00:00:00 Speaker 1: Imagine this. 00:00:02 Speaker 2: You're hiking on foot for more than 200 miles through one of the last most intact wilderness areas in the United States. There's no roads for miles and miles. No industrial sites. No development at all. Just hundreds of rivers and streams and lakes. And they're teeming with Arctic grayling and char, salmon and sheafish. All around you are tundra-covered high alpine peaks to the north and to the south, a vast, nearly endless swath of dark timber and pockmarked swamps and wetlands with tens of thousands of caribou, moose, and grizzly bears amidst it all. All you can hear is the flow of water, the rustling of alders in the breeze, a moose crashing in the distance, mosquitoes buzzing overhead. It is the definition of wildness, a final last vestige of our wild North American continent. The time caps still holding the best of our wild natural history, still offering you and me and all of us a chance to experience it. 00:01:16 Speaker 1: To hunt and fish or backpack and raft or. 00:01:20 Speaker 2: For locals to sustain themselves the way they have for so many generations. Now imagine an industrial road being built right through the middle of that wilderness, through a national park, right in the middle of a critical. 00:01:36 Speaker 1: Caribou migration route. 00:01:38 Speaker 2: Then imagine that road becoming an industrial corridor, with possibly as many as 168 semi-truck loads every single day running up and down that route, rattling, rumbling, kicking up gravel and dust, crossing nearly 3,000 pristine rivers and streams and ultimately going to a proposed mining district that could hold up to 5,000 active mining claims, covering more than 650,000 acres of that once wild place. If this were to happen, it would seem, in my humble opinion at least, that this last vestige of our wild North American continent, this time capsule still holding the best of our wild natural history might no longer exist at all. 00:02:27 Speaker 3: That is what is being. 00:02:28 Speaker 2: Proposed today in Alaska, and what has been approved by our federal government. 00:02:34 Speaker 3: And the project is known as the Ambler Road. Our guests today, Robert Lester. 00:02:40 Speaker 2: And Ben Caden, decided to take it upon themselves to go see this place for themselves, to document exactly what the conditions are on the ground, what this project proposes to do, and to experience what stands to. 00:02:53 Speaker 1: Be lost if this road is built. 00:02:56 Speaker 2: Their mission was to trek the entirety of the proposed 211-mile Ambler Road route, on foot, while documenting this wildest of adventures along the way, and then report back to the rest of us. 00:03:11 Speaker 3: In today's conversation, they do just that. Thanks for being here. 00:03:17 Speaker 2: This is Future Wild, brought to you by Conservation First Bank. Ben, Caden, Robert, Lester, thank you guys for being here. 00:03:35 Speaker 4: Absolutely. Yeah, thanks for having us. 00:03:38 Speaker 3: I'm excited for this chat. 00:03:41 Speaker 2: In particular, because as I just kind of teased to you guys a second ago, I almost did this trip myself, like a slightly different version of it, but became very close to going and doing something very similar this summer. 00:03:54 Speaker 3: We got to the point of. 00:03:57 Speaker 2: Booking flights and mapping out a route, and we had all sorts of stuff kind of figured out. But for various reasons, we had to punt the project here earlier this summer. 00:04:09 Speaker 1: But as I have read. 00:04:11 Speaker 2: Your essay, Robert, and heard a little bit about what you guys experienced, I realized that I probably avoided one hell of a sufferfest. So thank you for going and doing the hard work so that I didn't have to go. 00:04:24 Speaker 3: And do that myself. 00:04:25 Speaker 2: Because it sounds like you guys had a heck of an adventure. And I want to start with a simple question about that adventure. At least it's a simple question in the asking. The question is, why? Why would you guys want to go trekking down somewhere around 200 miles. 00:04:48 Speaker 3: Through a roadless, trail-less, grizzly-filled, alder-choked, boot-sucking mud bog for weeks and weeks on end? Why do that? 00:05:00 Speaker 5: Yeah. 00:05:01 Speaker 4: So it kind of started as my idea. 00:05:06 Speaker 6: When the Ambler Road was re-approved, I was seeing all of these announcements on social media and things like that. And they all were just illustrated with generic Arctic imagery, right? It wasn't with specific spots of the Ambler Road. And I thought about it and I thought, man, if we can't show people what's actually at stake we can't really hope that they'll care for this place you know and so i have kind of a commit first figure it out later style and so that same day i thought okay i'm gonna try my best to walk this and you know 10 seconds later i texted ben and i texted ben i thought hey will you come would you be interested in coming to find a way to film maybe a section of this you know and maybe try and see if we could do something like that while i walked the whole way And I get a text back from Ben saying not only that he's interested in filming it, but he's like, yeah, I want to come the whole way. 00:06:05 Speaker 4: So I thought life couldn't be better for me. 00:06:09 Speaker 2: So, Ben, what about what about for you when he sent you that text? Like, what were you thinking? Why commit to this so quick? 00:06:15 Speaker 5: Yeah, absolutely. Well, a couple of years ago, Rob did a expedition down the from Butte to the ocean in a canoe down the waterways that make up the Columbia River. And I turned down that invite and still agree with that decision in some ways and regret it in others. But I kind of saw that like, it was, I trusted Rob's judgment to begin with. And I knew that this was something that I wanted like personally as a, you know, kind of a career goal. I don't have a specialty in film really, besides being willing to kind of take the camera anywhere and get myself in trouble doing it. Um, So that was a big part of it, and I also have a large interest in protecting our wild spaces first and foremost. So that's why I signed up, and the immediate yes was definitely without a great amount of judgment. Just like Rob, there's a lot of figuring it out after the committing. 00:07:18 Speaker 3: For sure. 00:07:20 Speaker 4: Yeah. 00:07:21 Speaker 2: So prior to the trip, what did you guys know about this Ambler Road project. Like paint me a picture of, you know, what you knew as of early this June that made you both so interested in saying, Hey, this is a place we need to go document and bring this story to the world. 00:07:40 Speaker 3: I'm curious, you know, here, I want to hear what you knew before. 00:07:43 Speaker 2: And then once we hear about the story, I'm curious to hear your thoughts about the after, but let's start with what you knew prior to the expedition. Yeah. 00:07:53 Speaker 6: So, you know, the big things about this landscape in particular that are important are, you know, the major one is that this is one of North America's largest intact ecosystems left. You know, we're not just talking about like a roadless area. We're talking about, you know, millions of acres that are as pristine of nature as we have left, you know, in the planet, you know, and this is the biggest section basically of left in the United States. And so, you know, thinking about putting a road into that place, you know, was something where we thought, you know, before something like that happens, basically, right before this is no longer that largest chunk of intact ecosystem, we thought, you know, we should at least go look at it and go show people what it looks like, you know, both from a, you know, like we said, a conservation standpoint, but also from like a documentarian standpoint to show, you know, if the road is built, what, you know, what this used to look like, um, to hopefully make better decisions on other things as well in the future. 