Subsistence hunter Glenn Villeneuve moved from Vermont to Alaska 17 years ago — to live close to the land and hunt in the remote mountains of arctic Alaska. For most of the year, the man lives alone in a cabin in the Brooks Range, 200 miles north of Fairbanks, and a 60-mile walk from the nearest road! Glenn — who shares his adventures on the show Life Below Zero (that premiered on Sony BBC Earth on May 15 and airs Monday to Friday at 10pm) — lives without water, electricity and technology, was once chased by a pack of 20 wolves and has gone up to more than four months without seeing another human! A t2 chat.
Was there a moment of epiphany when you decided to move to Alaska and become a subsistence hunter or was that something you always wanted to do?
There was one summer when I was living in the woods at Vermont, close to where I grew up. It was then that I decided that I wanted to move to Alaska because it was the only place where I knew I could do what I wanted to. It was the only place that had the kind of wilderness that I was looking for. My family always encouraged me to do what I wanted to do... and I always felt very free. They were only too happy to support my decision.
It’s been more than a decade that you have been living in the wild. Have you at any point regretted your decision?
It’s been 17 years that I have been living in Alaska. Of that, I’ve been completely alone in the wilderness for about 13 or 14 years. I have no regrets about my decision. I love it up here, I love what I do and given a chance, I would do it again.
For how many months of the year are you up there in Alaska and what’s a typical day in your life like when you are there?
Well, how many months I spend in the wilderness completely depends on the year. There have been months when I haven’t been to town… staying in the wilderness for up to 15 months at a stretch. Recently, I have been going back and forth more often, spending about half my time at my cabin in the Brooks Range and the other half at another log cabin that I have built about 200 miles to the south. That’s where I am now… it’s on the outskirts of a city that has only 45 people!
If you ask me about a typical day, one nice thing about living in the wilderness is that there is no typical day. I never know what’s going to happen when I get up in the morning. Some days when I wake up, I see a herd of 100 caribou walking across the lake in front; on another day, I get up and realise that I need to cut firewood and I go out, though it’s 40 (degrees) below zero outside. I don’t have a schedule… so every day it’s different.
For all of us so dependent on technology and who consider water and electricity as basics, how do you manage with so little?
It’s not a problem for me because it’s a choice. When I am in the bush, I don’t have phone or Internet. And even when I go to my other cabin close to the city, I can have Internet, phone and electricity, but I choose not to have any of it. I had all these things growing up and I decided that I would rather try and live without it. It does have benefits because as exciting as technology is, I think people are starting to see its disadvantages too. Just as technology brings people together, it also separates us. Today, a lot of people are spending time looking at screens than they are looking at other people.
Do you enjoy being on Life Below Zero or do you think it intrudes into your space?
I love being on the show and it’s been a great experience for me. Contrary to perception, I love people and for a very long time, I wanted to share what I was experiencing being so close to nature and to animals in the wild. When I got on the show, it opened up the opportunity to share my stories with so many people around the world.
What have been your most memorable moments on the show so far?
There have been so many… but a big thing for me in the fall is hunting moose and when I kill a big moose, it gives me enough meat to last me for six months! So that’s a huge thing. One day, just by chance I had a cameraman and we were able to film a wolf chasing a caribou… right in front of us! It’s only something that I have seen only a few times in the 17 years I have been up here.
You were apparently chased by a pack of 20 wolves once!
Well, it was a little strange because I have spent a lot of time with the wolves through the years and I never had them behave aggressively towards me. On that day, they somehow did! (Laughs)
It was unbelievable, I thought I was dreaming…. I looked across the lake and I saw 20 wolves charging towards me. I wrote the whole story on Facebook, but it really was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. I wouldn’t want it to ever happen again! (Laughs) That episode made me realise that you can never know how animals are going to act.
A life like this calls for bravery and strong survival instincts, but it also means uncertainty at every step. What keeps you going?
It’s just the state of consciousness that kind of an environment puts me in. Alaska is a different world, particularly a very different world from India or Singapore. Alaska is about half the size of India, but in all that space there are not even three-quarters of a million people. Contrast this to the 1.2 billion people you have in India. Just the space alone changes your consciousness… it’s so big and you are so small and you only have yourself to rely on. It’s a completely different state of mind, but I like it. That compulsion to survive against all odds is what keeps me going.
But does it ever get lonely up there and do you ever feel out of place among us humans when you come back?
Of course, I have been lonely… there was a time when I went for four-and-a-half months without seeing another person! That’s a long time to live alone. I don’t like that kind of isolation. I didn’t go to the wilderness to live alone, but that’s a small price to pay for the experiences I have in the wild. I do have my family in Fairbanks (the largest city in the Interior region of Alaska). I spend some time with them and sometimes they come to the bush to live with me.
Initially, I would find it tough to adjust. When I spent 15 months without coming to town, I came back to a changed world. I spent 15 months without getting any news of the world! But when I come back, there are a lot of restrictions — I have to follow rules I don’t follow in the wild. When I am in the bush, I have my rifle, knife and ammunition… when I come to town, I am expected to have a credit card, a phone, my driver’s licence. It’s taken me some getting used to.
Priyanka Roy
