It is the nearness of death, the always present consequence, that at least in part gives significance to the Alaskan life. The Eskimos know this. On the spring ice or in a very small boat in a very big ocean, you must do right whatever it is you're doing-sealing, whaling, fixing a suddenly dead outboard in heavy seas. You learn to do it right before you try to do it at all. No trial and error here.
Life is too precious, the world too dangerous, the consequences of a mistake too irreversible.
It's as simple as that. It's just like shooting the rapids in a canoe, reading the white water in the clear sweet Chena river, flowing down from the hills north of Fairbanks into the big, glaciated, serious Tanana. What you do matters, your skills count. Or you can misread a turn, look away from a sweeper, go the wrong way around the rocks, and then you lose the canoe, you lose your gear, and maybe more. And I do like that.