00:08:58 Speaker 2: Yeah. You guys, you guys know, uh, the author Edward Abbey. So I don't know if you've read his book desert solitaire, but he has, okay. 00:09:08 Speaker 3: So then, you know, this, this. 00:09:09 Speaker 2: Chapter in his book, he documents, uh, Glen Canyon, this stretch of the Colorado river that now is flooded because of a dam. But in the fifties and sixties, of course it was, it was a free wild river still in the stunning ecological wild. 00:09:29 Speaker 1: Wonder of the world. And many didn't. 00:09:32 Speaker 2: Realize just how spectacular it was, but he got to float it prior to it being flooding, flooded. And he documented it, wrote about that experience kind of mourning the Because he knew at that time that it was going to be flooded. And when I read that book many, many years ago and then heard about the Amber Road years after that, I immediately thought back to that. Like, oh yeah, Ed Abbey experiencing the Glen Canyon before it was destroyed. experiencing that incredible wild stretch of river before it was going to change forever. I kind of felt like that's this opportunity now with the Ambler Road is to be able to see this and experience this place as it is still now intact, vast, wild, and documented. And like you said, There's one of two outcomes here. One outcome is that you document what it is like now, and you're able to bring that story to the world, and it helps change the outcome, and it stays wild. Or two, the other fork in the road is that they do put this road in, and it does change, and now you have this time capsule that people can look back on and at least remember it. 00:10:47 Speaker 3: It's a powerful... project either way. Um, but Ben, you know, being the, you know, the, the. 00:10:54 Speaker 2: Maybe the main person operating the camera and thinking about that side of things. Um, how did you feel about like the obligation of capturing this place and this story in such a way that what. 00:11:06 Speaker 3: We, what I just described there could be possible. I don't know. 00:11:09 Speaker 2: Did you guys feel that while you were out there doing this? Was that on your mind, Ben? Like, Oh, I better not screw this up because this might be the only window into this place that some people will ever get, especially if it changes someday. 00:11:23 Speaker 5: Yeah, absolutely. I've, I definitely felt a sense of obligation, um, really tried to avoid letting that overwhelm me though, I would say. And also just the day to day, um, capacity of, of what we're pushing ourselves throughout there, maybe in a way helped, um, as backwards as that sounds, but, it was probably a great distraction ultimately, but I did feel an obligation and, um, yeah, just, just did my best while I was out there and tried not to, to overthink it too much. 00:12:01 Speaker 1: Yeah. 00:12:02 Speaker 3: How, how have you thought about that, Robert? 00:12:05 Speaker 4: Yeah. 00:12:06 Speaker 6: Um, you know, specifically of capturing the place, you know, we talked about that, a lot. But you know, the cool thing about that side of filmmaking, especially for our film we're making is that, you know, nothing is staged or nothing is redone. You know, we don't go back and do anything we don't, you know, so from a video standpoint, while that makes his job maybe more difficult, it makes, you know, the filmmaking really interesting. You know, if you didn't capture it, it doesn't make it on there. If you did capture it, it's exactly as we experienced it. And you know, from the filmmaking side, now that we're, you know, trying to edit this film and share it with people, you know, I'm really trying to make this as immersive as possible. 00:12:46 Speaker 4: And that was our other, you know, deal. 00:12:48 Speaker 6: We, we know that we were incredibly lucky and that, you know, most people will never get to experience this, this ecosystem, you know, like it's way out there. It's the middle of nowhere. Most people don't want to go suffer. Um, and I respect that completely. Like I understand why they don't. Um, But I wanted to offer them a way to experience it. 00:13:11 Speaker 4: As close as possible. 00:13:13 Speaker 6: It'll never be the real thing, but hopefully they can grasp some of that themselves. Yeah. 00:13:19 Speaker 4: All right. 00:13:20 Speaker 2: So like I mentioned a second ago, I went deep down the rabbit hole of trying to plan my own version of something like this. So we're talking 211 plus miles of this corridor. 00:13:33 Speaker 3: There's no roads. 00:13:34 Speaker 1: There's no trails. It is. 00:13:36 Speaker 3: wet, wet, wet. 00:13:37 Speaker 2: It is thick, thick, thick. There's no easy way to do it. There's no easy way to manage logistics. There's no easy way to meet people along the way or get drop-offs or get gear. 00:13:49 Speaker 1: Along the way. 00:13:51 Speaker 2: It's a long time period you would need to do something like this. So many logistical challenges in pulling it off. Talk to me about the planning process, how you guys put this thing together. how you managed to build an expedition plan that could get you from point A to point B from beginning to end, not only capturing it and documenting it, but surviving. 00:14:17 Speaker 3: The damn thing. 00:14:19 Speaker 6: Yeah, so for me, it kind of starts that next day. As soon as Ben's going to come with me, I know I'm going to do it. It's starting to learn about the area. And really, a lot of the actual learning came from from Roman Dial and Jamie Dittmar, who are kind of, you know, Arctic legends, especially Roman when it comes to the Brooks Range. We interviewed him for the film. He's done over 7,000 miles of human-powered travel in the Brooks Range. 00:14:49 Speaker 1: Incredible. 00:14:50 Speaker 4: It's absolutely insane. 00:14:53 Speaker 6: You know, so taking a lot of tips from people who know this area better, you know, like I've never even, had never even been to Alaska, to be frank. 00:15:02 Speaker 2: You know? 00:15:03 Speaker 6: So like, it's a lot of research and a lot of planning and then talking to the right people. 00:15:07 Speaker 4: So we, uh, we did a lot of stuff with coyote. 00:15:10 Speaker 6: Air, you know, they were the ones who were fantastic. Um, so it was a lot of calling people like that too, of like, Hey, you know, I'm thinking about doing this. 00:15:21 Speaker 4: What is realistic? 00:15:22 Speaker 6: Where can you try and get us supplies? Where could you maybe pick us up at? Um, and so it's a lot of, of planning like that. Um, my biggest, like my most fearful moment and like a moment that was a great compliment as well. Um, in the pre-planning was when I was talking to Roman and he, he also thought about doing a trip like this. Um, he was just getting a little older, you know, his health was starting to not be as good. 00:15:50 Speaker 4: So he ended up not doing it. 00:15:52 Speaker 6: But when he first thought about it, he was you know, scoping to find people who go into the Brooks range a lot to do this expedition. And he said he wasn't able, you know, he was struggling to find people who would do this because it's so bushy. 00:16:06 Speaker 4: It's so wet. It's such hard walking conditions. 00:16:09 Speaker 6: And so, you know, before we've left, when I hear that, I'm like, both like, wow, that's pretty cool that we're going where this guy's, you know, having trouble finding people, but then also like, holy shit, what are we in for? 00:16:20 Speaker 2: You know? 00:16:21 Speaker 4: So yeah. 00:16:22 Speaker 5: You have to find partners that are, unfamiliar with the area. 00:16:26 Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. Ignorance is bliss sometimes I say. 00:16:30 Speaker 2: Exactly. Um, yeah, I, I, I talked to multiple people who've spent a good amount of time out there like, like, uh, John Gattache and Bjorn Dela and, uh, several times I was suggested to me, Hey, you might want to just like stay up in the foothills of the Brooks range and be like off the route a little bit, but not in that swampy stuff the entire time. Um, But it sounds like you guys tried to stay as close to the actual route as possible. 