perpetual growth capitalism is designed to work. 

Another core point to the book is the overwhelming evidence that shows that after our hierarchy of needs are met, more material wealth accumulation does not lead to better or even longer lives for humans. He cites Costa Rica as an example: “We know that Costa Ricans live long lives: around eighty years on average. But the researchers had noticed that the Nicoyans live even longer, with a life expectancy of up to eighty five years—one of the highest in the world. This is odd, because Nicoya is one of the poorest parts of Costa Rica, in monetary terms. It is a subsistence economy where people live traditional lives.” Their longevity, it has been determined, is the result of tight social bonds, feeling valued, and connected, which are the things perpetual growth capitalism spurns in favor of individualism and competition. 

Was there ever a time when human beings weren’t so destructive to ourselves and the rest of the living world, and is there a map out of this maze? Radical anthropologists and Anarchists say yes. Unfortunately, Hickle gets right to the edge of this precipice of understanding, but backs away from the full implication and leaves off with very little meat for his readers to sink their teeth into.

Dualism and anthropocentrism, almost universally accepted and embraced in this era, are very new ideas for human beings. I was pleased and somewhat surprised to read his appreciation of and for Animism, the metaphysics that all humans once lived with, embraced, understood, and felt. For instance: “[T]he Achuar (Amazonian hunter-gatherers) know that their existence depends on maintaining good relationships with the teeming community of non-human (or more-than-human) persons with whom they share the forest. They know that they are fundamentally interdependent; that without them they would be nothing—non-existent. Their fates are bound together.” 

Ethnographers the world over make similar observations regarding “primitive” hunter-gatherers’ understanding that all life is interdependent, and that healthy relationships are based upon reciprocity.  This is perhaps the most profound and fundamental concept that has been corrupted and broken by civilization, capitalism and theism. Taking more than you need and thinking that you are granted special, extra-ordinary privilege is aberrant thinking that comes with dire consequences. Mr. Hickel makes the observation but sadly he steers his readers back to the central authority of top down-governments and the hierarchical systems and societal arrangements we are accustomed to. He just hopes, without the slightest shred of evidence, that our governments will suddenly come to their senses and that we’ll start using less. 

No one has a crystal ball nor can anyone say for certain how the Anthropocene and the global civilization we have created are going to play out. If I had to guess, however, I suspect that real behavioral change won’t come until the collapse is more seriously felt and that restraint won’t come until it is the only option left available. If I were to write the story, it would be based on a soft landing approach—one in which humans simply walk away from central governments and authority, remembering that they unnecessary, harmful, deeply colonial institutions; that wealth accumulation and resource hoarding is to be avoided at all cost; and that true wealth comes from strong social bonds, access to wildness, clean food, water and air. 

I believe that people should read Less is More. The imaginary battle line that the so-called Left and the so-called Right have created when it comes to the economy is nothing more than excruciatingly painful, empty chatter created by the corporate media. Both wings fully embrace the same destructive construct of perpetual growth. Less is More may help deepen people’s understanding of where the conversation needs to be steered if we want to avoid the worst effects of global warming and the collapse of our ecosystems. However, I ultimately think the book should be read alongside other authors like John Gowdy, John Zerzan, Paul Shepherd, Marshall Sahlins, Colin Ward, Peter Marshall, the classic Anarchist thinkers such as Malatesta, Bakunin, Kropotkin, and many, many others who have swum further from the shore as Hickel has dared to. 

It is no longer surprising to me that there are so many economists who are also anthropologists and vice versa. This suite of skills and scholarship lends itself to grappling with the big problems we are facing today. There is genuine compassion for the living world and a beautiful appeal to demand the impossible within the book. Mr. Hickel may very well already have the map out of the maze and is too afraid to share it because he fears it is too radical for the mainstream, progressivist audience he is appealing to. I think it’s more likely, however, that he just hasn’t yet fully accepted the reality of what his research into anthropology and economics are showing him. Read Less is More for insights, but I caution you to be wary of solutions that maintain the systems of oppression and domination that we are supposedly attempting to subvert in order to save the World. 

Teller to Wales

Teller to Wales

-Bjørn Olson

Originally published in Bikepacking.Com

Kim McNett rides her loaded fat-bike into the York Mountains of the Seward Peninsula.

In the middle of the night, on a dramatic stretch of coastline just below the Arctic Circle, the offshore gale that we had fallen asleep to suddenly switched 180 degrees. Before I fully grasped what had occurred, my hands flashed out of my toasty sleeping bag and violently grabbed ahold of our pyramid shelter that had blown over and threatened to be whisked off into the treeless mountain-scape beyond our camp. “Hold on,” I yelled to Kim over the sound of thrashing fabric. I jumped out of my bag and plunged half naked into the raging storm to re-secure the anchors. A small stuff sack whisked past my face and disappeared into the night. 

A small dose of the fight or flight response is good for humans. Sprinting from a predator or charging headlong into a burning building to save a child sends a surge of survival hormones into our bodies, strengthening our wits and sharpening our ability to better respond in the future. These Ice Age adaptations are seldom necessary in our modern world of comfort, leisure, and safety. Wilderness adventures with a fat-bike into untamed landscapes provide a reliable antidote for this deficiency. 

We were more than halfway through our summer fat-bike expedition, and beyond what we assumed would be the crux of our trip, when we encountered an impassable cliff face. A strong storm was blowing onto the shore, causing a storm surge, and was accompanied by six-foot waves crashing against the sliver of beach that was to be our pathway ahead. Our best option was to post up and wait for a change in wind direction to blow the conditions down. The deceitful Bering Sea had other ideas. 

For over a decade, Kim and I have been returning to the windswept Seward Peninsula in the northwest of Alaska. Our first summer together as a couple, in 2009, we spent a month in the region. For the first two weeks we joined our friend, Maynard, who is a knife and ulu maker. Every summer Maynard spends several months scouring the backcountry throughout the region for shedded caribou antlers. Back home in his workshop, he upcycles the antler into knife handles. After filling his ATV trailers, Kim and I went on to explore the peninsula’s road systems and backcountry for another two weeks by fat-bike.    

Since then, we have returned to the Seward Peninsula on many occasions for both winter and summer fat-bike expeditions and for work. Every trip into this sub-Arctic biome deepens our connection to the region, its culture, and people, and opens our eyes to new areas to explore. 

Last June, Kim and I loaded our Subaru to capacity and drove 240 miles north from our home to the Anchorage airport. Our ambitious Nome-based agenda was on display in our compressed shocks. Packed into our car were two weeks of food, filmmaking equipment, a Rubbermaid tote full of Kim’s teaching artist supplies for our first mission: traveling by helicopter to the extremely remote community of Little Diomede to make a documentary. After flying back to Nome from Little Diomede, we would require an additional 10 days of food, fat-bikes, packrafts, backpacks, and other backcountry gear for our proposed wilderness adventure—the village of Teller to the westernmost community on the Seward Peninsula—Cape Prince of Wales. And lastly, once the 10-day fat-bike trip was over, we would return once again to Nome where I would join our knife-making friend for a 10-day caribou hunting trip. 

Expensive lenses, padlocked rifle case, bike boxes stuffed beyond the 50-pound limit, and totes full of dehydrated and freeze-dried food spilled out of our car at the air cargo parking lot in Anchorage. Each of the upcoming undertakings required self-reliance. There would be no bike shops, or Amazon.Com to save us if anything was forgotten or overlooked. The piles of gear appeared absurd, but no single item that sat atop the airline’s industrial scale was superfluous. 

Weeks later, with our trip to Little Diomede behind us, we biked the last miles of dirt road into the village of Teller. As the early morning sunlight penetrated our chilled bones, the familiar and carefree feeling of disconnecting from civilization washed over me. Traveling around the bend or over the next hill by human power used to be as commonplace to our species as breathing. Too much sedentism can atrophy our innate nature; my preferred antidote is to ride into wildness.

Teller, an Inupiat village of 200+ residents, is situated at the westernmost extent of the Seward Peninsula’s road-system. Shaped like a north facing arrow point, the village is hedged by water on both sides—the protected, intertidal Grantly Harbor gently laps against its eastern shore; the Bering Sea—tempestuous and unrelenting—collides with its shore to the west. It’s difficult to envision a more alluring and subsistence-rich rural community.

The familiar aroma of smokehouses packed with fresh salmon wafted through the air as we rode past chained dog teams, fishing nets, beached skiffs, fuel tanks, and the assortment of tightly spaced houses. I waved as an ATV loaded with three kids returning from the store passed us. They tepidly waved back and craned their necks at the uncommon outsiders. 

Beyond the last house, the road ended. After months of planning and weeks of logistical strategizing, our off-piste excursion had finally begun. We downshifted and continued riding the remaining ¾ of a mile to the tip of the sandy spit beyond the community. At the terminus, we dismounted and began to blow up our packrafts for a short crossing. On the other side of the channel sat another small village—Brevig Mission. Beyond it, a vast and seldom visited wilderness, and, for us, the best thing a trip can provide: the unknown. 

Simple yet sturdy driftwood drying racks, draped with fileted salmon, and family-group fish camps peppered the coastline for a few miles on either side of Brevig Mission. For at least 10,000 years, Alaska has been inhabited, and a lineage of traditional ecological knowledge remains unbroken throughout much of the circumpolar region. Salmon, a renewable, nutrient-dense subsistence resource, return every summer. How and when to harvest as well as how to preserve stockpiles for the long, dark winter ahead were on colorful display.

For the next two days, we strained our knees in our lowest gears and low tire pressure atop loose sand and gravel. In the distance, the York Mountains drew closer. Beach travel by fat-bikes is a straight-forward way to cover a lot of territory. Bears, foxes, caribou, and other creatures looking for the path of least resistance also use these natural pathways. Analyzing their tracks is an endless subject of inquiry. A downside to long beach routes, however, is that they can often become monotonous. 

A variety of criteria are considered when we design a wilderness expedition from the comfort of our cabin. Pouring over maps and satellite images while logs radiate heat from the wood stove, we discuss options. Covering a lot of ground has appeal. Exploring interesting or exciting terrain to ride a bike on is also deeply satisfying. And, although we often repeat many of our favorite routes, we are almost always motivated to explore somewhere new.  

Teller to Wales is not a particularly long route, but it met our other two criteria. Although Alaska’s population is less than 750,000, it is home to over 240 remote villages. Each is unique both in geographic location, but also culturally. Visiting these off-the-road-system communities has enriched my appreciation and understanding of this Great Land. Traveling by fat-bike, packraft or sea kayak, has afforded me countless lasting friendships that now span thousands of miles in over 80 of these often extremely remote villages and towns; saying nothing of the friendships that have been made along the trail. 

