There are places on earth that are so vast they still impress upon us the power of nature.
And Canada's rich and rugged terrain never fails to astound me.
This series is a record of my journey
across this northern wilderness...
..and back into its past.
A history written by explorers who should be household names back in their native Britain,
but are as unknown as the land they encountered.
I'll be soaking up the great outdoors
with its amazing landscape, wildlife and history.
Meeting the locals who keep traditional skills alive, and relevant.
Following in the footsteps of pioneers
who made commercial exploitation of this country possible.
And finding out about the British company they worked for,
which helped to define the country we now know as Canada.
My journey starts here, in the heart of Canada,
and the forest that dominates it.
I'm here to learn about the wildlife, the plants
and the people that made this forest home.
So now I'm really looking forward to it
because this northern wilderness is a place I've truly come to love.
It's a place where knowledge and experience are still
far more important than the equipment you carry with you.
This forest in many ways defines Canada.
It covers a third of the country.
At first it held little to attract outside interest.
Its mix of trees and water made it hard to get around.
The land was barely fertile, the growing season cut short by the extreme winter.
It was only when explorers learned the ways of the forest,
a world of small wonders, that they were able to conquer Canada.
To understand these explorers and their achievements,
we first have to understand the land they encountered.
It calls to me deeply,
it's a place I love to explore, and it has a special name,
the boreal forest.
It takes its name from the Greek god Boreas, god of the Northern Wind.
It sits on the top of the world and encircles the globe.
It forms the single largest land biome on the planet,
a green crown that's bigger than the Amazon.
And I'm right in the heart of it.
This is autumn in Prince Albert National Park, Saskatchewan.
Today people talk of coming into the boreal forest to make a wilderness trip,
but for the many tribes that once inhabited this forest
it was simply home, and that's what interests me -
the knowledge, the skills
that make you feel completely at one with a wild place like this.
I love just walking here.
There's always things to see, and, if you can read the signs,
you get a real feel for how the place works
and how each tiny detail fits into the magnificent bigger picture.
A walk here is an exploration of how to survive the elements,
a journey into history
and a revelation of the interdependence of life.
Knowledge is everything in the forest.
You can see bear claw marks here on the tree
but this tree itself is interesting.
This is a balsam fir and the leaves from the balsam fir
are important browse for moose, particularly during the winter.
First nations also had uses for this.
All over this bark you've got lots of little blisters,
and if I pop one of those blisters you'll see what I'm talking about.
See, if I pop that blister,
you'll see it's full of resin,
and that resin
has been used to treat wounds,
for cuts, even for burns,
for centuries.
A simple and effective bush medicine.
There's always wildlife to see here.
This is from a wolf.
The pointed tail indicates a predator,
and if you look closely you can see fur within the dropping.
Almost every mark on the trees here tell some sort of story.
If you look up here you've got these nice little holes
drilled in the tree
in horizontal lines going across.
That's done by a member of the woodpecker family,
it's the red-breasted sapsucker.
And what it's done is actually tapped in little reservoirs
into which sap, like a sugary syrup in this tree, will collect,
and then it comes along later and harvests it.
Sometimes you can even see where the sap has run down the bark.
This is a lovely thing that you find this time of year.
See this mushroom in the top of the tree?
It didn't grow there, that's been put there by a red squirrel
so that it'll dry and when it's dry he'll come and collect it,
if he remembers where he put it,
take it off up into the trees and stash it away for the coming winter.
The native species may make life here look beautifully simple,
but the pioneers who explored this land had to learn how to survive.
The sheer size of the forest makes it difficult to come to terms with.
Get lost here, even today, and you really are in the middle of nowhere.
The boreal forest really is a beautiful place to explore
but there is one major hazard.
The moment you step off of a trail it becomes invisible,
and that means it's very easy to get turned around here and become lost.
But, you know, you needn't fear the forest.
With a few simple tips, you can be comfortable here, even then.
The first thing is,
as soon as you think you may be a little bit turned around,
stop, think, maybe even have a drink.
Always have a drink, if it's cold weather have something to eat,
cos quite often once you've done that,
your brain starts working a bit better.