00:16:56 Speaker 3: Is that accurate? How did you figure all that out? 00:17:00 Speaker 2: Because I remember when I was trying to go through this, trying to actually get an accurate read on the route, those resources to see a very clear route was not easily accessible. And trying to map that yourself and actually get down to the point where you can see it well, like maybe one of us would do an onX or something like that. It took some translation. It was taking some work. How did that all come together for you? Yeah. 00:17:27 Speaker 6: So I went to the Alaska's DNRC, their version of, you know, there is a map out there of the, you know, the current proposed route, and it's just a PDF of a topo. So then I took that and then went into, you know, some of those mapping services, Google Earth and that sort of stuff. And then, and basically, like you said, I'm trying to hand map based on the topography of of where the road route is going to go. So I'm sure that I'm not, you know, perfectly accurate. But then from there, we could take that file. You know, I had a GPS watch that helped us kind of stay on route. And then Ben had Onyx. So he was using Onyx as our other method. And then, you know, the realities of that ends up, that's all the planning stuff. And then when you get out there, you know, like we're staying fairly close to that route that we put in. But like, You know, there were times when it was obvious that it was clearer, you know, a half mile or quarter mile to the right, so we'd stay there. For the most part, we were never far outside. We had some of the same recommendations told to us. We were like, just stay in the rivers or just go up high and avoid some of that stuff. I had felt that while there was still a lot of merit in doing something like that, I thought if we could stay as close to it as we could, then we could really– people couldn't say, well, that's not what's at risk. We could show people like, hey– you know, for good or for bad, this is at risk. And we could also evaluate the road building conditions themselves, you know, and like, I am no road building expert, but this is the worst road building conditions I have ever seen between the, you know, it's right where continuous and non-continuous permafrost meet, which is a really interesting thing as the Arctic warms, you know, the Arctic is warming faster than any other place on earth, basically. So there's issues with that. But then like the things we experienced were mostly just the water. I mean, the amount of water is insane. So again, one of those like before to reality things, the estimate is 2,900 streams, right? It's just a little over that, that this road will cross that will require a culvert. 00:19:40 Speaker 4: Okay. 00:19:40 Speaker 6: So in my mind, I'm like, okay, that's, you know, I'm doing the math. That's a culvert every 130 yards. Yeah. 00:19:48 Speaker 4: That's crazy. Absolutely. 00:19:51 Speaker 6: No way that when we're out there, there'll be a stream that we have to cross every 130 yards. And then by like day 20, I'm sitting there and I'm like looking at Ben and I'm like, I think they might've underestimated. 00:20:02 Speaker 4: Like it might be more, like there was so. 00:20:06 Speaker 6: Much water, you know, like I had you know, we were out there for 26 days. I had one day with dry feet and Ben didn't even have one singular day. Like, you know, we were battling trench foot all the time. You know, this area is just full of water. And like I said, some of the worst road building conditions I could ever imagine. 00:20:31 Speaker 2: So what did you guys show up with? Day one, you set off from the highway and What was with you? What did you have to support you for the next month or so? Yeah. 00:20:44 Speaker 5: I mean, how many days of food did we have at that time? 00:20:47 Speaker 4: We had probably 10 days of food. 00:20:49 Speaker 5: Yeah. 00:20:50 Speaker 4: 10 or 11 days of food. 00:20:51 Speaker 5: So there's that. We have a four-man tent with a center post made up of a trekking pole and some packraft paddles. and then all the fixings for sleeping and stuff. Of course, camera equipment. There's the Sony FX6, which is a small cinema camera, but a relatively big build to carry in those conditions. GoPros. Rob's carrying the Sony A7S III, which is like your traditional mirrorless-sized camera, doing stills and video, and then a bunch of video accessories, drone. And then. 00:21:34 Speaker 5: Um, I mean, every, like we were pretty minimalistic in terms of clothing. We had one pair of pants, we had one base layer, we had one puffy and we had one shell. And then, um, a set of, of waterproof boots and gators, which I don't know if that was the right, I was happy to have the ankle support, but honestly, a boot that would have drained might've been the proper decision after the fact, but. That's kind of what we were working with. And then, of course, the pack rafts, two pack rafts. 00:22:08 Speaker 2: Did you weigh your packs before going? Do you know how much you were carrying out there? 00:22:13 Speaker 4: Yeah, it was about 65 pounds. 00:22:15 Speaker 3: Okay. 00:22:17 Speaker 2: And other than you mentioned your boot choice, looking back, is there any gear decisions you wish you had made differently? Yeah. 00:22:25 Speaker 4: Well, it's tough. 00:22:26 Speaker 6: Like even the boots, you know, the funny thing is like having a boot that would have drained would have been really nice. But one of the best things we had were our gaiters to me were invaluable. So even if they weren't, oh, you know, a lot of times we just ended up in such deep water that the water is coming over our gaiters. That's how our boots are getting wet, right? But the flip side of that is, you know, like the gaiters were like armor for the brush. Like we ripped the heck out of our pants above the gaiters. And so the gators were ended up, you know, honestly, probably saving our pants from just being completely in tatters. Um, by the end we had forgot anything, the, the only thing, you know, and on an expedition like this, I'm pretty proud of it. But the only thing I forgot in Fairbanks, um, before coming up was our needle and thread. So we're switching to using the Leatherman punch and, you know, fishing line to tie off the, So one thing we forgot. 00:23:22 Speaker 4: But, you know, it's hard. 00:23:23 Speaker 6: It's one of those deals where, you know, maybe we would have done a lot of things different in terms of just needing more time probably and more food in reality. But, like, I don't know that any single equipment change or any major equipment change would have made this, you know, more or less possible. Yeah. 00:23:46 Speaker 4: Yeah. 00:23:47 Speaker 5: And yeah, I left out the fly rod and the spin rod, which were invaluable as long as I wasn't the one casting. 00:23:55 Speaker 2: Yeah, so in your essay that you wrote, Robert, over on Republic, you mentioned how important it was to be fishing for food, to supplement what you guys had. Let's talk about the food situation a little bit. So you mentioned you brought 10 or so days of food for that first bout, did you then have drops somewhere along the way? Or how did you manage the food process throughout? And what did that, you know, what did that look like? 00:24:22 Speaker 1: What were you eating? 00:24:24 Speaker 3: Sounds like things got pretty thin there towards the end. 00:24:27 Speaker 2: Tell me about this whole experience from a food perspective. 00:24:31 Speaker 6: Yeah, so in reality, too, on our expedition, we actually began with three people. So my cousin Bill was coming with us as well. He ended up kind of tearing up his hip flexors. And he had to get out. We had to get to a spot actually on the Koyakuk. We had to backtrack to a point where Dirk could come pick him up, get him out, that sort of thing. So within that, right, when we have a third guy, we're able to carry a lot more food. Ben is almost exclusively carrying our camera gear, right? Like, he has so much camera stuff. 