Looking back, Palin appreciates the many adventures she had with her parents and siblings.
"Once in the early '70s, the six of us went caribou hunting and we had stripped the meat and hung the meat overnight right near our tents," she recalled. "I remember waking up in the middle of the night to the bears scratching on our tent and Dad hustling us into the car, an old Valiant.
"We spent the night there, all of us crammed into that car, watching the bear taking our meat."
Another time, when she was in junior high, Palin remembers her father waking her for an early-morning bird hunt. Bleary-eyed, she got out of bed and followed Dad to a lake and got into a canoe.
"He'd get us up at 3 in the morning, and we were sitting in the canoe and I remember shotgun pellets plopping all around us," she said. "He'd say, 'Alright, just duck, don't worry about it. You're not going to get hurt; they're just pellets.' "
Early-morning hunts were commonplace with Chuck. Another time, he dragged the kids out of bed to go moose hunting before school. He got one quickly and began butchering it, while Palin, then in high school, assisted.
"As he was butchering it, he asked me to hold the moose eyeballs because he was going to bring them into the classroom that morning (for a lesson), and I just couldn't do it," she said. "He was really sympathetic."
Remnants of those many outings are captured throughout the Heath home.
On a wall leading downstairs to the family room are photos of the Heath family camping, skiing, running, hunting, fishing and boating. In one, Palin is aiming a rifle at a faraway caribou. In another, big brother Chuck is posing with a fish.
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