Arriving in one of these communities by fat-bike is, in our experience, a remarkable ice breaker. The local hunters, who know the land best, pepper us with questions about our route, inquiring about game signs, animal migrations, or favorite landmarks. We are often bombarded by children who may be curious of any new face in town, but who show special interest in the dirty ones on funny looking, oversized bicycles. On several occasions, our good fortune has brought us into a community amid a cultural celebration. Time and time again, we have been made to feel welcome. Cape Prince of Wales, protruding into the Bering Strait, a mere 50 miles from mainland Siberia, would be new to us. 

Our route also appealed to our more basic instinct: riding our bikes on giggle-inducing terrain. Between the villages of Brevig Mission and Wales sits an isolated, relatively low elevation mountain range. Full of incised canyons, dry creek and riverbeds, with compact sedimentation, and with almost no vegetation, they appeared from afar to be an ideal fat-bike, mountain-scape. 

As is often the case, however, to play, we would first have to pay, and then pay again. After two days of riding the long barrier lagoon, and beaches, we reached the mouth of Lost River. From here, we would head inland and ride over and through the treeless York Mountains. 

Before settling down for the evening, Kim and I admired our surroundings and peered up the Lost River canyon. If not for the cold, offshore wind, and the presence of the Bering Sea at our back, it would be easy to confuse our location for the American Southwest. New Mexico, perhaps? 

Over the sound of wind ripping down the valley, we could hear approaching ATVs. Within minutes, two machines rounded the bend from the direction we had just come from. Four wide-eyed and smiling teenagers pulled up and turned their motors off. I was baffled. Along our way, we had to blow our packrafts up several times for short but deep-water crossings. “There’s a trail on the inside of the lagoon,” they informed us. “Very wet.” The mud and grass caked to their machines was all we needed to see to realize that we had divined the better, albeit semi-aquatic, path. 

The Brevig Mission boys were on their way up the Lost River to visit a friend. Far into the valley a crew of seasonal workers were exploring for rare earth minerals, hoping for a motherload deposit and economic viability. Electric cars, solar panels, and other technologies have ratcheted up interest in metals mining throughout Alaska. 

As someone acutely concerned about global warming and the effects it is having on our natural world, I also have misgivings about many of the proposed solutions to the crisis and the impacts they in turn will have on the environment. For thousands of years, all Alaskans lived with a different form of economy—an immediate return subsistence economy—and their impact was minimal. I often wonder if in our pursuit to prevent wholesale species extinctions and ecological collapse, are we overlooking simpler solutions? Or is our current standard of living and resource-intensive way of life too precious to barter with?

We waved goodbye to the boys, watched as they rode into the hills and began to look for a camp. With a steep hill to block the offshore wind at our back and the sea to our front, we went to sleep full of excitement. In the morning we would begin our overland ride through the mountains. The forecast was perfect. 

“I admire your adventures, but I do not envy them,” is a sentiment I have heard more than once. On more than a few of our wilderness cycling trips, I have also not envied myself and I often question my judgment. Adventures by bike can be incredible; adventures with bikes can be absurd. I am not interested in dragging a bicycle through a forest of alder or up a summit just to claim a first. My passion for this activity is born from a childlike love for cycling on and over interesting terrain. Unfortunately, you don’t always get to know which one you’re choosing. 

By 10 am, we were stripped down to our base layers and riding with ease on our way into the mountains. We followed a dry riverbed for several miles before turning northwest into a valley system and climbed deeper into the range. The traction was perfect. This is what fat-bikes do best. 

As we continued, the massive valley we were following began branching. We took the fork we needed and continued climbing toward a high elevation pass that would deposit us into another river system that we could follow back down to the coast, but my mind was dizzy with all the possibilities. We were following a practical route through the range, but there were many other valleys and passes to explore.

As we gained elevation, small rivulets of crystal-clear pools and flowing streams began to appear. We crouched down on hands and knees and slurped our fill, submerged our sweaty foreheads, and took a break. We were engulfed in the arid and rugged mountains; in the distance a family of ptarmigan cackled.

Near the summit of the pass, we encountered a patch of loose, bowling ball-sized boulders that forced us off our bikes. For the first time since leaving the coast, we had to push. Beyond this short obstacle, we re-mounted and rode onward to the top of the divide. 

At the top, we were greeted by little clumps of pale-yellow Arctic poppies that danced and swayed in the breeze. With almost no soil to cling to and situated in a spot that regularly sees hurricane force winds, we admired their tenacity, their anti-fragility. The Arctic poppy thrives under adversity. If Seneca and Marcus Aurelius did not contemplate this proud little flower, they missed an opportunity to find further confirmation for their Stoic worldview. 

Our day of climbing had been a pure joy, but the lively mountains had more to give. Down, down, down we rode. Loose cobble in the steep, upper couloir required our full attention, but the grade soon slackened. The further we descended, the more compact and uniform the terrain became. For over an hour we plunged downhill until we reached a wide river valley where we turned southwest and followed the drainage back to the coast. A lone, bull caribou grazed in the distance.

Our map indicated that, once back to the shore, we would immediately confront a narrow sliver of coast with a steep and unstable slope above it. Evening light bathed the wide beach, fresh water and ample driftwood were on hand, and the day had been long. We decided to camp and save the next obstacle—the unknown—for the morning. We made a mistake.

The onshore storm built through the night and in the morning, we realized that our way forward was blocked. As winds blow onshore in the shallow Bering Sea, water levels rise into what is called a storm surge, like a high tide. The surge of water coupled with breaking waves forced us to retreat. Time and a change in wind direction would be necessary if we were to proceed along our proposed course.

Rather than consume food from our dwindling stockpile, Kim assembled our break-apart fishing pole, and we walked up the river in search of sustenance. Much to our delight, a small school of pink salmon were making their way up to their spawning grounds. None were particularly eager to bite, but with persistence we were eventually able to land four of the small but delicious salmon—our one and only meal for the day.

Two days later, we began to reevaluate our options. The sudden switch in the middle of the previous night to a violent onshore gale—powerful enough to blow our well-anchored shelter over—felt demoralizing. Two alternative options remained: pushing our bikes up and over the tall mountain, now being occupied by a grizzly, or retreating the way we had come. Both were on the table for discussion. We decided to wait one more night with the hope that conditions would finally improve. The grizzly bear, foraging a few hundred feet above us, kept us on alert and away from the fishing hole. We stoked the fire, fasted, and waited.

I sat fifty feet above Kim on a cliff face the following morning and yelled down to her. “Not yet. There’s a big set coming.” “Okay, now! Run!” The storm surge and waves had subsided, but our path forward remained menacing and dicey. As the last wave retreated, she bounded around the first of several rock outcroppings and made it to the other side. Above her, loose rocks hung precariously. We repeated this trick of timing the swell and of avoiding rockfall for the next fifteen, hair-raising minutes. Patience and luck paid off. We were finally past the constriction and back on the bikes.

Twelve miles in the distance, we could see Cape Mountain boldly thrusting into the skyline above the abandoned town and deep-water port of Tin City. An out-of-place radar dome capped its summit; a not-so-subtle reminder of the Cold War and the continued distrust of our Russian neighbors to the west.  

After a painless and sunny beach ride, punctuated with a few shallow creek crossings, we arrived in Tin City in the early afternoon. Abandoned buildings from two different eras—an early mining boom, and Cold War era military installations—littered the valley. The mountains, with their ridgelines of spires and tors, looked to us like sleeping dragons. As I stopped to put on my windbreaker near a pile of rusting 55-gallon fuel drums, a plastic wrapper blew past my feet and the spell of wildness I had been under was broken.

We rode up to a pair of massive and derelict microwave towers—a pre-satellite-era communication technology—and looked back on our route. From this vantage, we could see the beach we had been stranded on for 3 nights, the York Mountains, and beyond. The view was stunning, and hard won.

Spikey outcroppings of jagged, tooth-like rocks dotted the weathered, undulating terrain along the road from Tin City to Wales. As we rounded a wide bend, the narrow waist of the Bering Strait came into view—the site of the Bering Land Bridge where the first Americans came from. Both Little and Big Diomede Islands were visible, as was the Siberian mainland—a mere fifty miles in the distance. In the middle of the strait lies the international date line. We were looking both into tomorrow, and into the deep past.

As we drew closer to the village, a familiar sound came from overhead. A twin-engine Bering Air passenger airplane was on its approach. It turned into the stiffening wind and landed on the long, gravel airstrip. “Think we can catch it before it takes off?” I asked Kim. “It’s worth a shot.” The headwind was working against us, but we shifted into high gear and began racing the last miles into town.

Over the years, we have learned to make peace with the often-schizophrenic nature of wilderness adventures in the far north. When conditions are good, we have learned to strike and to strike hard. We have also had to learn to be patient; to ration, to fast; to remember that nature is supreme; often cruel and unforgiving to those who act with hubris. Adventures, we have found, come not from what you expect, but rather from what you didn’t expect.  

As we sped to catch the plane, I began to feel conflicted. Had being stranded for three-days made us impatient to be done? Were we hurrying to miss an opportunity, an experience? A half mile from the airstrip my concern vanished. Fate took over as we watched the plane taxi down the runway and take off back to Nome. Little did we realize that Mother Nature and her trixie vixen, the Bering Sea, weren’t finished with us yet. A fresh storm was brewing, and that was to be the last plane into Wales for the next four days.

Metabolic Flexibility for Adventurers

Metabolic Flexibility for Adventurers

-Bjørn Olson

An example of what my one meal a day, nutrient-dense diet consists of: moose patty with free range chicken eggs, coho salmon roe, seasoned with pink salt, and a bowl of caribou bone broth.

A wet sucking sound accompanied each step as I lifted my foot up and out of the spongy tundra. I’d then test the space between the pillowy jack-o’-lantern sized tussocks to locate the least-wet place to set my foot, then heave my laden fat-bike forward before taking the next sloppy, energy-draining step. Forward progress was painfully slow through the sub-Arctic mire. I scanned the rolling terrain ahead in search of a less energy consuming path. Nothing but miles of soggy tundra met my gaze. Intense exhaustion and an acute swelling pain in my knee threatened to overwhelm me. Internally, I worried that I had overshot my abilities with this wilderness cycling route that involved a lot of bike-pushing. 