00:25:06 Speaker 4: It's unbelievable. 00:25:06 Speaker 6: And then basically his personal things, I'm carrying a decent amount of food and then, you know, all the camping gear basically. And then our third guy's main job is to carry the other pack raft and food. And so then, you know, when he leaves all of a sudden, you know, we just end up having to make a bunch of adjustments basically. 00:25:26 Speaker 4: And so within. 00:25:27 Speaker 6: That, you know, that means Ben carrying some food, And things like that as well. 00:25:32 Speaker 4: And then me carrying as much food as we can. 00:25:35 Speaker 6: When he got picked up and we went back out there, we end up doing, you know, instead of having four planned food drops, we end up just having one additional food drop. And that's how things end up a little thin on the food end. So we had started, like we said, plan was granola for breakfast, you know, add your own water. 00:26:00 Speaker 4: Get some gruel. 00:26:02 Speaker 6: Lunch was, you know, nuts, a power bar, a candy bar, a piece of hard candy and some fruit. 00:26:08 Speaker 4: And then dinner's a mountain house, right? 00:26:10 Speaker 6: And we're supposed to have that for each of us every day. Once the third guy leaves, we end up cutting down to basically we each have a breakfast and And then we split a lunch and a single mountain house. 00:26:23 Speaker 4: And so that's where food. 00:26:26 Speaker 6: All of a sudden goes from, you know, being a decent amount to being mighty thin, mighty quick. And so, you know, then we even, you know, as we ran out of food even more, we cut down to about half of that where, you know, we're each like barely eating at all, trying to hold this food on for as long as we can. And then, like we said, eating as much fish as we possibly can, you know, like And that was the best thing. The fish were awesome. I've personally never tasted fish so good. Neither of us love fish, but you know, like in this pure, clean, clear Arctic water, you know, and you're, you're taking this fish straight from, you know, the, the river onto the fire in less than five minutes and, you know, cooking it up. It was incredible. The fish were delicious. And basically we'd eat as much of, of fish as we could. But then the problem with that even becomes, right, that we're not always along the river, right? The funny thing, like I said, the reason the road crosses so many rivers and streams is because it basically bisects. It goes east to west. All the streams in the area basically run north to south. Um, and so not all those streams have fish either. 00:27:36 Speaker 1: Right. 00:27:36 Speaker 6: So basically the ones that have fish are probably every, only every few days. Um, you know, the fish spawn in some of these creeks and stuff like that, but they aren't there when we were there. 00:27:46 Speaker 4: So they're not always all fishable. 00:27:49 Speaker 6: Um, but so we'd fish whenever we could, but that also then meant, you know, we're still trying to move and move towards the end of, of the road route. And so, you know, you get three days or so where you can't fish and then we get to a river and eat as many as we can, and then keep going. 00:28:05 Speaker 4: But then I'll let Ben, he. 00:28:08 Speaker 6: Started diverting to some interesting diet choices as we ran out of food. 00:28:13 Speaker 2: Oh, really? 00:28:14 Speaker 4: Oh, yeah. 00:28:15 Speaker 5: Yeah, I'll start this with my lack of experience in being that degree of hungry and Rob's experience in mixed martial arts where he's cutting weight. So one of us has a little bit of a tolerance towards that kind of thing, but I did start doing some dumpster diving through our trash bag, scraping together, whatever I could find the melted chocolate off of a fun size Twix, stuff like that. And then, uh, devolving into toothpaste and Pepto-Bismol. 00:28:44 Speaker 1: Oh God. 00:28:46 Speaker 3: Um, yeah, I guess you, you did mention that in that essay. Now that you, now that I hear that, um. 00:28:53 Speaker 2: What does toothpaste taste like in a situation like that where you are so hungry that did it in any way satisfy you? 00:29:02 Speaker 5: I don't know if it, I, well, I don't think it satisfied me in terms of caloric value, but it probably tricked my brain a bit, helped me out. And it did taste better than it normally does for sure. 00:29:13 Speaker 3: Yeah, man. 00:29:17 Speaker 2: Um, back to the fishing. How was the fishing? Were you guys mostly catching grayling or what else? If, if there was something else and was that pretty, was it tough going? 00:29:27 Speaker 3: Was it pretty easy fishing? What was that experience like? 00:29:29 Speaker 4: Yeah, no, I mean, the fishing was incredible, right? 00:29:32 Speaker 5: It was really hard for me. 00:29:36 Speaker 6: Ben was kind of experiencing some of his first, like, you know, moments. 00:29:40 Speaker 4: Your first fishing, right? You didn't fish that much growing up? 00:29:42 Speaker 5: Not much growing up and very little since then. I've cast, you know, I live in Montana. I've probably fished a little bit, but yeah. But no, Rob was a fishing guy for sure. 00:29:51 Speaker 6: But so, you know, these fisheries are, you know, completely wild. You know, there's no stocking of fish or anything like that. But the flip side of that is, you know, it's unimpacted right now, right? There is no impact on these fisheries from human development. So, you know, this is a bountiful, bountiful fishery. You know, there was one day where, you know, we stopped eating fish obviously, and are just catching them for fun where we're hanging out on the outlet of Walker Lake where I caught, you know, I caught 18 grayling on the fly in you know, in less than probably an hour. Like, I mean, we were trying to film where I was like back casting for the, you know, and I like couldn't keep the fish off the hook. Like it was awesome. You know, so this is a really, really bountiful fishery. Our favorite to eat was where the Arctic grayling for sure. We caught some lake trout, um, caught Nate, some pike, um, which obviously aren't as much fun. 00:30:45 Speaker 4: But, you know, for us, we're still great. 00:30:49 Speaker 6: But we basically had no problems catching fish when I tried. 00:30:54 Speaker 5: Nice. 00:30:55 Speaker 3: And your favorite preparation to eat them? 00:30:58 Speaker 4: Oh, there was only one. 00:31:00 Speaker 6: So, you know, fried over the fire in tinfoil, we brought our SPNG, our salt, pepper, and garlic. And then Ben had done a smart thing where he dehydrated a bunch of lemons. And while, you know, The lemons and the fish were delicious, but to be completely honest, the lemons didn't make it in the fish much. We just pretty much started hammering the lemons like they were candy. But yeah, the salt, pepper, garlic in the tinfoil on the fire, like hard to beat it. 00:31:28 Speaker 3: Yeah, that's pretty good stuff. 00:31:30 Speaker 2: So if you could, and I imagine you've already been doing this, Robert, since you're working on Post. But if you could imagine this story, this journey of sorts, being placed into like a three-act structure. 00:31:43 Speaker 1: A narrative arc, right? 00:31:44 Speaker 2: And you've got your, a couple key highlights that take you from beginning to end. What would that be if you were to take this story and, and, you know, I know it's a very long story and make it into a cliff notes version with those key moments that take you through that three acts. Give me that version of the story. 