Maybe you're dehydrated,
and it could be possible you can solve the problem then.
If not, establish that place a little bit better.
Old timers would take moss and put it up in the trees
cos moss just doesn't grow there, so they could see the place.
Today we can carry something like this with us.
High visibility marker tape is very good
for marking your position.
Now the advantage of this is we've now got a fixed point.
This is where we first discovered that we were lost and this is
probably the nearest point we're going to be to being found as well.
Having marked a spot, we could, if we wanted to,
march off in different directions until we relocate ourselves with something we know,
as long as we maintain contact to this known point.
If you get lost at the end of the day,
it's better to stay put and make a shelter
than bushwhacking around in the dark.
This is how I make the most basic of shelters, using branches propped against fallen tree trunks.
It's simple, quick and effective.
One of the secrets is not to work too frantically, take your time.
You don't want to sweat
cos if you sweat your clothing'll get cold when the sun goes down.
There's no rush, staying composed and in a calm mind
is the way you'll solve the problem.
All I've used here is dead wood, I haven't even broken branches.
I've just taken dead fallen trees,
and it's not raining today and I don't think it's gonna rain tonight.
That is plenty shelter enough,
but if it WAS wet I'd just keep piling on dead trees until I can't see through
and you'd be amazed how well just dead wood piled up like this actually works.
And there, there is my little snug shelter.
Now a few little home improvements.
The secret is, if I can curl up in here and I'm away from the elements,
and with a fire beside me, I'll be toasty warm.
And that's all it takes to see the night through.
Once you've committed to staying in a shelter through the night,
you've taken a positive step towards solving your problem.
All of a sudden, psychology is in your favour.
Now I just need a fire.
Don't make it any bigger than you need,
there's no point wasting effort.
Start with a little platform as always.
On there I'll put some kindling, some birch bark maybe,
and some small branches and away we go.
Well, that's me set.
Got a rudimentary shelter,
the psychological value of which is immense.
I can improve that now if I want to,
and I've got my fire going.
That's my main source of warmth and it's a tremendous source of morale.
And the key is not to panic,
not to feel threatened by the environment,
but actually to look to it to help you,
which is exactly what I've done.
In fact, first nations have lived here for centuries,
relying on the animals and plants around them.
One brilliantly versatile resource is the birch tree.
In the past I've built canoes and pots from its pliable, strong bark,
but in the right hands it has many, many uses.
The mighty tree isn't just robust,
it can also be put to the most delicate of uses.
Thankfully, people like Sally Milne keep such traditional crafts alive.
Sally, the birch tree is one of my favourite trees.
Mine too.
You're going to show me something new about that, aren't you?
Yes. It's in layers, the bark of the tree is in layers.
I mean, that's not easy.
Yes, it is.
No, no it's not easy.
After lots of practise it gets easy, it's really easy.
That is amazing.
So what are you looking for, when you look at the tree?
A tree that doesn't have too many branches on it.
Mm-hmm. Not too many of these. And not too many of the knots, yeah.
And the rest is purely luck.
And is there anything you have to do
when you collect the bark from the tree?
You just take a knife and cut it down,
without damaging the inner bark.
Mmm hmm. So that it'll carry on living.
Mm hmm, yeah. You just take what you need to take.
Once the bark has been separated, Sally makes beautiful patterns,
and she makes them with her teeth.
Right then, over to you.
If my tooth is stuck on it when I'm done, it'll be your fault.
Always my fault!
She learned this skill from her grandmother.
Wow, look at that, that's amazing.
That's beautiful, and the light comes through it, it's just incredible.
Now what was the original use for this, this decorative work?
Patterns for baskets, and clothing and whatever I guess.
So that would go on top of the basket.
It would go on top of the lid of the basket,
then you poke holes, then you put the roots through that.
And sew it on. Yeah, and then they just discard the biting after.
Amazing. It's become its own form of art now, hasn't it?
Sort of. They don't call it art, they call it a craft.
A craft, yeah.
One of these days they'll decide to consider it art.
I think they should. Yeah.
That's amazing.
We don't decide those things, do we? No.
