Alarm clocks, traffic, 9-to-5 desk jobs: Meet people who've thrown all that out the window and trudged down their own dirt road.

The solitude scares many, but the intimacy might be more intimidating. Living through a winter with another person in a tiny cabin is no small feat. And what about raising kids? 

In the middle of the country's largest national park, people live with animals large and small, and they also live with the weather. In a place like McCarthy, the outside creeps in. Because you depend on the resources around you to survive and because you can't even go to the bathroom without venturing outside.

People come and go. Others stay for years. There's no government beyond the state. And there's all different ideas of what the community really is or what it should be. Yet, somehow, it works.

What's progress like in a place surrounded by preservation, a place who's golden age is 100 years past? Technology, access, tourism: they've all brought change to McCarthy. Is there such thing as the good old days? If you could hold back the tide, would you?