00:32:03 Speaker 1: Yeah. 00:32:03 Speaker 6: So, I mean, we've done that right now, you know, right now it really looks like the beginning of is a lot about the struggle, the realities of us being out there. Honestly, some of the worst walking was in the first 30 miles. So we're in there. We're with the three of us. We have our third partner, Bill, ends up getting hurt, has to get out, the realities of that. So that's act one, just the pure struggle in this place. Act two is really the beauty. So then you know, me and Ben head back out and we're really experiencing this place now in a different way. You know, like we knew without Bill, we weren't going to be able to walk the whole 211 miles. We didn't, you know, to be honest, we didn't make it like I had wanted to. And I was at first worried about that. You know, I was like, we just lost the hook. If I can't tell people that we walked the whole way, why will they care? But then in reality, I, you know, I am like, we are able to focus on the beauty of this place so much more. And that's what that whole second part of the journey would be for sure. You know, the beauty in terms of, you know, ecologically, in terms of the landscape, in terms of looking at, you know, birds and fish and all that sort of thing. And then our third act really kind of pushes towards that. Okay, we're out here. Let's get as many miles as we can get in. Food's getting really, really low. What do we do. 00:33:27 Speaker 4: To push through? Our bodies are getting beat up. Make it as far as we can. 00:33:32 Speaker 6: Document as much of this place as we can, even though we're not going to get the whole thing. 00:33:38 Speaker 3: Okay. 00:33:40 Speaker 2: Let's take the opposite approach now and instead zoom in all the way in. What's a single day like on this journey? Give me an example day and give me the nitty gritty of what a day in the life is. looked like, felt like, was like on this trip? 00:34:01 Speaker 5: Yeah, I think that something that really outlined our day was the fact that we were recharging camera equipment on solar panels. Alaska at that time of the year, or that part of Alaska in the Arctic at that time of the year has 24-hour sunlight, but it's not all as direct. So a lot of those normal daylight hours, we want to have the panels up, We want to be stopped. We want to be sleeping and recharging our equipment. So we ended up waking up around noon most days and hiking until 3 to 5 a.m. So, yeah, we wake up, break down camp. 00:34:45 Speaker 4: Dry out the feet usually, finish drying the boots. 00:34:49 Speaker 5: Yeah, get bit by mosquitoes and horseflies for a little while and then eat– Depending on what section of the trip we're on, we'd have some form of breakfast and start walking. Look at the map a little bit. Ultimately, Onyx was pretty helpful in having satellite imagery. As we became more familiar with the landscape, we were able to decipher where the easiest path of travel would be along the road corridor. We'd hike for hours and hours, take a break for water, maybe pump water if we needed to at the time. Obviously, that wasn't a major concern because it's a bountiful resource up there. And then at some point, stop for lunch, push into the early hours of the morning and make camp and have dinner for the most part. Sometimes we'd have dinner and then push for another couple hours and then make camp. But yeah, that's really what it looked like. 00:35:51 Speaker 3: Tell me about that navigation challenge. How much was it? 00:35:56 Speaker 2: I'm assuming that you came into this with like a route on your map or on your Onyx or whatever. And then the reality on the ground all of a sudden was like different. And where you had a line on your map that you wanted to follow, all of a sudden you realized, oh, we can't get through there. We have to go around this and around that and over here and under this. How did you handle the navigation actually on the ground on a day-to-day basis? What did that look like day in and day out? 00:36:22 Speaker 4: Yeah. 00:36:22 Speaker 6: You know, the, the funny part, you say that, right, we do have a line on the map and you get out there and you think like, okay, there's a thicket in front of us. But the reality is like, it's, you know, it's not like 200 yards to the left or to the rights any better. So, you know, most of the terrain is, is pretty consistent. It's so wild. And like when we talked about, you know, like it's just such an intact ecosystem that there, there wasn't, you know, a lot of relief in those types of things. Our biggest things we were doing for help with that was using, like Ben said, the satellite imagery to really look for just for openness, whether that was an old burn. 00:37:01 Speaker 4: That's our favorite, right? You went through a place that had been burned. You were avoiding a lot of the brush. 00:37:08 Speaker 6: Or the spots where the heavy lichen was and the lichen, this is reindeer lichen, was usually good ground. Wherever the lichen was, it wasn't swampy and it was pretty open. So Those are the two changes we're really making, but for us, we were probably very rarely, if ever, more than a half mile or a mile away from our line on that map. 00:37:38 Speaker 2: Maybe unfairly, I have been asking you guys to describe a lot of the lousy parts of it, the challenges of it. 00:37:45 Speaker 3: But what about the good? What about the beauty of that place? 00:37:49 Speaker 2: You mentioned how kind of act two of your story was really focusing on the beauty and the wonder, right? 00:37:54 Speaker 3: Describe that for me. 00:37:55 Speaker 2: I mean, you know, I have not been there. I've been to the Brooks range, but I've not been to this Southern portion of it. But from my experience on the North slope, and I guess I was a little bit on the Southeast side of the Brooks range. I mean, it's one of the most spectacular places, uh, the most spectacular place I've ever experienced. Um, What was your experience there like from the beauty, the wonder, the experience of being in a place that wild, that intact? 00:38:25 Speaker 3: What was that like for you guys? What did that look like and feel like? 00:38:29 Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, throughout my life, I've kind of challenged myself to like look at a wide open space, like find a wide open space that's uninterrupted by humans. And normally my scope has to get really narrow or you have to stare down at the ground or something like that to see that. And here it's just every direction, 360 degrees of just untouched wilderness. It really redefined my concept of wilderness, and it was just breathtaking. To say the least, there's one particular night where we're just surrounded by lakes, surrounded by mountains, and the sunset just lasts forever. Well, it's a continuous sunset to sunrise for like six or seven hours probably. And the whole time it's just reflecting off of these legs. It's just phenomenally breathtaking. I mean, yeah, some of that stuff was extremely rewarding in the moment. And you you definitely forgot about the rest of the struggles and that is the stuff that um that really brought home. 00:39:35 Speaker 7: With myself yeah yeah what about you Robert yeah I'd agree you know it's really like you said it's the most spent spectacular landscape I have ever been in you know even outside of being so wild and so intact It is stunningly beautiful, you know. 00:39:52 Speaker 4: I think it doesn't match what people would imagine. 00:39:56 Speaker 6: You know, if I was telling you we're up, you know, 160 miles north of the Arctic Circle, what is it like? People, you know, people would not picture what we saw. You know, this is not just flat tundra going on for miles, you know, especially where we are on the south side. You know, we're in thick jungle-like alders. We're in, you know, amazing, beautiful mountains. And, you know, it's funny when I describe it to people, I've had people say to me, oh, wow, if you put that anywhere else, it would be a national park. 00:40:28 Speaker 4: And then I like to counter with it already is. 00:40:31 Speaker 6: You know, I think that's some of the wildness about the Ambler Road is, you know, like Gates of the Arctic is, you know, an amazing national. 