For more than two thirds of my life I have been an outdoor adventurer, which is to say that I have a deep familiarity with “bonking.” I know what drained depletion and ravenous hunger feel like. On long trips, my strategy had always been to eat frequent, high carbohydrate snacks to recharge my flagging blood sugar. When and if snacks ran low or were entirely consumed, all thoughts focused on food and the next resupply. 

Over the years, I had grown used to achy joints and exhaustion, but as I looked up at the miles of post-holing ahead of me, I felt a fatigue deeper and more concerning than usual. When I returned home from the trip, I visited the clinic for a checkup, and to have a blood panel done. The results were sobering. I was overweight, developing metabolic syndrome and, most alarming, I was becoming insulin resistant - the early signs of developing type 2 diabetes. My yearning for strenuous backcountry adventures was still strong, but it seemed as though the clock had been accelerated and that my days of adventure may soon be reined in. 

I began to search for solutions that would allow me to maintain my active lifestyle and regain optimal health. The approach that I had always followed was causing me to gain several pounds of body fat each year, my stamina and strength no longer felt optimal, joints ached, and I was becoming insulin resistant. Something had to change, but I had no clear idea where to begin. 

Through luck, coincidence and one compelling presentation about decolonization and ancestral wisdom, I found what I consider to be nothing less than a miracle solution to the spectrum of ailments that plagued me. I stumbled across what it means to become a metabolically flexible fat burner, through ancestral nutrition. 

Digging into this line of investigation, I found a bottomless and wildly fascinating rabbit hole. Ancient ways of living and eating, that worked for our species for hundreds of thousands of years, are now being justified and supported by burgeoning science. More importantly, however, tens of thousands of individuals, like myself, who have reached dead ends with the modern standard of care, are self-experimenting with this way of eating and are course correcting away from the diseases of civilization. 

As I began to peer under the first onion layers, I started to comprehend that we are a species of hominid that has lived in direct contact with the natural world for the absolute majority of our time on the planet. It struck me that I had never had the imagination or bothered to consider, what is a species appropriate diet for humans? 

Our ancestors, I began to understand, ate what they could kill, scavenge, or forage, and often underwent protracted periods without eating. Human beings are the surviving members in a branch of primates that, over millions of years, gradually adapted away from big biota filled guts, which require continuous feeding, and that can extract nutrition from plant fiber. When our ancient ancestors moved out of the trees and into the savanna, several million years ago, we began consuming animal protein and fat. The big guts shrank and were slowly exchanged for big brains. This is called the expensive tissue hypothesis. 

Our genes have not changed in any significant way since the Agricultural Revolution, some ten thousand years ago (depending on what region of the world your ancestors are from). Our diets, however, have increasingly diverged from the rich and varied nutrition and eating patterns our species has been programmed, over hundreds of thousands of years, to thrive with. This nutritional divergence has further accelerated over the last 50 or so years. High fructose corn syrup industrially processed and highly inflammatory seed oils (canola, soy, peanut, corn, vegetable, etc), and other hyper-palatable, nutrient-poor, center-aisle food-like products are all modern additions to the human diet -- none of which our ancestors would recognize as food. 

It is sobering to consider that over 55% of Americans are either diabetic or pre-diabetic; that roughly 70% are either overweight or obese; and that only 12% of American adults are considered metabolically healthy. This way of eating has given me a fighting chance in avoiding becoming another member in these grim statistics. 

At the outset of my dietary experimentation, I struggled with the idea that the goal should be to consume the majority of my calories from fat and to dramatically restrict carbohydrates. Although I grew up in Alaska and knew that all Indigenous Alaskans had eaten this way for thousands of years, my Western conditioning was deeply ingrained. A light went on for me, however, when I first read that of the three macronutrients (fat, protein, and carbohydrates) that there is no such thing as an *essential carbohydrate. 

Certain cells in our bodies absolutely require glucose to function, but if you never ate another Snickers, slice of bread or bowl of rice for the rest of your life, those cells would function perfectly. Human bodies can manufacture all the glucose they need. Human beings cannot function, however, for long, without essential fatty acids, essential amino acids, essential vitamins, and minerals. 

When I began to consume a high fat/low carbohydrate diet, a few fascinating and profound things began to occur, which led me to believe that I was on the right path. One of the first things I noticed was that I immediately lost several pounds of water weight that I had no idea why I was carrying around. Every gram of carbohydrate in our bodies, it turns out, is supported by three grams of water. Once I ditched the carbs, this water was excreted. I felt lighter and my joints hurt less. The next thing I noticed was that I was off the blood sugar roller coaster, and I could go and go for many hours between meals without experiencing the familiar and dreaded bonk. 

In most cases, people who prioritize healthy fats and protein as the cornerstone of their diet, adopt intermittent fasting or time restricted eating patterns. Healthy fats and protein are satiating and once the body remembers how to extract energy from these substrates, by becoming fat adapted (also known as keto adapted), the hormone insulin drops, and a cascade of fascinating things begin to happen. 

When insulin is present, we cannot tap into our stored body fat for energy because insulin is a storage hormone. By abstaining from snacks and meal frequency, and by greatly reducing carbohydrates, insulin drops. With insulin levels low, our bodies can then tap back into our fat stores to use for energy. 

This is the remarkable adaptive strategy that allowed our Paleolithic ancestors to survive times of hardship, and this is the cornerstone of what it means to become metabolically flexible: we eat nutritious food and extract energy from it, but when we don’t eat, our fat-burning mitochondria begin to pull the fat off our bodies and use it for fuel without discrimination or unnecessary hunger pangs. Furthermore, our brain function and moods improve when we are off the blood sugar roller coaster and rely on ketones, rather than glucose, for the primary fuel source. 

As the first weeks and months went by, I began to experiment. I found it hard to believe that my body could run on its own storage fuel, and that losing excess body fat could be so simple. 16-to-24-hour fasts (skipping breakfast and or breakfast and lunch) eventually became reflexive for me at home, but I wondered how I’d perform on bike trips. Breakfast had always been a morning ritual before starting long days on the saddle, and my Western conditioning about breakfast being the most important meal of the day was deeply ingrained. 

Much to my surprise and delight, I was able to get going with nothing more than a cup of black coffee, then ride well into the day before feeling the urge to eat my first meal. I was elated to discover that I had conditioned my metabolism to run on fat rather than carbohydrates. 

Two years in, I still marvel at the fact that, with practice and discipline, I was able to return to my ancestral programming, and am now able to use both exogenous and endogenous calories for fuel. I am no longer a glucose slave and I take great satisfaction when I consider that my body has remembered how to use its built-in surplus for the energy it needs when it needs it. I feel like I have a superpower.

This spring, I returned to the clinic for another checkup and to have blood work done again. I had lost more than 30 pounds; my insulin resistance had reverted to healthy insulin sensitive levels and my markers for metabolic dysfunction had been greatly improved. I had dodged an all too-common bullet.  

I do not consider this way of eating to be a diet. The word diet denotes something to do temporarily but expect to go off. I intend to eat and fast this way for the rest of my life. There is still a lot to learn and certain tweaks to be made, but becoming metabolically flexible has made too many profound improvements in my life to list. I can no longer imagine returning to the diseased state I had been in for the meagre reward of a quick dopamine rush from sugars, industrial seed oils and highly refined carbohydrates.

Single ingredient, whole foods are now at the foundation of what I eat, and much of what I eat is wild-caught fish and game that I procure myself. This is one of the great joys of living in Alaska – a state that, up to now, has prioritized and managed its healthy renewable resources. When my freezer and pantry run low on wild-caught or foraged food, I do my best to purchase regeneratively and local-raised/grown food. 

Although I now eat far fewer meals than I used to, every meal I eat is delicious, and I eat to satiety. However, I am not a zealot. In Mark Session’s book, The Primal Blueprint, he states that we should aim high, but accept that 80% adherence is more reasonable. Conscious treats (not cheats) should be factored into a life worth living. 

We have become conditioned by modernity and culture to believe that grocery stores, supermarkets, and all that they contain, are normal. Highly subsidized grains and monoculture agriculture has wildly transformed our diets over the last half century. Most of us have some idea about which foods are more-or-less healthy or nutritious, but I for one had never considered just how many of these foods can be deleterious to long life and robust health. If and when I feel deprived, I consider what my future self will say about the choices I make now to remain in or to slip away from metabolic health.

Mountaineering, paddling, bike expeditions and wilderness exploration are embedded into my identity and are the sacred methods I use to recharge my being. I am open-eyed and under no illusion, however, that someday I will have to reign in expectations about my limits in the backcountry. Relying on ancestral wisdom to break bad habits and rediscover optimal health has provided me with a new lease. My only regret is that I didn’t learn about metabolic flexibility sooner.

Bering Sea-Change

Bering Sea-Change

Bjørn Olson

This story was originally published in Alaska Magazine.

The village of Diomede.

Nome, renowned as the finish line of the Iditarod Trail, the ancient hunting grounds of the Inupiat and as the site that the Three Lucky Swedes, who, in 1898, discovered gold and kicked off a stampede of fortune seekers, is one of my favorite Alaskan towns. Along with my partner, Kim McNett, I have been to the community many times for fat-bike adventures in both winter and summer. Last winter, however, we were on a different sort of adventure. The bikes stayed home; we’d flown north from our home in Homer to make a documentary film about the island community of Little Diomede.  

Situated in the middle of the Bering Strait, where Alaska and Siberia nearly touch, the village of Little Diomede is home to fewer than 100 people. Big Diomede, a mere 2.5 miles to the west, is part of Russia, and the International Date Line runs between the two. For at least 3 thousand years a sturdy and hyper-adept civilization of Inupiat people, the Ingalikmiut, have made their home on this resource rich, remote and rocky island in the sea. 

For 8 days time in February we had attempted to travel to this remote community by the only commercially available option: helicopter. For over a week, thick ice fog prohibited air travel and we were forced to settle for a second attempt in March. When we returned, we were again confronted with poor flying conditions for another 8 days, even having flown halfway out only to turn back as the fog thickened over the open water in the straight. This also happened to be the week that the world fell to pieces as the pandemic began. 

Kim had visited the island on previous occasions, through the Artists In Schools program, and worked with the students to create a string-art food web of the Bering Strait ecosystem. Bits of colored twine connect individual species to the foods that they depend on. This interconnection to food resources extends from a geometric sun at the center of the installation, to the plankton and the small fish, on up to the iconic animals like the bowhead whale, walrus, polar bear, and the Ingalikmiut. 

