Identical twin sisters Julie and Miki Collins grew up in the vast, roadless wilderness north of Denali National Park in Alaska, spending their childhood in a community of roughly thirty people scattered around the shores of a large lake. After seven years of correspondence home schooling, the twin sisters attended high school and college in Fairbanks, studying biology and journalism at the University of Alaska. Then they returned to their family's homestead, where they continue to live a traditional Bush lifestyle, trapping for fur, hunting for meat, fishing, and growing their own produce. Julie ran the 1,000-mile Yukon Quest, Miki once entered the Iditarod, and the sisters bought their first Icelandic horse, Lilja, in 1986.