00:40:39 Speaker 4: Park up there. 00:40:41 Speaker 6: The whole area we went through is worthy of a national park. Don't get me wrong. But like, you know, it's crazy for me to think about how little people realize that, you know, this might be an industrial mining road through one of their national parks, you know, and If we proposed something like that in Yellowstone or in Glacier, the uproar would be insane. But just because this place is so remote. you know, doesn't mean it's not beautiful. It doesn't mean it doesn't hold that same value, you know, for individuals visiting, even though it is a little harder or, you know, the native peoples who've relied on this landscape for thousands and thousands of years. And then also, you know, for planetary health as well, you know, like these big open areas of landscape give a lot to our planet, even if we're not there to see it every day. 00:41:32 Speaker 3: Yeah, so true. 00:41:34 Speaker 2: What about the wildlife? What all do you guys see up there? What's living up there in this? What some people say is just a blank spot on the map. It's just a place there for the taking. But as you just alluded to, that's not the case. There's a vibrant community of both, you know, people in that region and wildlife. 00:41:55 Speaker 6: Yeah, you know, the really funny thing about the wildlife was we saw a lot less wildlife than we maybe encountered or saw, you know, evidence of. Um, so we saw moose and bears, um, and, but, you know, we actually, we only saw one bear. 00:42:14 Speaker 4: We saw quite a few moose. 00:42:16 Speaker 6: But the reality is that we interacted with a lot more of those animals. There were a lot of times in which, you know, we're going through the heavy brush. We're trying to be loud. You know, you can smell the moose and like, there's a bull moose, like 10 yards from us. Like this guy, you know, like we're trying to be as loud as we can, or we hear the crashing, that sort of thing, you know? So we're really trying to, uh, you know, limit our direct interactions, especially with bears and moose. Um, And then sadly, we weren't there when the caribou migration comes through. But we saw a ton of evidence. We saw so many sheds, found so many sheds of these caribou, both females and males. This area is where the Western Arctic caribou herd comes through. So there used to be the amazing part is there used to be about 500,000, 490,000 caribou in this region, in this Western Arctic herd, the biggest in Alaska. And now there's only about 175,000. And so we missed the migration. There's still tons of sign in terms of trail and that sort. 00:43:22 Speaker 3: Of thing. 00:43:25 Speaker 4: Out there. 00:43:25 Speaker 6: But we weren't able to see those large undulates in terms of the migration and that sort of thing, which was a bummer. But Ben had some really interesting points while we were out there, especially about just the flora and the birds and things like that. 00:43:41 Speaker 5: Yeah, and first to build on what Rob said, I'd imagine that we would have seen a lot more predators had that herd been migrating through that same area at the same time. But, I mean, the ground, you look down, speaking to the flora, and it's just, there's a jungle within the first two feet of surface. First, there's the tussock cotton grass, which I don't think we've described yet. 00:44:05 Speaker 6: We haven't. 00:44:06 Speaker 3: Yeah, you should. You should definitely tell people about that. 00:44:09 Speaker 5: Yeah. So this plant does not grow. Its roots don't go into the ground because of permafrost typically. So it grows in large mounds varying from half a foot to two and a half or so feet. So you're making, you can't step on top of it. It'll move out of the way. You got to step in between it. You got to lift your legs with every step. I compare the exertion to, you know, trudging through deep snow just on foot. But in reality, it's more like trying to walk between some sort of bowling ball or something and, and having to take like the most exerting path. So there's that, but then there's places where all these mosses and lichens are, are growing on top of each other and you really never see dirt in most places. It's just layers and layers of flora, like completely intact. Um, And then to Rob's point with the reindeer lichen in some spots, the very little time that we spent on a game trail was through patches of reindeer lichen. And that's where you would actually see the ground. And that was by far our easiest travel. But it was just astounding looking down at your feet and trying to comprehend how much life is just right there. 00:45:34 Speaker 3: What did it sound like? 00:45:38 Speaker 2: And then I ask because the sound stood out to me in the Brooks range or lack thereof. What, what did you experience on that front? Yeah. 00:45:48 Speaker 6: I mean, a lack of human sound completely, but you know, I'd say far from a lack of sound, you know, like I think when people think about wilderness, they think about quiet, but you know, in this place, especially other places too, but in this place, especially, you know, Wilderness is not quiet. You know, we're listening to the birds, to the river, to the water, to the wind, you know, and it is a symphony all its own on a symphony, all its own under uninterrupted by, you know, human sounds. 00:46:23 Speaker 5: Yeah. For the most part, there's the occasional bush. 00:46:26 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:46:26 Speaker 4: Bush plane or helicopter. 00:46:28 Speaker 5: From the surveying parties out there or not the surveying. 00:46:33 Speaker 4: But the, The mind surveying, yeah. 00:46:36 Speaker 5: Yeah, the man camps as they call them. But besides that, yeah, what Rob said just completely, the occasional bird and the wind and everything else. What about. 00:46:48 Speaker 3: Go ahead. You go ahead, Ben. 00:46:52 Speaker 5: I think I only mentioned the kind of microflora at our feet, but as Rob mentioned early on, having very little visuals along with articles about this place It's by no means desolate, just thick forests of pines, boreal forests and alders and every bush in between. I mean, I was blown away by how forested a lot of it was. 00:47:19 Speaker 4: Yeah. 00:47:20 Speaker 2: You mentioned microflora. What about microfauna, the buzzing around you type? 00:47:26 Speaker 3: How are the mosquitoes? 00:47:29 Speaker 4: They were terrible. They were awful. Yeah. 00:47:33 Speaker 6: Like occasionally we'd have some respite, but like an easy day of mosquitoes out there was worse than the worst mosquitoes I've ever seen in my life. Um, we, I was just up in the village of Ambler, uh, last week we were doing some interviews with, you know, the people that are going to be impacted. And basically, you know, every time I'd tell them when we went, they would all just be like, oh, mosquito season. 00:47:57 Speaker 4: Like, what are you doing? But it's like, that's when we could go. Yeah. 00:48:02 Speaker 5: Yeah. Yeah. Using the bathroom is particularly eventful. Or like I said, we only brought one pair of pants. There's times I'm hanging out in camp in the morning just in my underwear because it's already pretty warm out. And I experienced some horseflies in places that I don't need to go into more detail about. 00:48:22 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:48:23 Speaker 5: Yeah. 00:48:23 Speaker 3: That's, that's no good. That's no fun. 00:48:27 Speaker 2: Um, but at least, and maybe you guys will disagree, but I think you would agree. Um, whether it was the gnarly mosquitoes I experienced up on the North slope, uh, or when I've been, I've had some pretty insane mosquitoes, uh, up in the upper Missouri breaks here in Montana. Um, but that lasts in the moment, right? It's miserable in the moment with mosquitoes. But as soon as you're out of that, you kind of forget about that whole part of the experience and you're just left with the good stuff, right? Like the memories, the good stuff is what actually sinks into your bones and you carry with you. And then you kind of have this amnesia about the miserable stuff, the mosquitoes or the mud. And then you're like, oh yeah, I'd love to go back. I imagine maybe it's like Maybe how it was with my wife when she had her first child. There's all sorts of horribleness in the moment, but then like, you know, as soon as it's all done, it's, oh, it was a beautiful experience. 