Opik Okinga, Diomede’s Environmental Coordinator, has been championing the preservation of these essential connections that the ecosystem provides to human life on the island. As is the case with most of the island’s residents, Opik’s relationship with the environment is part of an ancient continuum. This legacy of interconnection with the natural world, the seasonal variability, the annual migrations, the harsh conditions and the access to rich, nutrient dense animals, stretches back thousands of years. 

Rapid climate change is throwing the animals in this unique and hyper-rich food web (and the people who depend on them) into turmoil. Opik invited Kim and me to make a documentary film with the community about the breakneck environmental and climatic changes that Diomede is experiencing, and the threats it is posing to their cultural way of life.

As little as 10 years ago, our journey to Little Diomede would have been less fickle. Airplanes, rather than the more costly and weather-dependent helicopter, regularly serviced the community. In the winter, ice conditions—almost without fail—allowed for the plowing of a runway on sea ice at least 4 feet thick. These conditions have nearly vanished. 

One egregious example of this rapid change came in February of 2018. A storm broke up the ice between Little and Big Diomede. It never returned. No one in living memory had ever seen or had to contend with this profoundly disruptive circumstance. The road grader that once plowed the ice runway now sits in disrepair on the edge of the village, a symbol of a soon-to-be bygone era.

For millennia, the reliable platform of ice has allowed the residents of Diomede to step off their steep island and out onto the sea to subsistence hunt, fish and to catch crabs. The ice had protected the community from monstrous waves generated by the severe winter storms and is an essential ingredient for the nutrient cycle that has supported this biologically rich ecosystem - world famous for its monstrous King crab. 

“Climate change is real,” Opik tells us. “and it is demanding that we the people must learn to live around new seasons, weather, ice conditions, and even the loss of our culture. Soon, we won't see the manners we practice, the practices that our ancestors gave us to survive.” 

While waiting in Nome, Kim and I interviewed Diomede residents who now make their home on the mainland and local scientists. On a blizzardy afternoon, we met up with Gay Sheffield, a marine biologist and professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ Northwest Campus in Nome. “The ecosystem that was here has changed,” she says. “Everything has changed. The water temperatures have warmed, which make it hard for the ice to form and the wind direction has switched.” 

“When I came to the region in 1992,” Gay says, “my job as a marine mammal biologist was to study the reproductive rates of seals or other interesting things like... What is the diet of walrus’? That’s how it was; those were the kinds of things we would study.” Over the last 10 years, the focus has switched. The topics have increased and most of them bode ill for the region. “Now it’s response, not study, that we do,” Gay said. Residents who rely on wild-caught food and the scientists who research those creatures are both in crisis mode.

Our heads swam as she continued to regale us with the myriad changes and how they relate to a rapidly warming climate. As we stepped out of the building and back into the winter storm, I was reminded of a John Muir quote. He observed that, “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.” For the people of Diomede, everything is hitched to sea ice. 

Each morning Kim and I checked the weather report and called into Pathfinder Aviation to inquire if today would be the day we’d finally fly to Diomede. “Check back tomorrow morning,” the recording perpetually advised. We would then switch on the news to learn more about the spread and infection rate of the SARS-CoV virus that was now officially in the United States. 

As the Covid-19 case count around the nation grew and the pandemic began, it was decided by all that we must abandon our attempt to reach the island community. The documentary would have to be put on hold, a sad reality to accept given the urgency of the situation and the need for the world to heed the warning that Diomede suffers.  

Since last March, scientists the world over have worked tirelessly to develop a vaccine. Our civilization has again demonstrated our ability to rise to tough and complex challenges. Someday soon this pandemic will be in our collective rearview mirror and a sense of normality will return to our lives. Someday soon we hope to succeed in documenting the profound ecological occurrence taking shape in the Bering Sea and share it near and far for the sake of the Ingalikmiut and humanity as a whole. 

This virus has required us to modify our behavior, show restraint for the good of all and to also listen to the scientific community. The Ingalikmiut people of Little Diomede, and myriad other frontline communities, are imploring that we stop and listen to their stories, trust the science, and truly digest how disruptive climate change has already become for them. If we can hear their stories, perhaps we will have the foresight to take precautions against similar ecological fates that may soon befall us all. 

Post script: Since the publication of this story, Bjørn was able to fly to Diomede and work on the film with the tribe.

The Roof of Alaska

The Roof of Alaska

Originally published in the book, The Bikeraft Guide.

Map by Skyler Kline

Prelude: 

Bjorn Olson and Kim McNett have completed a series of fat-bike trips across Alaska that culminated in a contiguous 2000-mile wilderness route from their home in Homer to the northernmost point in Alaska. Together they share their stories of Arctic adventure, culture and climate change from the two northernmost portions of their route: Tikigaq (Point Hope) to Utqiagvik (Barrow) in 2017 and Kotzebue to Tikigaq (Point Hope) in 2019. None of this 600-mile stretch had ever been attempted by fat-bike and packraft. 

June 24th, 2017

Lisburne Hills:

Kim:

I donned my sunglasses, not for the glare, but to guard against the pebble projectiles that were assailing us. I looked ahead to my three companions who were grinding their fat-bikes eastward through loose gravel. The wind charged onto the beach, driving them toward the water in drunken trajectories. White spray swirled hundreds of feet into the air as the waves churned outward towards the unimaginable void of the Arctic Ocean.

This was the first attempt anyone had made to ride a bike across this wild terrain in the very northwestern corner of Alaska. Bjorn and I have gotten ourselves into some outlandish adventures over the years and this one was no exception. From the outset, we had no way of knowing how well our bikes would work on the trailless tundra or loose beach sediment (among many other variables that would influence our forward progress and well-being along the way). I began to question whether we were pretty brave or just downright stupid. I looked to my other two companions, Alayne and Daniel, and for a moment pitied their foolishness at trusting to follow such fools. 

Three days prior, a generous tail wind had assisted our party as we paddled our inflatable rafts along the coast. With fat-bikes disassembled and stowed on the bows, our minimal crafts were highly subject to the temperamental moods of the sea. Soon the waves began to peel and cap. With our judgment in working order, we pulled out in a gully where a pleasant waterfall and terraced streambed offered a lovely little campsite. We pitched our floorless mid-shetlers, using our paddles as centerpoles, and settled in to sleep through the storm. We had no idea what was in store.  

As the accelerating wind spilled from the hills, its strength became bottlenecked in our gully like a funnel. Though well-anchored, our pyramid shelters rattled like spaceships ejecting from the atmosphere. The thrashing nylon along the perimeter eventually sawed itself through on the hard edges of the rock anchors and Bjorn and my shelter began to come loose. “Get out and anchor it!” Bjorn hollerded as he clung to the now loosened center pole. Regretting my request to sleep closest to the door, I bursted from my cowering hovel to secure the camp lest it obliviate into the sea. For a brief moment I was frozen in astonishment. The water that had been spilling over the small falls was now being jettisoned horizontally. The stream was flowing through the gully in mid-air. 

In the morning we used our InReach device to get a weather report. The windstorm was massive, and it had no end in sight. It became clear that waiting this out would require more time than our provisions would allow. With our game faces on, we scouted the hills and found the ground firm and dry, good for biking. We looked at the maps and planned an overland route of some 30 miles through the northwestern corner of the Brooks Range in order to cut off Cape Lisburne and arrive on the open coast of the North Slope to the east. 

Away we raced, the force of the tailwind propelling us across the open landscape. We bore down on our brakes as we crossed areas of sharp rock scree. The wind would at times drive us upwards over the most unlikely surfaces, that is if we managed to stay in control. Suddenly a great gust tore down a side valley and sent all four of us simultaneously tumbling with our bikes like autumn leaves across a lawn. We clung to our precious possessions with white knuckles and yelled into each other’s ears to communicate. The changing of a layer or the eating of a snack became tasks of incredible diligence. But we were doing it. We were biking the Lisburne Hills.  

Cheerful alpine flowers blanketed the landscape, jingling in the wind. Impossibly oversized compared to the miniature twigs that supported them, they were delightfully bright and precious. I was reminded that for life on the Arctic tundra such circumstances are not crises but just an example of the endurance required to survive. Their work had to be done before the assured arrival of the deep freeze and the perpetual darkness of the polar night. “If they can survive out here,” I thought, “perhaps so can we”.

Like the dwarfed plants, we would sprawl ourselves on the ground for a brief rest, seeking any degree of shelter that the treeless landscape could offer. Omnipotent and omnipresent, the wind was the singular authority around which everything revolved. The glossy grass undulated like waves on the sea and the birds tousled around us in a shared chaos. “It’s going to feel really weird when the wind finally stops,” Daniel said, revealing how deeply we had become naturalized to its influence. 

I huddled against Bjorn, my anchor of support and self-assurance. It had been nearly 10 years since I moved to Alaska and joined his life of wilderness pursuit. Coercing me beyond my doubts, he helped me find my strength as paddle strokes and crank rotations slowly accumulated toward seemingly impossible goals. I found my humility as we negotiated forces against which humans, whether slender or bulky, don’t even register. I also found my heart as we recognized that our capabilities and sense of well-being are one and the same. Through the wilderness we have tested the type of material our relationship is made of, time and time again. 

After two momentous days we arrived back on the coast, weatherworn and exhausted, yet completely invigorated by the wild ride. Here the shoreline would guide our way to the distant village of Kali (Point Lay). Later, I would look up the wind speed from the Cape Lisburne weather station and find that the wind had been gusting at 100 mph. We had biked through a hurricane. 

July 1st, 2017

Village of Kali (Point Lay)

Bjorn:

Walking down an unfamiliar school hallway, my ears led me toward the cacophonous gymnasium. As I crossed the threshold into the bustling space, I paused for a second, allowing my brain to calibrate. After eleven days in the un-peopled wilderness, the flickering fluorescent lights, strong odors of food, and the sound of a hundred voices bouncing off the walls posed a stark sensory contrast.

When we arrived at Point Lay, known locally as Kali, the first village along our 400-mile route, our bodies were running on fumes. We desired a resupply and advice from locals about the way ahead. For Daniel and Alayne, the village, replete with a gravel airstrip serviced daily by a 12-seater airplane, was to be the end of their journey.

“Welcome to Kali,” an Inupiaq elder with a bent spine and kind smile said as he lifted his soft hand to mine. “Come in and eat. Today is Nalukatak - the whale festival.”

The day before our little cadre arrived in Kali, we’d seen a pod of perhaps one hundred or more beluga whales – the most any of us had ever seen at one time. The Kali hunters had seen the white whales too. Using contemporary means yet millennia-old strategy, they herded some of the pod with their skiffs to the inside of a lagoon and dispatched the number of animals they needed to see the community through the long, cold winter ahead.