Time for me to give it a go.
And how much pressure should I put on?
Mmm,
enough so that it shows through.
THEY LAUGH
Move it a little bit as you bite it, or move your teeth.
This is quite tricky.
OK, let's see what we've got.
There you go.
We've got something.
I'm not as neat as you.
That's unique, that's good, really good.
You've made some kind of a flower,
maybe something native to England that I've never seen.
I think definitely, definitely, this is a, this is a...
Cabbage, cabbage rose? This is a Tudor rose!
Sally grew up in this forest, and in many ways
it's the perspective this gives her
that is the most important thing about her.
The forest is home to me.
I love being in the forest.
It's, it's everything, you know.
I think today a lot of modern people who visit the forest
are a little bit scared by it because of its size.
Well, they shouldn't be.
Forests are disappearing very, very fast
and where there's some left
there's nothing, nothing to be scared of in the forest.
I know, I grew up in the forest.
Nothing ever frightened us.
What about bears?
Bears don't bother you if you don't bother them.
No, no you just know.
A healthy respect for your environment,
that's all the safety you need in the forest,
just to have a healthy respect for the elements that are out there.
It's a privilege to meet someone
who truly understands the value of the forest,
an understanding that has evolved through generations.
The power of nature
It's big, harsh and unforgiving.
It's certainly not a place you can cultivate,
and the forest is definitely in charge.
Everything here has to fight for its place.
It's a tough environment and survival isn't easy,
as David Henry, forest expert and author on the boreal forest, can testify.
David, we're really lucky, aren't we?
It's a beautiful autumnal day, but it doesn't really give
a true impression of the nature of this environment, does it?
This is a tough environment, and these tamarack trees,
they're just amazingly old.
They grow slowly.
I took one and polished down the cross section,
and a tree that size, that's 105 years old to grow to that size.
I mean I actually have to look through the binoculars
to magnify the rings to see them.
Look at the very outside ones,
they're less than a millimetre in size.
The Woods Cree name for it means the tree that bends.
They use it for making the toboggans
and making that beautiful curve in the front of the toboggan.
What's the average age of the trees here?
I would say these trees in here are probably averaging 150 years old,
hanging on and growing bit by bit over the years.
150 years old, yet these trees look like saplings,
and it's not just the weather that makes this place tough.
Fire is a vital part of the life of this forest.
Now you're gonna show me something about these Jack Pine cones.
Sure, I'll be glad to. I've brought a branch along,
and there's so many well-adapted things in the boreal forest,
but the Jack Pine kind of comes in first place in some way.
The cones, they grow on the tree and they're sealed with pitch,
they can stay on the tree for 20 years,
and the seeds are just as viable, and they germinate
just as well as if they're one year old.
And the way they open, they get opened by fire.
So the cones carry their own fuel supply,
but they don't start right away.
That cone's been on the tree long enough to get lichen growing on it.
That's right, it's probably been on the tree 10 years.
There now. It's opening. Can I have a look at that?
Sure. I mean, that's amazing, isn't it?
You can see how well the fire has opened that,
and of course the seeds lodge down at the base of each of these scales.
I'm amazed. How long can they stay dormant like this?
20 years. 20 years waiting.
And they're as fresh as...
Yeah, waiting for that fire,
and then the seeds will just spill out of the cone.
So the point is that this forest
actually requires fire for its own well-being.
Yes, it's fire-dependent.
Yes, the ecology of the forest is built around the fact of fire.
You get the sense that whatever challenges
nature throws at this place it bounces back stronger than ever.
Even when fire destroys an area new growth soon emerges.
In these clearings the new shoots make perfect grazing for wildlife,
who in turn fertilise the land and restart the process.
Everything that happens in this forest has a reason,
every act a reaction.
Of course, for the people who lived here
the clearings proved to be great hunting grounds.
It's lovely to see the cow elk and her calf.
I'm no expert on elk but I would assume that that was born this year.
They seem very relaxed
but actually this is a very exciting time of year for them.
This is the beginning of the mating season, the rut,
and in the woods around here there'll be the bull elks
with all their fantastic antlers on.
Very exciting time.