00:49:20 Speaker 3: I want to have another baby. I think it's kind of. 00:49:23 Speaker 2: Like that with wild places like this and, uh, and the, the type two fun that comes along with mosquitoes and trench foot and all that kind of thing. 00:49:31 Speaker 6: Yeah, you know, and I think the funny thing about Type 2 Fun, like you said, is that the farther away you get from it, the more you're, like, willing to go back into that. 00:49:41 Speaker 4: And, like, you know, I don't know. I don't know if I'm quite there yet. 00:49:44 Speaker 6: To me, I can still, when I think about the mosquitoes still, I can still, like, it makes my skin. 00:49:48 Speaker 4: Crawl more now than then. 00:49:50 Speaker 6: Like, I cannot believe how used to them I got to, like, now when I think about plopping myself right back in there, I'd be like, oh. 00:49:57 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:49:58 Speaker 6: Um, but I think there's a funny thing Ben said, uh, that Roman dial actually also said, um, about the Brooks range and the best way to experience it, that I am like, I'm currently still, I might not be on the type two fun side of things back on a new Brooks range trip yet, but I'm really on this side of things. 00:50:17 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:50:18 Speaker 5: I think the best way to experience the Brooks or South of the Brooks range is, is by river or river trip for sure. 00:50:25 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:50:25 Speaker 4: So, yeah, if I was going to go back right now, I think I think I'd stay on the river. 00:50:29 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:50:30 Speaker 1: Yeah. 00:50:30 Speaker 2: What we had planned was we were going to do the whole route by foot, float and flight. And so we're going to hike a portion. We're going to float the Kobuk River and then we're going to have a couple of little segments that we would have to fly to connect the dots on that. 00:50:45 Speaker 3: And so and so, yeah. 00:50:46 Speaker 1: We were on that. 00:50:48 Speaker 3: Float the river as much as possible train, which wouldn't have had us exactly on the route. We would have been parallel to it. 00:50:54 Speaker 2: But yeah, that seemed like a more enjoyable way to experience a lot of it. 00:50:59 Speaker 3: But you did it. You guys did it. You got to experience it. 00:51:03 Speaker 2: You know something now that most people almost know other people really, truly do have a lived experience of. And that's pretty powerful. I wonder about one other thing. And again, I keep having to compare what I have personal experience with to what you had. But I'm curious if you felt something similar to what I did when I was on the north slope of the Brooks Range in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. And I was looking out over the coastal plain. I remember hiking through this valley and up on this last ridge before the coastal plain starts. 00:51:41 Speaker 3: I got to the top of that ridge. 00:51:42 Speaker 2: And for the first time, I could see over this vast tundra expanse that goes all the way to the Arctic Ocean. And right now it is completely untouched, unpeopled, wild, vast, amazing. But that is where they are and have been for many years debating whether or not to open this area up to oil extraction. And leasing had been approved last summer, the summer I was there. And so being there, I looked out across this landscape and was just awestruck by it. But then After a moment of taking that in and experiencing just this unbelievable life experience, I then had this next thought, which was, it might not be like this for much longer, right? If I could ever bring my kids there someday to see it, what would they see in 10 years? Would it be completely different? Would it be an industrial site? And that just broke my heart. 00:52:43 Speaker 3: It really was. 00:52:46 Speaker 2: a striking emotional moment to go from seeing maybe the most beautiful place in my entire life, the wildest experience in my entire life, and then realizing that in a matter of years, one of these last incredible wild places we have might be forever changed. 00:53:03 Speaker 3: Did you experience some version of that? 00:53:05 Speaker 6: Yeah, our version was maybe more from a filmmaking meets personal side. So part of the reason that I wanted to walk the road route is that if we walked it and documented big sections of it, then if the road was built one day, we could come back, document it again, and have the exact before and afters. And so even, like we talked about, even if we couldn't stop this, we could maybe add a third section. Right now in our film, there is the section of documenting beforehand, trying to prevent, and then there's having a record if it passes. And our third side of things was, okay, and then Could we show a direct before and after to impact a new place if this was built? 00:53:51 Speaker 4: And then, you know, the reality of going out there is so different. 00:53:55 Speaker 6: I think after having been there and seen it and experienced it, like, you know, like what you were talking about, I now think about trying to go back if the road was built and I would have to really stone myself and really harden myself to be able to go do that. 00:54:15 Speaker 4: I don't think that. 00:54:18 Speaker 6: I would have an easy time returning to see this landscape changed. 00:54:25 Speaker 2: How do you view this Ambler project differently now? now that you've actually seen this place, right? At first, it was a hypothetical. It was a line on a map. This place way out there, it's so far away. Why can't we just build a road through this and open up this mining district and get the resources that we need? So many people have said that. Now you've went and seen it yourself. You have ground-truthed it. How do you feel about this proposed road and industrial project now? 00:54:55 Speaker 3: How has this experience changed your perspective, if at all? 00:54:59 Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, boots on the ground being there for that duration of time, I came out ultimately against the building of the road. And I had that leaning before going in, but that really solidified it. And like Rob said, it would be really difficult to go back seeing that construction be completed. And at the same time, you look at kind of the numbers behind it To begin with, the private foreign mining company is asking the state of Alaska to foot the bill for the road. So this mining district is already prospected to not be that profitable, let alone where's that money going. Ultimately, it's all going to get spent, and we're not going to ever get this place back. We can have this place in perpetuity, but the money is never really in perpetuity. That gets spent, it goes away, yada, yada, yada. But to think that it's not even valuable enough for the mining company to build the private road without the state of Alaska, the people of Alaska footing the bill, is just unimaginable to me. And I know that the world we live in, if you want to keep on this track, requires... a lot of the metals that are coming that may come out of the ground in the Ambler Mining District. But if that's the road we're going to go down, then it seems like any other option should be exhausted in places that perhaps have already been mined, perhaps are way more accessible if that needs to be the case. 00:56:44 Speaker 4: Yeah. 00:56:45 Speaker 6: And for me, you know, I think I'm like I said, so I guess I'll answer two ways. The first part, you know, It was so much more complex than I ever imagined. I went in, you know, thinking we were going to make this film and we were going to be like, okay, we're going to be hunting for the ecological beauty to show people. Now, when I look at the footage and the place that I've been, I can tell you that that's not a problem at all. You know, we're going to show the visuals and people are going to think, wow, this is not what I thought. The place is going to exceed people's expectations and you know, we did research and our expectations were exceeded. You know, the average person's expectations will be far exceeded by this landscape. And then, you know, the part that is even more interesting besides the numbers and that sort of thing is the subsistence lifestyle side of things, you know, fresh off that trip. 00:57:38 Speaker 4: I just got back a few days ago from being up in the village of Ambler. 