The gymnasium had been transformed into a mess hall outfitted with school cafeteria folding tables covered in butcher paper. Blue tarps lined the floor, protecting it from errant drips or spills. A string of serving tables lined the far wall, piled with pots, disposable aluminum platters and five gallon buckets bursting with food.  Paper plates, jugs of juice, carafes of coffee and tea crammed into every bit of remaining space on the overburdened tables.

I peered down the aisles of seated locals looking for my teammates. I found them at the far end of the gymnasium, map already out, engaged in conversation with a man whose calloused finger pointed out landmarks. “This is Doug Rexford,” Kim said. “He’s the captain of the whaling crew.” We were invited to sit and eat with the praiseworthy hunter at the table of honor.

“Would you like some boiled beluga maktak,” a woman holding a 3-gallon pot and ladle asked me. “Quyanaq. Yes, please.” Through many shared meals with my Siberian Yup’ik godmother and her family, I’ve eaten a lot of Bowhead whale and had tasted beluga before but this was to be my first experience eating it boiled.

“The boiled maktak is best when the beluga is fresh,” Doug told me as I picked up a one-inch cube of the warm blubber and skin layer--a circumpolar mainstay and calorie-dense food that has sustained human life on the North Slope for thousands of years. My teeth effortlessly fell through the substance, oozing a smooth, rich oily flavor throughout my mouth. I closed my eyes and slowly chewed, savoring every molecule. Before reaching for my second piece, I offered my impression: “To say that boiled beluga is like butter is a disservice. They should say that butter is like boiled beluga, but not as good.”

Over the next several hours, we glued our trail-worn bottoms to the cafeteria seats and relished one course after another. As soon as the swan soup had been served and consumed, along came someone to dish out caribou ribs or seal steaks or dried whitefish with seal oil. The waitrons walked the aisles, filling every plate or bowl, always serving the elders first, until each offering was finished.

Our wind chapped faces glistened with grease and a surge of nutrition flooded our hungry mitochondria. The food that had supported our host’s ancestors in this severe Arctic environment was also the exact fuel we needed to continue our journey. 

After the meal, and before the drumming and dancing began, a group of young men carried in several dozen brimming sacks of frozen whale meat and maktak to the center of the gym and began distributing it to every household. In many Alaskan Native communities wealth is rarely measured by how much an individual owns, but rather by how much one can give away,  an ancient and time honored tradition of survival and community wellness. The hunters had had a successful harvest and no one would lack for meat in the village of Kali. 

While the distribution of food was underway, Kim and I were surrounded by a group of kids that were curious about the strange white people that had arrived in their community by bicycle. After answering their questions, we asked ours. They were only too happy to oblige, often competing with one another to tell their shared stories and experiences. We heard stories of Silla the weather goddess, the Big Mouth Baby and other tales of Inupiat lore. In the care of these children, Arctic history and mythology seemed to be in safekeeping for future generations. 

The following day Kim and I said goodbye to our two traveling companions and rode away from the village. The insecurity we had begun our expedition with had been gradually replaced by careful confidence. We continued out of Kali on our way to the northernmost point of Alaska armed with insights, encouraged by new friends and loaded down with leftovers. 

August 18th, 2019

Cape Thompson: 

Kim- 

Bjorn and I landed our rafts shortly after sundown, which here meant well after midnight. With the familiar relief of getting off the water at last, we silently and methodically went about our camp chores while shaking the cold from our stiff joints. We had just rounded the front of Cape Thompson in the Arctic Maritime National Wildlife Refuge. Tomorrow would be the final day on our 180 mile route from Kotzebue to Tikigaq (Point Hope). Though not in sequence, this was the final segment of our series of wilderness routes that connected our home on the Gulf of Alaska to the very top of the state. 

The term victory lap perfectly described our experience. When I think back on all the days and miles that we store in our memory banks, these will stand out as some of the most wonderful. Our beaches had been firm, pleasant weather was the norm, and our equipment ideal. Our familiarity with this sort of travel offered us total freedom to shamelessly enjoy ourselves without troubling over logistical details. We took time to sketch, take photos, and watch the wildlife. We know how to take the bad, but we also know how to take the good. 

While our personal well-being on this trip had been nothing short of optimal, it had been exceedingly apparent that the well-being of the Arctic ecosystem was not. The evidence of rapid climate change was everywhere, from melting permafrost, shore-zone erosion, numerous dead walrus, the presence of atypical species like bull kelp and jellyfish, and stories from locals all hinted that something unprecedented was underfoot in the Arctic. Even the prolific pink salmon run and pleasantly warm conditions that had made our trip so enjoyable were indicative of a de-stabilizing normal. 

With evidence of landscape change at nearly every turn, these remote trips offer unique opportunities to collect data in places that are rarely visited by scientists. Citizen science projects cause us to step outside ourselves and increase our curiosity about the places where we travel. Over the years, we have documented retreating shorelines, glacial melt, and the spreading of trees as a response to warming conditions. 

Knowing that seabirds had been facing starvation in recent years due to water temperature shifts, I had come with a plan. I was going to use my camera with a built-in GPS to document every dead seabird that I encountered along the way. I would then culminate the data and submit it to the Coastal Observation and Seabird Survey Team (COASST) to add to their running database on unusual seabird mortality events. 

I pedaled up to the first dead bird, a black-legged kittiwake, and snapped a photo. Soon I found another. Then another. On and on they went like a breadcrumb trail, mile after mile. I identified horned puffins, common and thick-billed murres, gulls, fulmars, auklets, and most abundant of all, short-tailed shearwaters.

The extra effort it took to record the birds made me feel like an energetic dog on a hike as I swerved up and down the beach, covering many times the necessary distance. Still, I found myself fervently committed to the task. I knew that without my efforts the stranded birds would be washed away into the sands and tides, never to enter the hearts and minds of humans. 

It is said that the more that you pay attention to something, the more you learn to love it. As I paused to acknowledge every single bird, I felt my grief sink deeper and deeper. The expressive gestures of their splayed wings, arched necks, and immaculate feathers made them seem to me like fallen soldiers on the battlefield of climate change. I tallied 921 dead birds. I couldn’t help but wonder how the collective choices of humanity, my own included, had led to this unseen and yet profound loss. 

The climax of our trip would offer a redeeming perspective to the grim mood caused by the seabird die-off. Cape Thompson, one of the greatest natural treasures in Alaska, is a 7-mile stretch of cliffs that boasts a rookery of seabirds some several hundred thousand strong. While we could have traveled overland, we chose to wait 4 days for the wind to calm so that we could paddle underneath the towering cliffs, something we had dreamed of doing for many years. 

A blizzard of birds whirred overhead, our voices muted under their croaks and calls. The stimulation was like that of a major metropolis and we felt like country bumpkins dumbstruck at our first experience on the streets of a big city. Our rafts bounced against an unexpected current as we desperately tried to take in as much of the scene as we could. The utter busyness made it impossible to distinguish which exciting occurrence the other person was pointing to. Kittiwakes curbed in unison and erupted in chatter as they relanded on the cliffs. The penguin-like murres plunged toward the water, their new chicks faithfully leaping after them in their one and only plummet from their natal ledge to sea. Looking to the heights, I could not tell what was rock and what was bird. The cliff faces themselves appeared to be alive. 

This remarkable expression of life renewed me with hope. In the face of plummeting biodiversity and environmental collapse, individual actions can feel futile in the grand scheme. Yet just as each paddle stroke alone is insignificant, the only way to make any crossing is to take the next one. I believe it is our duty, as the most mindful and influential species on our planet, to both appreciate and work to keep these natural systems intact...because we haven’t lost them all. Not yet. 

July 13th, 2017

Walakpa Bay

Bjorn:

Kim and I strained on our cranks as we rode over the unconsolidated sand and gravel beach. In the distance we could hear the din of a small generator and saw a group of people, several tents and a small hive of activity. Curiosity compelled us into a state of doddering composure and we cranked a little harder. When we arrived at the encampment we quickly deduced that this was a team of archeologists hard at work. 

Our strange means of travel and shabby appearance caught their attention. After we answered their questions about our unusual expedition, Anne Jensen, the lead archeologist, gave us a tour of their dig. 

Several hundred years ago, a multi-family sod hut complex had been located several miles inland. Rapid sea-level rise and coastal erosion has brought the Arctic Ocean right to the front door of this intricate and well designed house site. The archeologists and their team of undergraduate students, working as fast as possible, raced an accelerated clock to preserve this slice of Arctic history before it would be lost to the ages in a rising sea. 

Exposed by coastal erosion, the seaward edge of the complex was already poking through the bluff edge and a mound of sand bags had been placed below in a feeble attempt to buy the archeologists a little more time before the next storm. The team, working from the top down, had carefully peeled off the roofs to expose the houses, side tunnels, sheds and storerooms. Kim and I peered down into a recently bygone yet millenia-old history. In the meat cache wing, a 600-year-old seal had been perfectly preserved in the permafrost. It looked as though it had been caught last week. 

Roughly one quarter of the land in the Northern Hemisphere is permafrost, and it is thickest in the Arctic. Frozen within the permafrost is more than double the amount of carbon already in our atmosphere. As our planet rapidly warms from our wholesale combustion of fossil fuels, the melting of permafrost is accelerating and releasing this trapped carbon. This causes a cascade of more warming, more thawing and more heat trapping gasses released into the atmosphere. Known as a “positive feedback loop,” this phenomena will be anything except positive if left unchecked. 

Kim and I declined the generous offer to spend a night with the archaeologists. After the protracted break and enlightening visit, we wished them well and resumed our path. We were eagerly nearing the end of our trip and our weather forecast for the remaining days couldn’t have been better.  

That evening we found a sun-drenched valley where we would make our last camp and finally put to rest our doubts about this un-tested fat-bike and packraft route. Since my teenage years, I have been gravitated to and inspired by tales of exploration and scientific discovery. The adventurers that most ignited my young imagination were the few that set out into the unknown to attempt something novel, who returned transformed by their well-earned and prized insights. Never did I imagine that my own good fortune would lead me to Kim, an inspired and capable life companion to face the unknown with, to share in a life of adventure and inquiry. 

Over the last dozen years, the fat-bike and packraft have rapidly evolved in form and functionality. Both of these instruments of human-powered wilderness travel were originally conceived and developed in Alaska, but the efficiency and practicality of both have caught the imagination of people worldwide. Use of a fat-bike in conjunction with a lightweight, one-person packraft has opened a new era of creative exploration. 