There's another cow just appeared here, I'm surrounded by them.
I love their markings.
It's a very good camouflage as well,
these muted shades that blend in so beautifully.
Her curious calf, look.
What's all this, then?
I haven't seen this before.
I love the way they move with their head up, it's very imperial.
They're beautiful animals.
Nowadays the best place to see elk is in a national park like this,
where they and the forest are protected
because this forest needs protection.
Oil has been found under it,
and potentially the forest is under threat from industry.
But there is a business that doesn't just live with the forest,
it positively thrives on it.
The wild rice industry.
Oh, I feel like at home now.
That's more like it!
For centuries the Huron gathered rice at the southern edge of the forest as a staple food.
But today it's a major industry in the north of Saskatchewan.
Tom Charles showed me how it would have been harvested traditionally.
When it gets in your face just...
There's quite a knack to this, isn't there?
If I go too fast then you miss some.
Yeah, and you don't, you really don't wanna hit the stalk itself,
so what you do is you bring it over, across like that. Yeah.
And when it's there you want to tap it into the boat.
That's so as not to damage the rice.
You don't want to hit the stalk itself because in the ripening period
it starts from the top and it gradually goes down.
So with this area here you could pick four or five times in the one time.
So if you hit the stalk itself you take off the unripe seeds.
Yeah, and you've destroyed it
and that way you may not have seed for next year.
Some people think it's an annual plant but it isn't,
it's because of our...
The way you... Yeah, the way you hit 'em and things like that.
This is the traditional way of harvesting but it's not how you do it today.
No. We have big, modern boats
and we drive through there at 10, 12 miles an hour and it falls in there.
Just scoop it up. Just scoop it up.
I guess in the old days the people who did this,
did harvest it this way, they'd have had a real knack at this.
Yeah, yeah.
Are you gonna show me what we do with this then?
Yeah, let's go back to shore.
One last...
So Tom, you're parching the grains now.
Yeah, by moving it around all the time.
It's got to have a bit of water when it's starting to heat up.
You want the inside of the grain to be hard,
harden it up so it's not chalky or milky any more.
You just want to keep turning it, and moving it around in the pot.
So you're getting rid of the husk and you're hardening the kernel.
Yes, exactly.
Yeah.
Let's hope it's worth the wait.
Oh, that's delicious. Yeah, it is delicious.
Cor, goodness me, that'd make a great breakfast cereal.
You're going to eat up all the evidence here. I am.
And this here is the more the traditional
commercial product that they produced at the processing plant.
Uh-huh. You notice it's all uniform, it's hard.
Mm, I'm gonna eat all this. We'd better cook some of that, hadn't we?
We'd better cook some of this right away.
It may be big business but it's great to meet people like Tom
who are so in tune with the area in which he works.
Tom, do you spend long out in the woods like this?
Yeah, especially this time of the year it's a seasonal job.
You've got maybe 1400, 1500 people doing this in the harvesting industry.
To get the best harvesters out in the bush,
it's people that enjoy the bush and respect the bush
and then learning little trades like this and listening to the elders.
There's not much to say about it,
a person's got to go out and experience it.
Some people like kayaking, I enjoy doing this.
Right. Try that.
That is delicious, it's so... The texture's fantastic.
Yeah, it's got a bit... The flavour's lovely.
This one's a little bit hot, I think.
What's interesting is it has a flavour of its own,
it's so strong in flavour.
I think that's delicious, absolutely beautiful.
Ordinary rice does not compare to that. No. Mmm.
Tom, I really have to give you a lesson in spoon carving.
Or to learn how to us chopsticks or something like that. It's really good.
That was delicious. Thank you for showing me that.
You're welcome. Thank you for coming here. Oh, it's been a pleasure.
It's the abundance of water that makes this place ideal for wild rice.
It's humbling to think that one fifth
of the world's fresh water is here.
Water is key to the boreal forest.
My favourite time to come and explore the boreal forest
is now in the autumn, when the mosquitoes have died right back.
But there is one problem travelling by canoe here and that is
that the rivers often have very little water left in them.
But I do have an ally in that, and that's the beaver.