00:57:43 Speaker 6: And, you know, even though I had done so much reading and talk to these people, Until I went there, it was impossible to really grasp what this subsistence lifestyle is really like. And the best way I think I can put it to you is these people rely on caribou, right? More than anything else, it's where most of their food comes from still in this modern day. A can of soup at the store, a Campbell's can of soup costs $ 10. 00:58:11 Speaker 4: 65. 00:58:12 Speaker 6: There is a store in town, but how can you afford that? A gallon of Gas is $ 28. 00:58:18 Speaker 4: Oof. So these people are really, you know, still relying on the land. 00:58:25 Speaker 6: And right now, the Western Arctic caribou herd is late, right? The migration's about a month late compared to what they're used to. And I asked every person that we talked to what that meant. And the resounding question is, I mean, the resounding answer is that people are going hungry. You know, just because the caribou are late, people are going hungry. And so when you start to imagine, you know, putting in this road and impacting, you know, this already majorly impacted herd's numbers, you know, you really are impacting these people's lives in a way that I couldn't even understand. Until I was there, I just could not grasp the true impact that these people have, you know, and that was just talking about eating, you know, hunting and fishing and expense. caribou are so important to who these people are and their culture in, you know, in a way that is, is uncomprehendable for us who live, you know, such a modern, easy life. 00:59:26 Speaker 5: Yeah. 00:59:27 Speaker 2: So building off of that, What is the single greatest thing that you want the rest of the world to know? Maybe it's what you just shared or some of the things you just shared, but coming out of this experience, what is it that you are hoping that the world will learn once they're able to not only hear your story, but then also eventually get to watch your story? What do we need to know about this region, this place, this proposed project that maybe they don't know right now? 00:59:58 Speaker 4: Yeah, I think. 00:59:59 Speaker 6: you know, that we don't want to, you know, really, I would say that the things I would want people to think are to think, number one, about the value of the wild parts of our world, and especially those that are public lands. I would want people to consider the impacts of mining and where they might go beyond us as a consumer. Or, you know, what people claim is national defense or yada, yada, yada, reliance on foreign minerals. I want people to think about the other side of those impacts. And then the third thing I would think about is like, I would want people to think about is the idea of, you know, yeah, we can spend money and do anything, but are those good ideas? And what do we lose when we gain other things? 01:00:56 Speaker 7: Yeah. 01:00:57 Speaker 3: Would you add anything else, Ben? No, not really. 01:01:00 Speaker 5: I mean, other than, like Robert elaborated on in terms of the subsistence lifestyle of all the folks who are native to these places, it's just being as close to your food source as possible is ultimately the most efficient way to get your food. And we're just getting more and more detached from that. And I don't really know how I want to finish that. 01:01:28 Speaker 3: That's all right. 01:01:29 Speaker 2: Yeah, I'll give, I'll throw another one at you, which is, I imagine for a lot of folks, this might be a starting point for them in learning about this project and learning about what to do about it. 01:01:45 Speaker 3: Even, um, would either one of. 01:01:47 Speaker 2: You guys have any recommendations as far as any other resources you would recommend for people to, to take a look at, to learn about this or, um, how they can make their voices heard on this or take action in the coming days or weeks. 01:02:02 Speaker 4: Yeah. 01:02:02 Speaker 6: So the, the, there's a few major ways on the, you know, the mining side of things right now, right now, the Arctic mine, which is the most developed mine in the area, it'd be the first open pit of the four large ones. It's environmental comment period is happening right now till November 2nd. 01:02:24 Speaker 4: So this is the first opportunity for people to. 01:02:27 Speaker 6: Have a voice on the mining in this area, in the Ambler Mining District, in the Southern Brooks Range. Second, we were lucky enough to go experience this, make a film about it, and we really get to contribute our way by bringing voices and bringing people's work to the forefront. But there's people out there doing this work all the time. People like Defend Brooks Range, people like the Wilderness Society, the Alaska Conservation League. There's tons of great organizations that are doing work on this every day that I'm not out there, you know, grinding on that they're doing really good things. And then, you know, lastly, just make your voices heard in your representation, you know, whether that's telling other people about it or also, you know, Talking to your senators, talking to your representatives and telling them, hey, this is something I care about. This is something I oppose, you know, because they are supposed to be delegates of the people and they are supposed to care what you think. 01:03:29 Speaker 3: Yeah. Great, great reminder. 01:03:33 Speaker 2: Last question. This film, I imagine there's a lot of work underway. I imagine there might be some pressure trying to get this thing done. When is it supposed to be done by? When will we get to watch it? And where should we look for this? 01:03:47 Speaker 6: Yeah, so we're absolutely flying with it. We're going to do some in-person theater stops. You can keep an eye out on that starting October 26th. But really, the film is going to be out for everybody to watch the day after Thanksgiving, Black Friday. 01:04:05 Speaker 4: It's going to go out. 01:04:06 Speaker 6: So 2026, everybody can see it on YouTube for free. We thought that it was really important that this issue was accessed quick for people and free. 01:04:16 Speaker 4: So that we could have the biggest impact we could. 01:04:18 Speaker 1: Amazing. 01:04:19 Speaker 3: Do you guys have a title yet? 01:04:21 Speaker 4: Yeah, it's going to be called Roadless. 01:04:24 Speaker 1: Love it. 01:04:24 Speaker 3: All right, guys. Well, thank you. Thank you for this chat. And more than that, thank you for taking on. 01:04:30 Speaker 2: This project and for going out there, being that on the ground witness for this truly special place. 01:04:38 Speaker 4: Thank you for having us. And thanks for letting us talk about it. 01:04:42 Speaker 5: We appreciate your time. 01:04:43 Speaker 2: Thanks, Mark. If you'd like to learn more about the proposed Ambler Road or take action by voicing your own opinion on this matter, visit HuntFishBrooksRange.com to learn how.