Traversing these landscapes at human speed has expanded our appreciation for the grave ecological messages that the Arctic is signaling to the world. Our lives have been enriched by the villages we passed through and the lasting friendships we have made. We stand in awe of the Inupiat people’s traditions of community, survival and resiliency in a temperamental climate bordering on the untenable. It is sobering to confront the fact that these people now face unprecedented forces that will thaw and erode the foundations of their civilization.

We arrived in the northernmost community in the United States three weeks and 400-miles after leaving Tikigaq. On this exceptionally remote expedition, the sun never set nor was certainty ever assured. Fat-bike trips through varied and rough terrain often require us to hike our bikes over great distances. At times challenging and at times exhilarating, we were delighted to find that the majority of this route was bikeable. Kim and I returned home with our own well-earned and prized insights, eyes set to future expeditions, and with an invigorated sense of urgency about our climate crisis. 

Fueled By Fire

Fueled by Fire 

Winter Bikepacking with a Wood Stove

-Bjørn Olson

Originally published in BikePacking.Com

Throughout the day, the bulging mass of ice that clung to my beard indicated that the temperature remained well below zero. As the sun began to set behind the boreal forest of Interior Alaska, the mercury dropped even lower. My partner, Kim McNett, and I pushed our laden bikes off the Iditarod Trail into the unconsolidated sugar snow and began setting up our shelter in the falling twilight. We assembled our handsaws and began cutting wood. 

An hour and a half later, we both reposed inside our floorless mid-shelter, stripped down to our long underwear, making hot drinks and dinner atop our titanium wood stove, and dried our damp liner socks above the mini-inferno. Outside, the frost dipped down to minus 40 degrees. 

My first outdoor love affair was mountaineering. Climbing mountains and glacier travel trips in winter informed my self-reliant attitude toward winter bikepacking. One of the many challenges one must overcome on self-supported expeditions in the cold is managing moisture. Damp clothing, tents, and sleeping bags are difficult—often impossible—to defrost and dry once wet. As the days and weeks go on, moisture from breath and sweat clings to this important insulation, becoming frozen, heavy, and less insulative.  

For many years, my solution to address the moisture I generate through body sweat was to employ vapor barriers (VBL), which can be anything from plastic bags to fancy, non-permeable base layers. These thin layers are worn next to the skin or with a thin poly or merino wool layer underneath. Any sweat you generate is then blocked before it has an opportunity to seep through and into the insulative layers. Interestingly, we sweat to the point of saturation but then stop. Without the VBL, sweat will continue until all the insulation is saturated, but with the VBL only a small amount of sweat is generated. 

To protect the down in my sleeping bag, I would sleep in a VBL sack or with VBL top and bottoms on. Few experiences are more miserable than waking up damp and clammy from a night of sleeping in VBLs and changing into frosty clothing in freezing temperatures. On mountaineering trips, a frozen sleeping bag can be turned inside out and loosely strapped to the outside of a backpack to allow the trapped moisture to sublimate. This technique, however, is impractical on bike trips. 

After a few days on any winter bike expedition, I inevitably found myself desperate to reach a shelter cabin with a wood stove or a generous host willing to invite me inside and allow me to dry out frozen tents, clothing, and sleeping bags. Meeting and visiting with people along these routes is one of the most memorable and meaningful aspects of these trips, but feeling dependent on others is an anathema to an ethic of self-sufficiency. 

Alaska has a small population but is rich with pioneering individuals who think outside the box and devise creative methods to overcome obstructions to wilderness travel. At the top of this long list is adventurer, Dick Griffith. Dick began undertaking long, wilderness treks in Alaska with a lightweight ethic in the 1950s and continued to do so well into his late 80s. He was the first person to employ a lightweight, single-person raft with a break-apart kayak paddle in Alaska, which led to the packraft revolution we see today. After suffering terrible frostbite and many other experiences with deep cold, Dick eventually sewed a fireproof wood stove jack into his Stephenson Warmlite tent and began to use a small wood stove on his winter ski expeditions. 

“I’d never touch that country again without a stove,” he once told me. After years of suffering myself, I was convinced and decided to try this method. 

In 2013, I modified a worn-out, floorless silnylon mid-shelter to work with a collapsable titanium wood stove. That March, Kim and I spent 30 days cycling over 1,000 miles on a network of snow trails that led us from southern Alaska to the Arctic community of Kotzebue. All of our water melting and cooking was done on the wood stove and we were able to dry our bodies and gear in temperatures as cold as minus 30. I haven’t done a winter bike expedition without a wood stove since. 

This March, as the daylight slowly returned, Kim and I felt the seasonal pull to unplug from our busy lives and head into the wilderness. We settled on a 300-mile route along the Iditarod Trail. Although we have ridden through this area several times before, this trip was unique for a few reasons. We biked south instead of north for the first time. And because we are still in the grip of a global pandemic, our shelter with the collapsible wood stove liberated us to do this trip without the need to go indoors as we passed through the village of Nikolai and the Iditarod checkpoints along the way. Perhaps more than ever before, we were grateful to have this particular equipment and the familiarity to know what is possible with it. 

Before the pandemic, Kim and I had our sights set on a new-to-us winter route. This proposed trail network, however, passes through many remote villages, deeming the trip unadvisable under the current circumstances. We hoped that by this spring the virus would have subsided. As March approached, we concluded that if we were going to do a winter bike trip it’d have to be something more conservative. McGrath to Willow on the Iditarod Trail seemed like a good option. The dogsled race was modified this year to avoid as many villages as possible and was an out-and-back passing through McGrath. We timed our trip to be on the trail as the teams were coming and going.

We flew from Anchorage on a damp and above-freezing day but were greeted with a breezy, sub-zero afternoon as we departed the twin-engine airplane in McGrath. On our first night, we were thrust into temperatures down to minus 40 degrees, which snapped our survival instincts to attention. 

After a few days, we found ourselves in a blissful and familiar state of being, one that I had been craving to reconnect with since the pandemic began, where the rules are simple, the goal singular, and the methods well ingrained: wake up, ride, camp, repeat. Even as non-racers, this sort of winter travel is strenuous and we often have to dig deep to circumvent doubt, flagging muscles, and soreness. We always know, however, that what awaits us after a hard day on the saddle and an evening of chores is a warm mug of tea, a hearty meal, dry clothes, rosy-red cheeks, and a night of peaceful slumber. In our experience, we tend to finish these trips feeling stronger and hardier than when we began.

Kim and I are in awe of the cyclists from Alaska and around the world who compete on the Iditarod Trail. We know all too well what it means to put in a hard day and it’s easy for us to imagine what it must feel like to have to push on into the dark and cold of night to chase the clock. Without these events, it’s likely that the fat bike might not have been developed at all. Now that these bikes and this equipment exist, however, racing doesn’t need to be the only option for extended wilderness experiences on snowy trails. 

Kim and I don’t race against competitors; we race storms, spring breakup, and our own time constraints. Our shelter with the wood stove awards us nights of restful sleep and recovery. And, because we rely on it for all our snow melting and cooking, it helps define our expeditions by some of nature’s basic parameters.  

For anyone wishing to attempt this method, there are many points to consider and precautions to take. Number one is that you must be willing to sacrifice a floorless mid-shelter and dedicate it for sub-freezing trips only. Once you cut a hole for the fireproof stove pipe material and begin to accumulate errant ember burns in the shelter fabric, it will no longer protect you from rain. If you can accept that, know that we’ve gotten many winter seasons out of each of the two shelters we have used to date. The other obvious consideration is that once the stove is installed and lit, an almost freakish amount of vigilance is required while you learn the boundaries of melty and flammable synthetic things in proximity to a roaring inferno in a tight space. Remember: fire hot! While the stove is ablaze, hyper-attentiveness is always required. But in our years of experience, we have developed a sense of what is an irrational versus a serious concern. With a modicum of precaution, using a small stove in a synthetic shelter is less dangerous than you might at first believe, but it’s important to behave as if your life depends on extreme caution—because it does. 

Ours is a hybrid system. We use a collapsible Titanium Goat wood stove in our most worn-out pyramid shelter, into which I sewed a patch of fireproof fabric into an upper triangle of the shelter. In our experience, a four-person mid-shelter is perfect for two people (and no more). Another modification I made to the shelter is to sew a two-foot-wide wide “skirt” of similar fabric around the perimeter, except near the door. After anchoring the four corners of the shelter with stakes, this skirt allows us to add snow around the shelter to help further anchor it to keep out uninvited drafts. Because the skirt is on the outside, this extra snow does not infringe on the precious floor space inside.

After years of trial and error, Kim and I have settled into a nice daily routine. When the sun dips near the horizon in the evening, we begin to scan the environment for our essential ingredients: plentiful dry wood and, if possible, firm snow to camp atop of and for ease of cutting sturdy snow blocks. However, well-compacted snow is a luxury, and we often have to accept what is available. 

Once we find what we’re looking for, we both help each other pitch the shelter and cut a small batch of wood together. Each evening, we tend to switch roles: cookie or wood getter. At this point, cookie gathers all personal belongings from the bike, crawls inside the shelter, assembles the stove, and starts melting snow for drinking water, dinner, and hot drinks, which, on average, takes about an hour and a half to accomplish. Meanwhile, the wood getter remains outside and continues to shore up the shelter, cut enough wood into stove-length pieces to see us through the evening and morning, and carve blocks of snow for water-making. 

One pro-tip we eventually discovered is to cut two pieces of green willow to set under the stove at right angles on the snow. As the heat from the stove begins to melt a pit underneath the stove, the green willow acts as a bridge to help keep the stove level and secure. Pieces with a 1-to-2 inch diameter and cut into 2.5-to-3-foot lengths do the trick. Because the wood is green, it doesn’t burn even when in direct contact with the stove. We’ve also found that the ends of these willow pieces act as a nice sleeping pad and sleeping bag boundary. Anything closer is in the red-hot danger zone. 

After we have both consumed our dinner, a big mug of tea, and have fully filled our 64 oz thermoses with boiling water, we crawl into our sleeping bags, let the fire die and sleep like newborn babies. More than once we have remarked that we get more restful slumber on these expeditions than we do at home. 

At the earliest hint of daylight, the cookie wakes first, lights the stove, sets a pot of snow with a little water from the thermos to help accelerate the melting process, and encourages the fire to life, which promptly radiates warmth to the frozen interior of the shelter. Within minutes, frost begins to evaporate, sleeping bags begin to release moisture, and the day is soon met with high spirits and hot coffee.  