Beavers build dams in the rivers and sometimes that's a godsend
cos they hold water in the river too.
This amazing mound to my right is a beavers' lodge
and this has been created throughout the summer by a family of beavers,
and inside there they've got chambers
in which they can feed and sleep safely.
They make their dams to keep the water level high enough
that their entrance is under water, that's for security and for safety.
At this time of year they're just sort of completing the lodge,
you can see some mud up there now, they'll start to cover this in mud.
When the winter comes that will freeze
like a frozen cap on top of it
to protect them from predators trying to burrow in.
They modify this whole landscape to create this.
The beaver play a vital role here in creating habitat
for a whole range of water plants.
The beaver certainly leave their mark on the landscape.
This is a pretty good-sized balsam poplar.
I'd say this is four or five hours of work for the beavers.
You can see all the teeth marks here and they're all kind of horizontal.
Well, they're not after the main trunk of the tree
but it's the younger bark on the branches at the top of the tree
that'll get them through the winter, that's what they digest.
The way a beaver'll do this
is they come up and turn their head sideways,
and here's one of the chips that they've taken out and it sits in
the tree like that
and if you look at it you can see their teeth marks.
Basically they chew once, twice, three times at the top
and then they reach down and at the bottom they bite
one, two, three, four times if they need it
and then they just reach in and rip it out
and toss it out to the side and go on to the next bite.
The beavers are the engineers of the boreal forest.
They build the lodge, they wanna build the dam,
they have all that knowledge right inside.
Beavers don't just live here they play a part in maintaining
the habitat they need to live
and that's important to understand because the boreal forest
isn't just a static landscape -
it's a living entity, a collective where everything plays its part.
In fact, even the tiniest plants play a critical role
in the very creation of parts of the forest.
This is one of the miracles of the boreal forest
and despite its individual size,
sphagnum moss is a powerful force here.
David, I'm quite astonished
at the number of types of sphagnum I'm seeing here.
How many different species do you have?
In our forest in Saskatchewan we have 17 different species of sphagnum.
That's amazing, cos where I come from we've less than a handful.
But the sphagnum plays an important role in the forest as a whole?
In the boreal forest it's central.
It determines what trees grow on this site,
what shrubs grow on this site, makes acid tolerant plants grow there.
One of the things I find fascinating about this plant
is how in one sense it's a sponge
and yet the environment in which it lives is also very wet.
How does that work?
Well, it is a sponge.
It gets established in a little wet area
where water might be flowing through and it starts to grow
and there's the sponge-like structure to it
that allows it to absorb around seven times its weight in water.
It grows to the extent where it will
shut off those little channels coming into the site
and then it's really cut off not only the flow through,
but it's cut off the flow of nutrients,
nitrogen or phosphorus, coming through.
The more sphagnum takes hold,
the more it creates conditions where only sphagnum can live.
Other plants are eased out leaving boggy musk egg
sitting on top of the peat bogs.
And once it's in that state it just will grow, the peat moss accumulates.
The only nutrients it gets are from the wind or from the rain,
and it just starts releasing acid,
starts lowering the temperature of the soil,
making the site more and more favourable to the sphagnum
and less and less favourable to many plants that can't tolerate the acid,
can't tolerate the low nutrients.
And a bog starts to form in the forest and grows out from there
until the sphagnum creates a mound.
So these raised bogs. The raised bogs or the pulses.
It's really an organic land form completely created by this moss
that is that high in its maturity.
That's amazing.
It's really beautiful in here, isn't it?
A fine feather moss, fine moss shag forest.
That's fantastic.
It's beautiful.
Like a giant carpet.
Lichen and all sorts of things peering out of the moss.
Yes.
Red squirrels have made this, this is red squirrel midden
and this is where they store their winter food.
It's amazing, and I think they've got some Jack Pines already in here.
Yes, indeed, yeah. They're starting to put it underground,
from the crop down underground, yeah.
And the whole mound is made out of shelled black spruce cones
that they've taken apart the cones to get to the seeds
and this is how they, their food source for, for all winter.
And so they go, they will actually go underground at some point?
