This spring, Animal Planet takes a journey deep into Alaska's bush, where naturalist and adventurer Billy Brown, along with his wife, Ami, and their seven children, chooses to live life on his own terms, connected to wild nature and bonded to each other. In the new series ALASKA BUSH FAMILY, the family of nine strives to be self-sufficient against all odds- often shunning modern society to live off the wilderness and to walk where no man has ever walked before.
After the tragic death of his parents and sister that left him orphaned at 16, Billy Brown vowed to live life on his own terms and create his own family to reclaim the love that he lost. With Ami by his side, Billy traveled the lower 48 states and eventually found home in the sprawling landscape of the last frontier, where they have spent most of the last 30 years raising their children. "Our family is doing what is natural for human beings to do. We survive on what we hunt, fish, trap and barter for," Brown says. "We explore, we wander, we live. If you think about it, it's the life we were meant to live." His family echoes his sentiments:
· Ami - "We figured out we didn't need modern society... we could live off the ocean and the forest."
· Matt (31)- "People are always saying we have some kind of accent. I don't know where it comes from. I guess it's from all the different people that live here in Alaska."
· Bam Bam (29) - "You go through the forest and then into the wilderness, and you just keep on going; when you think you can't go any farther and you've come to the very tip end of the wilderness, that's where the bush starts, and that's where nobody else ever goes."
· Bear (26) - "Our family is a lot like a wolf pack or a clan 'cause we stick together. We're like the three musketeers, actually. It's all for one and one for all."
· Gabe (24) - "It's not like we're backwards or cavemen even though our lifestyle can be quite primitive."
· Noah (21) - "We're all homeschooled, and even though we're in
The Middle of nowhere, we do get bits and pieces of the culture from the lower 48."
· Snowbird (19) - "Girl time is different in the bush. We don't just do our nails and play with dolls. We like to hunt, and we like to fish... "
· Rainy (11) - "My name is Merry Christmas Catherine Raindrop Brown, and people call me Rainy."
The freedom of life in the Alaskan backwoods comes with its fair share of struggles for this unique and close-knit clan. When they're not in pursuit of food, shelter and clean water, they're navigating more familiar and sometimes more demanding struggles of being a family from teenage dates to chores to be done to forgotten anniversaries to sibling rivalry.
That life can be tremendously challenging and often dangerous, exposed to wild weather and dangerous animals, carved from an untamed and rugged landscape. For the Browns, from the oldest to the youngest, it's entirely worth it all. As 11-year-old Rainy says, "It's freedom. There's not never-ending concrete. It's trees. It's free. You can do whatever you want."
Billy Brown is also an author who has chronicled his life in the book One Wave at a Time and has written several children's books.
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