After breakfast and coffee are consumed and sleeping bags are dried, we both work together to break camp and pack up for another full day on the bikes. An additional trick we have learned is to pour the embers from the stove in a pile onto the snow but to not immediately extinguish them. After fiddling with straps, shelter anchors, and zippers, our fingers are usually chilled. The last thing we do before mounting our bikes is to warm our hands around the embers—a treat bordering on the sublime in negative temperatures. 

Bicycles, synthetic fabrics, and collapsible titanium wood stoves are all very modern inventions, but human-powered migration in extreme environmental conditions is as old as our species. We evolved to move our bodies, to explore, and to experiment with the boundaries of our innate possibility. By pairing everything down to the bare essentials, these cold-weather trips remind us of what it means to be alive and human. Once Kim and I made the commitment to ditch the fuel-burning stove and rely entirely on native fuels from our surroundings, this dependence upon the natural world has deepened our appreciation of the regions we pass through and helped us to find our place in it. 

Now, like Dick Griffith, I will never touch that country without a wood stove.

Tundra Nutrition: Human-Powered Caribou Hunting in the Alaska Range

Tundra Nutrition

-Bjørn Olson

Originally published in BikePacking.Com

The author shuttling a load of gear and a hindquarter of caribou.

When summer’s vegetation turns from green to yellow, an ancient instinct takes hold; autumn is the harvest season. All northern creatures—the bear, squirrel, muskrat, ermine, ptarmigan, porcupine, moose, caribou, and more—all know, deep in their genes, that winter is coming. Human beings, still emerging from the Ice Age, and poorly adapted for modernity and civilization, also feel the compelling siren call to store up calories for the coming cold and dark.

In the first week of September, my fiance, Kim McNett, my brother, Clay, and my long-time best friend, Mark Teckenbrock, and I caravanned from our homes in southern Alaska into the interior of the state to hunt caribou by human power. We would ride bikes with trailers into the enchanted mountains of the Alaska Range, camp, catch grayling, drink cold water, wake up early, try to outmaneuver cunning and fleet-of-foot creatures, and rekindle our ancestral genes. Our two and a half million years of hominid, hunter-gatherer evolution hungered for the opportunity to be expressed. 

On our fourth day, my friend Mark and I crawled along the rain-soaked tundra on our hands and knees, gently sliding our rifles ahead of us. The two caribou we’d been watching through our binoculars and stalking for the last several hours were now just a couple hundred yards below us. Vibrant red and yellow leaves of a dwarf willow bush offered us a blind. The caribou approached the base of the hill, from the wide valley beyond, and then disappeared below us. They were close. We waited.

Five minutes passed. Then ten. Finally, I began to fear they may have wandered away unseen. I slowly crept up into a low stoop to peer over the edge. Barely breathing, I scanned right and then left. I froze. “They’re right here,” I whispered, pointing with my eyes.

For each of the previous days, our little band had been stealthily stalking the cagey and nimble animals. We were in the caribou’s kingdom and they were on high alert. My routine had been to crawl out of the shelter at the first hint of light, quickly fill my thermos with coffee, grab my rifle and binoculars, and hike uphill. 

Several times, my pursuit of a handful of small herds had been close, but with few blinds and no trees for cover, my presence startled them away. By mid-afternoon, I’d walk back down to camp to break my fast, dry out near the fire that my brother diligently kept going, despite the rain, and regroup with the others. After a break and a meal, I’d head back out again. On the third evening, I realized it was time for a new strategy. We decided we would all hunt together as a group and try a new area further up the valley the next day.

Growing up in Alaska, wild fish and game and foraged berries and mushrooms have always been an integral component of my diet. As an adult, I’ve tried to make harvesting this wild food a part of my annual routine, but work, fat-bike and sea kayak expeditions, and other life distractions often compete for our time and attention. This year, the two expeditions Kim and I had planned had to be put on hold due to the pandemic. This fact, coupled with a newfound interest in ancestral nutrition, led Kim and me to focus more of our energies on wild harvesting.

Global warming is affecting Alaska at more than twice the rate as the mid-latitudes. Often, our human-powered adventures through Alaska deepen our insights into these startling changes that are occurring. We don’t, however, have to travel far from home for evidence. In the summer of 2019, record-breaking temperatures swept across the state and a series of wildfires wrought apocalyptic havoc across the Kenai Peninsula and beyond. 

We began our harvest season this spring in the burnt rubble leftovers from the 167,200-acre Swan Lake fire, just north of our home. Morel mushrooms often fruit after a fire, and fruit they did. We filled up with gallons upon gallons of this highly sought-after fungal delicacy. 

After mushrooms, we switched gears to harvesting salmon and other fish. Alaska boasts of intact and mostly healthy salmon populations of all five species. In our region, two species are abundant enough to allow for commercial and personal use fisheries, as well as sport fishing. Sockeye (red) salmon are the staple in our region. Management of our personal use fishery allows for the use of hyper-efficient dip nets for Alaskan residents. Coho (silver) salmon run later in the season, and in our area, there is a personal use set net fishery, which allows an individual to catch 25 per person, plus 10 more per household dependent. We rounded out our salmon harvesting with a few Chinook (king) salmon, which we caught with rod and reel.

Taking cues from Alaska’s First People, I have begun to deepen my understanding of the health of our local ecosystems by directly relying on it for sustenance. One becomes acutely aware of the seasonal changes, migratory patterns, health of individual species, the air, water, and soil conditions, and more when relying on wild-harvested foods. These insights, coupled with the wisdom of elders, fish and wildlife managers, and others, helps establish a connection to place and an awareness of its health or its disease and or misuse.

In Alaska, 95% of the food found in grocery stores is imported from out of state. This importation comes at a high ecological cost, which is never factored into the price at the supermarket. Much of this food, produced halfway around the world, is also grown in nutrient-depleted soils, fertilized by petrochemical fertilizers, and often sprayed with glyphosate-based herbicides. Industrially raised livestock is pumped with hormones, antibiotics, and fed a diet of GMO grain, which radically alters and diminishes its nutritional value. 

Since 1991, the rate of obesity in Alaska has more than doubled, from 13% to 30% of our population. Type 2 diabetes has also more than doubled over the same period of time. For thousands of years, however, Alaska’s First People lived off this land and were beacons of health, strength, and endurance. That condition of vitality, coupled with a sense of connection to place, is what I am passionately seeking in my own life. 

The sturdy caribou and I locked eyes as I slowly lowered myself back down and gently picked up my rifle. Many Alaskan Native stories tell of how certain animals will offer themselves to a hunter, but I was mystified that the creature was not bounding away from us. Rather than fleeing at the sight of me, the caribou walked toward us. Squinting with one eye and peering with the other through my rifle’s scope, I consciously focused on calming my breath. Its chest filled the optical loop. The caribou then turned profile and stood still, offering me a clean shot. 

Moments later, Mark walked back uphill to inform Kim and Clay of our success and enlist their help. I embraced the moment to be alone, and to offer my solemn thanks to the caribou. After the violent outburst from my rifle, the valley was again silent. I knelt down beside the fallen animal and let a wave of emotions wash over me. 

When Kim, Clay, and Mark returned, I was reminded of the advice my brother and I had been given as children by our godmother, Umara. A Siberian Yup’ik woman, Umara grew up in a pure hunter-gather culture, in the middle of the Bering Sea. She told us that it’s essential to offer a dispatched animal a drink of water for its journey toward the other realm. We each felt the solemnity of the moment as we offered thanks and gave the caribou a farewell drink. 

Whenever we consume food, it comes with a cost. That cost, more expensive than money, is most often invisible and not accounted for in the marketplace. As we further our understanding about the consequences a global economic system—in conjunction with a perpetual growth model, on a finite resource planet— is having upon the natural world, I believe it is important to find ways to reduce these hidden costs as much as possible and to find alternatives. What we saved, in this instance, is an enormous carbon footprint for a less valuable and less nutritious substitute. There are few middle-men or egregious carbon outputs that stand between a hunter, a wild-harvester, or a gardener and the food they procure. When these engagements are undertaken by human power, the negative externalities drop even further. Our biggest cost was effort and a willingness to do what many would consider the “dirty work.” 

Alaska has a 21st-century economy, but we still have a 19th-century environment. This slice of the world has maintained its genuine wealth because the focus on what is most valuable has, for the most part, remained intact. Salmon, moose, berries, mushrooms, crab, halibut, and the ecological conditions that support these creatures, and many more, still exist here. But, there is no guarantee this will always be the case. When more people learn to cherish what nature provides, by making an effort to become a part of it, maybe then we’ll learn, or perhaps remember, how to be better caretakers. Wilderness is a place; wildness is everything, including us.

With sharp knives and a bone saw, we portioned the field-dressed caribou into thirds and, along with the organs, packed them into cotton game bags. A short walk brought us back to our bikes, where we loaded the trailers and tightly lashed down our sacred quarry for the ride back to camp. 

That evening, we feasted on some of the world’s most nutrient-dense and delicious food. Frost was in the air as the light fell and the stars came out. We warmed our bodies around the roaring willow fire as we recounted the day. Within each of us, a different and much more ancient fire was being rekindled.

Bike-Rafting

Bike-Rafting 101

-Bjørn Olson

Bike-Rafting

How to get started

Over the last dozen years, a new breed of cycling has exploded around the world. Fat-bikes and plus bikes are allowing people to go places outside the confines of traditional mountain bikes. An era of creative adventure and discovery is currently underway.

With these omni-terrain bicycles, creative wilderness routes have begun to come into focus. Every year and in all seasons, people are coming up with unique routes to attempt. From forest to alpine, beaches, desert, tundra and all bioregions in between, fat-bikes and plus-bikes are filling an organic niche for people looking for a raw wilderness experience from the saddle of a bicycle.

Riding on winter snow trails, like the Iditarod Trail, was the original driving force behind the evolution of the fat-bike, which, initially, were often called snow-bikes. As soon as this breed of bicycle became commercially available, in the mid-2000s, however, people began exploring other possibilities with them. Soft, rough and unmaintained tracts of vast wilderness can now be traversed by bicycle. The only limitations are skill level and imagination.

Co-evolving alongside this new breed of bicycle are two forms of equipment, which allow adventure cyclists greater potential to explore further afield in atypical terrain: soft-bags and packrafts. The soft-bags – like framebags, seat-bags, and handlebar rolls – are ideal for loading a bike with camping equipment while helping to keep the bike well-balanced and nimble feeling in rough terrain.