Yes, when it gets colder than -30 Celsius,
the squirrels can't take that temperature
so they'll leave the treetops, go underground,
so it's a warning that if you're travelling in the woods
when the squirrels go silent and you're not seeing them any more
you know it's that temperature or colder.
Stand still, David.
David, I don't know whether you know but just behind you
there's actually a squirrel with a mouthful of cones. No kidding.
That's amazing. They really are busy, aren't they?
It's an important time of year for them.
How long d'you think they've got until the snow comes?
The snow'll come mid-October or a bit later
so they're down to under a month at this point.
They've got their work to do,
just like the beavers, mudding and building up their lodges.
I think we'd better leave them to it. Yes!
If the forest is a daunting and harsh place in the autumn
it's nothing compared to the long SIX months...
of winter.
No wonder European explorers were reluctant to come here.
Why would anyone want to penetrate this frozen wilderness?
Smothered in its winter clothes,
I find it a truly stunning and overwhelming place.
With temperatures of -40 degrees it's not for the faint hearted,
but anyone who braves the elements can guarantee a wonderland,
and somewhere, somewhere out there all the wildlife, all the moss,
all the trees somehow manage to survive.
It's a totally different place in the winter,
worlds apart, in fact, from the summer months,
but no less intriguing.
It's amazing to think just a few months ago
I paddled across this lake in a canoe,
now there's a metre of ice beneath me
and I can just walk across it.
It's a fascinating landscape.
In the summer you have the canoe and the canoe paddles,
in the winter it's the toboggan and the snowshoe.
This is the beaver lodge that I visited back in the summer.
They've obviously completed it and now it's covered in snow.
Somewhere out here was their food raft, I think just there actually.
In here the beavers can overwinter,
they can get access to their food under the ice
which prevents them falling victim to predators on the surface,
and the snow is their insulation. Snow is a strange material.
If I were to take my hand and put it into the snow
it's gonna come out freezing cold but actually snow is full of air,
and when it lies as a blanket like this
it provides fantastic insulation for anything underneath it,
including the beavers.
It's a wonderful place to be though.
It's fantastic to be able to come back to the same spot months later
and see it when it's got its winter coat on.
Wonderful.
This cabin is a personal pilgrimage.
The man who lived here was one of the first to understand
the need to protect our wild places.
It's odd that a place so vast should need protection.
Now this is a very special cabin.
I have to come here, I couldn't possibly come
to Prince Albert National Park and not visit this particular cabin.
This was occupied by one of the greats of conservation and one of my personal heroes.
He was an Englishman, a boy who grew up in Hastings,
called Archie Belaney, but he came to be known as Grey Owl.
He had this dream of living as a North American Indian
here in the North Woods and he made his dream come true.
But, perhaps, more importantly he wrote a series
of very important and significant works of conservation,
talking about the forest here, the wildlife
and the people who inhabited it.
His books were way ahead of their time
and they brought the message of conservation,
of a respect for nature,
into the living rooms of thousands of people all over the world.
It's a very special place to be.
It's very peaceful and it's very quiet,
it's very of the man.
When Europeans did start to explore this land
they brought tents with them.
Planning and preparation, as always, were the key to survival here.
There's no doubt this is a really pretty environment
and there's no reason why you can't camp here,
despite the cold temperatures.
But there is a lot to know.
You have to be able to read the conditions
and these conditions, this pretty snow, is pretty awful.
It's not good weather to be travelling in, you tend to sweat,
you get wet, and when you get wet you get cold.
So my intention now is just to show you
how you can put a tent up in these conditions.
I've come into the trees, not the ideal camp site here.
I'd like to have found somewhere with more firewood close to hand,
but there is firewood. But the trees are giving me good shelter
from the wind and that's a help.
First job is to tamp the snow down
so that it will freeze and give me a solid surface on which to work.
The snow covers things so quickly
you need to be very organised so that you don't lose things.
So in here I've got things like my shovel, my axe, my mother ship,
the big jacket I put on if the weather's really cold,
those sorts of things.
Try to keep your hands dry.
People who are new to the north learn the hard way
to keep their hands dry.
