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Vice Blog

WORLD'S NORTHERNMOST DAD

This past October me and three other chumps got in a pair of bush planes and flew to one of the most remote spots in US territory (excluding crazy nuclear-bomb islands and, of course, the Moon) to visit Heimo Korth. Heimo and his wife live smack in the middle of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in the Alaskan Interior, a good hundred miles from both the arctic circle and the next nearest human.

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Heimo has lived through the contents of about five Jack London novellas since moving to Alaska at 19. He's packed meat for fancy big-game hunters, pulled an Into the Wild boner where he tried to live completely off the land his second year in the bush and nearly starved to death, saved his younger brother from a massive ice-flood during spring breakup, hunted whale with an Eskimo tribe in the Bering Sea (as in he lived in their village and was an actual part of their whale-hunting team, not just some tourist who paid to hold a harpoon), been hidden from Soviet Union patrol boats by the members of his whale-hunting team, married a lady from the same tribe as his whale-hunting team, had something happen to him in Nome which he doesn't like to talk about but which made him hate the city and everything related to it, and dragged his Eskimo bride to a tiny cabin a few days' walk from the middle of nowhere to live as fur-trappers for the next 30 years.

Actually, all this happened before he hit 25. Since then his adventure tally has doubled, his cabin count has tripled, and he's raised two daughters to completion in the middle of ANWR on a fur-trapper's salary (with a little in-town construction work thrown in here and there).

It goes without saying Heimo's a bit of an outdoorsy type, but he's not a weirdo about it or anything. He doesn't speak in authentic mountain gibberish and look down his nose at you for not being able to see a moose that's camoflaged against a stand of trees over 1,000 yards away (although you can tell he's kind of annoyed when it takes you over 30 minutes and he's been pointing at it the entire time). Likewise, he's not some passive-aggressive anti-synthetic-fibers hemp guy who takes Solar Showers and says crap about "leave no trace." Actually, I think he may take Solar Showers, but again he's not doing it to prove some sanctimonious point or make himself feel like a Na'vi. That's just what he's got out there.

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Solar Showers aside, I was a little taken aback to discover that, on a day-to-day basis, Heimo's lifestyle isn't that far removed from the standard suburban parent's. He's got a gas-powered generator that he uses to watch DVDs of dad staples like Air Force One every once in a while; he gets really mad when squirrels pick off the giant hanging racks of moose ribs in his yard; he uses way too much lighter fluid to start the grill and knows a bunch of old jokes that are probably too racist for me to admit are hilarious.

He also listens to the news in the morning and occasionally chats with the pilots of passing transcontinental flights (though not the Japanese anymore--not since almost causing an international incident), so it's not like he's not up to speed on things. I wouldn't even be surprised if he got that shitty Avatar joke a couple sentences back. Really, the only difference between him and the toilet-clogging lummox you grew up with is that he has really, and in many cases literally, built everything he's got with his own bare hands. And also his toilet is an uncloggable pit carved out of the permafrost.

Anyhioux, please start watching Heimo's Arctic Refuge on VBS if you haven't, and I'll let you know more stuff about Heimo and his land as it comes back to me.

BABY BALLS