The ultimate compendium for backcountry adventure with a fat-bike, however, is the packraft. Packrafts are sub-six-pound, one-person, inflatable rafts that roll up to the size of a stuffed, summer sleeping bag and are capable of carrying gear plus a bike. More than any other piece of equipment, this type of human-powered watercraft provides the greatest possibilities for the adventure cyclist to explore far off the beaten path.

Incorporating a packraft into the bike adventure quiver allows for an enormous variety of otherwise unattainable adventures. The ability to cross creeks, streams, rivers, and lakes or to get around steep headlands, for example, provides access to new cycling terrain. There are routes that involve cycling up one drainage and then paddling back down another or multi-week traverses that require amphibian adaptability.

Several brands of packraft are on the market but one stands head and shoulders above the others - Alpacka Rafts. Alpacka brand packrafts emerged in the 90s out of Alaska and have been in a constant process of evolution ever since. The original Alpacka Rafts were remarkably resilient and lightweight but over the last decade the design, and variety of rafts has seen a surge of improvements. A host of packraft shapes and configurations now exist for specific requirements; bike-rafting is one of them. 

If incorporating a packraft into your bike adventures is something you’d like to do, before making the plunge, there are a few things worth considering. Number one is what sort of trips do you plan to undertake. If bike-rafting is your primary objective, then that helps narrow down the options.

It is ideal when packrafting with a bike strapped onto the bow to have a slightly longer raft. If you are planning to run serious whitewater, you may want to have two rafts: one that fits perfectly and is outfitted for whitewater and an expedition boat with more length and simpler rigging. It is optimal to be able to achieve a full forward stroke for maximum propulsion. If the raft is too short, the bike strapped to the front will impede your efficiency while paddling. Furthermore, expedition rafts require few bells and whistles and are therefore, when they are stripped down to the bare essentials, easier to pack and carry.

Many modern packrafts can be purchased with a waterproof zipper on the stern of the boat. This allows you to stow gear inside the raft. There are a couple reasons why a zipper is a good idea: the gear stays dry and out of your way while you are paddling, and the raft becomes more stable when the weight is low rather than up high on the deck. However, zippers require extreme care. One piece of sand in the teeth can spell disaster. As long as you take precautions, the zipper is worth the extra attention they require.

Spray decks come in two flavors: Whitewater and Cruiser. A Whitewater spray deck consists of an all-lightweight-fabric deck with a small, round opening, similar to a kayak cockpit. Around the cockpit opening there is a tube of Pex plastic coaming, which acts as a lip to secure a spray skirt - again, similar to a kayak. The Cruiser spray deck is zippered onto the deck of the raft on three sides and opens with hook and loop fabric on one side. This allows for easy in and out access. Of the two, the whitewater spray deck keeps the most water out. If you plan to roll your raft or expect to be in big waves, the whitewater deck is the better option. For expeditions, the simpler Cruiser spray deck is quite sufficient for keeping your lower body dry from rain and small waves. You can also opt to save a little weight, space and money and foregoing the deck entirely. 

Once you figure out which raft suits your needs and make the plunge, the next step is to learn how to use it. This brief article is meant to be only an overview for bike-rafters. Before venturing out, be sure to get instruction and read Roman Dial’s book - Packrafting.

Here are a few specific tips, however, for rafting with a bike to get you on your way.

The first thing you’ll want to get efficient with is your transitions. Bikes carry rafts and rafts carry bikes. When you are underway, it is ideal to be able to switch from one mode to the other in the least time possible. Make sure, however, that you do it properly. Hitting a class 3 wave train or being slammed by a 25-mph gust of wind is not the time to realize you neglected to strap your bike down tight enough or that your load is lopsided.

Most of the time, while cycling, my raft is rolled up tight, with the tougher hull fabric exposed, strapped to the handlebar. The exception is when I know I am going to be pushing my bike for several miles and I want it to be as light as possible. On most summer expeditions I carry a large, lightweight backpack that I can fit my entire kit into. When the riding is good I carry most everything on the bike in soft bags and the raft gets strapped to the handlebar.

There are two main ways that I strap the bike to the raft when I am in aquatic mode. One way is very fast and simple, but I only ever use this method when making short and calm crossings. This involves inflating the raft, removing the non-drive pedal (create good habits and always store pedals in the same place every time. I put mine in my frame bag. Always!) and laying it across the bow. I then use one strap to keep the bike from falling overboard. The front wheel ends up being in the water with this configuration but if you only have a short distance to cover and it is calm, this is OK. Once I am in the raft I place my pack on my lap and make the crossing. Simple.

The proper way to strap the bike to the raft, however, takes a little more time to set up. This is the technique to use in almost all situations. Required for the proper method are three ladder-locking straps that are at least two feet long and one piece of 3-mil chord that is tied across the bow between the two furthest forward tie downs (d-rings) on the raft.

Begin by inflating the raft and seat. Then remove both pedals from the bike, stow them in a safe place and then remove the front wheel. Place the frame of the bike on the bow of the raft with the drive side up and the fork legs facing forward. Then find the right balance point where the bike is not too far forward or too far back. Too far forward and the bike will want to slip off; too far back will impede your forward stroke. Next, turn the handlebars up and horizontal so the levers and shifter(s) are facing up, and then place the front wheel on top. Once the bike is in the proper position, loosely strap the bike down with the three straps. On the front of the raft there are typically four tie downs. Use the two furthest aft bow tie downs. Connect the 3-mil cord between the furthest forward tie downs and then run one strap from the middle of the cord. After the bike is loosely strapped down, slowly cinch each strap and observe as you go how the load looks and shift or true as needed. If it’s wonky and off to one side, loosen, reposition and then resume.

Learn to use the inflation bag to its potential. Practice inflating your raft in your yard until it feels natural and second nature. Once the raft is as full as you can get it with the inflation bag, continue to force air into the raft with your breath. Then, before launching, place the raft in the cold water and let the air inside cool. This will allow you to get a couple more breaths worth of air inside the raft before you launch. You want it as full and taught as possible. On wilderness trips with a packraft, the transition between one mode to the other eats up time. Being proficient with these transitions is absolutely to your and your trip partner’s advantage. 

Pro tip: if there is a breeze, inflate your raft with the stern facing the wind. Use the wind to quickly refill the inflation bag and then force the air into the raft with big compressions of the sack.

It is important to practice rescues near home in safe, calm waters with friends nearby. Packrafts are very stable but they are nearly impossible to re-right by yourself once upside down, in deep water, with a bike strapped to the bow. Rescue requires either holding onto your paddle and raft, and swimming to the nearest shore or assistance from another friend in a packraft. With you helping in the water, the rescuer in the raft can re-right your raft and then stabilize it while you jump back in. Make sure you never let go of your raft or paddle when you do capsize. If it is windy and you let go, it only takes a second before the raft blows away and you’ll not be able to retrieve it. 

Again, work on rescues in calm water with friends before heading out into the backcountry until the techniques become second nature. Panic is your enemy in emergency situations. The solution is familiarity, good teamwork and enough practice that these maneuvers become reflexive. 

Other equipment you’ll want is a four-piece breakdown kayak paddle, paddle leash, a personal flotation device (PFD) and perhaps a dry suit.

There are many suitable kayak paddles on the market but the ideal packrafting paddle is a breakdown paddle that breaks into four pieces - where the shaft meets the paddle blades and in the middle of the shaft. This allows you to stow the paddle without long ends sticking out to catch on brush and tree branches as you cycle along. I also prefer a slightly longer paddle for packrafting than I would use for kayaking. 

The lightest paddles are made entirely of carbon fiber but there is a strong argument for nylon blades. Nylon is very strong material and therefore the paddles last longer and withstand abuse better. I often use three sections of my packraft paddle as the center pole in my floor-less mid-shelter and I sometimes use the blade as a shovel to scoop dirt, sand or gravel around the edge of my shelter to help keep it anchored when it is windy. I would not use the more fragile carbon fiber blades for these tasks. Personally, the slightly heavier blades are worth the weight penalty because of the increased durability and their dual-purpose nature.

There are many PFDs on the market and choosing the one that suits your needs is a personal choice. Some people like PFDs with a lot of bells and whistles but, for packrafting, I prefer a very simple, snug-fitting one. Inflatable PFDs are nice because they stow away into the smallest package and you can inflate them to just the right amount to use as a pillow at night.

Paddle leashes can be valuable when paddling on flat water, like lakes, bays, fjords, etc. The leash can be a simple as 3 to 5-mil chord tied to the middle of the paddle on one end and the bow of the raft on the other end. Six or so feet of cord is plenty but make sure you have enough to achieve a full forward stroke as well as your sweep and rudder strokes. The value of a paddle leash, when paddling in flat water, is that if you ever capsize all you have to be sure to do is hold onto the paddle. Your raft will be safe from blowing away. Never use a paddle leash if you are in water that has current. In current, the leash can wrap around an obstacle like a rock or tree, and you can quickly become hopelessly entangled.

Although packrafts are remarkably tough they are not indestructible. Learning to field-repair your boat is as important as knowing how to fix a flat or true your wheel. Always carry a repair kit and learn how to use it. The items I always carry are the patches Alpacka provides, alcohol swabs, a sturdy sewing needle, dental floss for thread, a few feet of Tyvek tape wrapped around a Bic lighter, a tube of Aquaseal and a smaller tube of quick-drying UV Aquaseal. If the trip is longer than a week, I often also carry a spare valve and a spare d-ring. 

Dry suits are a remarkable piece of safety and quality-of-experience equipment, especially in cold climates, but they are also bulky and heavy. Most often, mine stays home on bike-rafting trips. Instead, I rely on my rain gear and do everything in my power to keep from capsizing. The Alpacka/Kokatat drysuit is very lightweight, specifically made for the fast-and-light packrafter. If I plan to run whitewater or will be making long crossings, I sometimes use this suit on trips. Because it is so lightweight, it is recommended to wear rain gear over the top of it to help prevent it from tearing and abrading.

There are countless other gear and technique considerations for the wilderness cyclist looking to expand their range with the aid of a packraft but step one is getting out there and trying it. Start with small, bite-sized and low consequence trips. Keep your expectations honest and conservative, and always go with at least one reliable buddy. Once you feel efficient, safe and comfortable, take it to the next level. There is always a next level. Whatever that is, is up to you to decide. But in this era of wilderness exploration with a Salsa bike and a good packraft, the equipment won’t be what holds you back.