If your hands get wet in the snow they will get cold.
In the winter it's definitely not just a case of chopping down
a few trees and making a shelter.
You can never take this environment lightly.
You have to have wisdom and experience,
and with those it's perfectly possible
to live here comfortably, long-term.
I've come out to look for firewood.
Now if there were two of us one of us would come out
and collect all the firewood for the night
but when I'm on my own what I like to do is to come out,
have a little scout around first,
take back enough to get the stove going, to get a brew on,
then come back with the toboggan
to fill up with the other things I've found.
One of the difficulties in this environment is knowing
whether wood is dry and dead or green,
or even sopping wet and just frozen because they're all brittle.
There's a trick. If you take your knife or an axe
and you cut a sliver of the wood, put it on your tongue,
if it's damp,
there's moisture,
as it thaws on your tongue.
If it's dry it's like a piece of blotting paper, and that is moist.
I'm gonna have that small pine there for the moment.
I think that'll be perfect.
Well, that's a great feeling. I've got the tent up,
I've got the stove on, fire's going, and that is a very important thing.
When you're tired and you're cold it really raises your spirits.
I've already got some snow melting on there for a brew.
The key thing, though, is that with a tent and a wood burning stove
it doesn't matter if you're wet because you're gonna get dry,
that's the key thing.
In extreme cold, moisture builds up in your clothing
and your sleeping equipment and it's very difficult to get rid of that.
But in this tent even if it's -35 degrees outside
I know from testing it that with the fire going full on,
at ground level I get +28 degrees.
At the ridge, it's much higher and up there I'll hang all my clothes
and I get them dry and that's the key thing.
It means that you can continue going for a long period of time.
It's perfectly possible to sleep out even in very low temperatures if you have a big fire,
but eventually that moisture builds up in your clothing and you have to head indoors.
With a tent like this, you've got a sustained period outdoors without any problems.
In some ways it's easier to spot wildlife here in winter.
There are certainly less places to hide.
I saw wolf scat in the autumn but now I get a long-distance view
of a whole pack of wolves crossing a frozen lake nearby.
Fresh snow certainly makes following animal tracks a lot easier.
These predators can only survive
because there is actually enough food for them to prey on
so it's essential that even tiny animals can survive these winters.
In fact, the snow helps them.
David Henry is back to help guide me through this magical place.
The snow in the boreal forest is so fluffy, it's filled with air.
It's 90% air so the snow is filled with tiny little,
millions of tiny little air chambers which makes it excellent insulation.
Now ten minutes ago we buried a thermometer
right down next to the ground,
but outside it's -13 degrees right now.
Let's see what it is down there.
It's -4.
So tonight it'll probably get to about -25
but under the snow it's consistently around -4, the whole winter long.
Completely sheltered from the wind, and the mice and the voles need that.
That's the habitat they survive the winter.
In this very stable, slightly cold environment.
And the heat from the ground melts the first inch or two,
you get all this sugar snow,
so they have a little passageway next to the ground
that they move around in, nicely insulated for the winter.
David, there's a trail of a snowshoe hare, isn't it?
You bet, floating in that nice soft snow.
It is incredible how little they sink in. Yeah, yeah.
Astonishing.
Well, I don't know about you but I fancy a bit of a drink.
It tasted good this morning. Let's go and get a fire on, shall we? Yeah.
Good number of snowshoe hares in here, eh? Yeah, you can see them.
Yeah.
It's hard to describe just how cold it is here.
This looks like a good spot.
Yes, good, we're out of the wind.
The thought of a healthy fire and a cup of tea
is almost warmth in itself.
If we use this as a seat, eh? Sure.
If we clear a space here, put a fire here.
I don't know what the ground'll be like down there,
I'll have to have a look in a moment, and put a brew on.
That'll be good. OK, good. I'll go get the shovel out.
To make a space for the fire I need to clear the snow back.
Now you can use snowshoes but I've come prepared.
Oddly, a shovel is the one piece of equipment manuals rarely mention.
Shall I leave you with the shovel?
I can do some shovelling. I'll go and get some firewood. OK.
Nice bit of dead birch bark to start the fire, that's always helpful.
It's really nice working with David.
You can see he's used to being in the forest
cos he doesn't take his snowshoes off,
he leaves them on all the time. Very good.
For me bush craft and local knowledge make a wilderness come alive.
Some may say survival is just common sense
but if you can learn from the past, study the ways of the locals,
and adapt to the resources and demands
of the environment you're in, you have a head start over nature.
Think you can bluff your way through nature
and you are sure to come a cropper.
To hang the pot I could just put a branch straight across there
and just have a horizontal bar and hang it,
but my favourite way of suspending a cooking pot in snowy conditions
is with a tripod because it's much, much more stable
and so I've knocked one of those up quite simply here.
And it's good in, in the soft conditions.
It gives a greater degree of stability,
and control.
That's good.
And of course there's water all around, the snow,
I just need to make sure I collect clean snow.
If I was here any length of time I'd leave these long
so I can hang things to dry but we don't need that right now, so I'll just trim it off.
Whilst David collects the leaves from the Labrador tea plant
I employ the first nations tip of using spruce boughs
to provide critical insulation from the cold, freezing ground.
I reckon that looks like it's coming to the boil, doesn't it?
Yeah. Did you get some Labrador tea? I did, yeah.
If ever I needed a cup of tea, it's now.
It tastes a little bit like green tea.
It's not my usual choice of cuppa but it certainly hits the spot.
Oh, that's good and hot. Let that steep.
There are resources everywhere if you know where to look.
Well, let's try this, shall we? Sure.
They say you shouldn't drink too much
because of the strength of some of the chemicals
but it was very good for pioneers.
It was a source of vitamin C, wasn't it?
Between the choice between being cold and having hot tea
you can stand to risk a little bit.
Nothing like it on a cold day.
It may be a vast place, but it's a fragile one too.
The snowshoe hare is preyed upon by lynx.
In fact, they are completely interdependent.
It's typical of the mutual reliance of all things in this forest.
So, David, tell me about
this relationship between the snowshoe hare and the lynx.
Well, it's fundamental to the boreal forest.
The hares have just crashed over this winter,
so they're down again and it's usually the predators that drive them down
and the lynx is very important
in that along with great horned owls and coyotes.
The thought is now is that the hares ran out of food
in the places where there's good cover
and that drives them out in the open,
makes them more exposed to the predators,
and then the lynx and the other predators cause the crash.
And then they crash.
Yes, and then they crash, one or two years later then the predators crash.
And the other thing that a fellow in Alaska has researched
is that when some of the plants in the boreal forest
are heavily browsed by the hares
they put out new growth that has toxins in it
and these chemicals are in the plants for about three years,
that holds the hares at a very low level.
So how long does it take for the populations to recover?
Well, it takes about three of four years for the plants
to put out new growth that doesn't have these anti-hare chemicals in it.
And then the hares have a better food source,
they start having bigger litters
and we start the whole ten-year cycle again.
They start having three or four litters
and the population starts to increase.
And there are other animals that crash as well, aren't there, like the caribou?
Yes, the caribou, but that's a much longer cycle.
I think the thinking is it's a 40-year cycle
that the caribou build up and decline on that cycle.
But in a lot of the Indian cultures there are myths about starvation?
Ah, strong ones, yes.
This was a real and active thing that they experienced in the part of the world.
When the caribou were low or hadn't migrated
back to where the Indians were they'd go through these winters of starvation.
It just shows how everything from human to the tiniest of the rodents
is interdependent in this forest.
It's true, these strong cycles in the boreal forest just bring that out,
that everybody depends on those cycles and lives by those cycles.
I've really enjoyed these days we've spent tracking in the forest here.
I shall remember them, for a long while to come.
Well, you know, I've been enjoying this park for almost 40 years
and it's a wilderness of intimate experiences,
whether you're watching otters
or you're tracking moose through the forest,
it's just a wilderness that gives you great experiences.
And I would, I would certainly agree with you there. It's beautiful.
Next, my journey shows what finally drew Europeans
to this uneconomic backwater and turned it from a quiet corner
of human civilisation into one of the largest countries on earth.