Full spring marks the end of another trapping season in Alaska's bush country for Miki and Julie Collins, twin sisters who spend four months traveling 10 to 20 miles a day in temperatures ranging from 10 above to 40 below zero. Miki Collins is a handcrafter and writer as well as a trapper; the twin sisters have authored two books: "Trapline Twins" (Alaska Northwest Books), and "Dog Driver: a Guide for the Serious Musher" (Alpine Publications), with a third on the way from Epicenter Press. FOR PHOTOGRAPHS PLEASE CALL PACIFIC NEWS SERVICE.

LAKE MINCHUMINA, ALASKA -- There are virtually no jobs in Alaska's bush. People either work for the government, go on welfare, or are self-employed -- and that usually means trapping fur animals each winter.

Trapping may seem an unlikely profession, especially for a couple of women, but many people in this region depend upon fur money to survive. Each November, my twin sister Julie and I fight deep snow, frigid temperatures, and dangerous ice to set out traps for marten, fox, lynx, and other wild fur-bearers along 70 to 90 miles of trail.

We were born in Fairbanks, 150 miles by air from our parents' home (mother was a private pilot and geologist). Something in the wild air of the wilderness must have worked its way into our blood, because we have both lived in bush Alaska ever since.

During the trapping season (November through April) we travel 10 to 20 miles each day by dog team, often separately, and return each night to a tiny log cabin or canvas wall tent. Some years we must snowshoe ahead of the dogs through two or three feet of snow, which slows our pace to a crawl and slows our income even more.

To cover all the loops and trails along the trapline, we must travel about 135 miles. We do this as often as possible during the four-month trapping season.

The work is demanding, with four to eight hours behind a dog team at temperatures typically ranging from 10 above to 40 below zero, then we return to an unheated cabin, often after dark, and the day's work is not yet done -- we must light a fire in the wood stove, care for the dogs, melt snow for water, and tend to the furs.

Often I leave the tired dogs at the cabin to rest for a day while I ski or snowshoe a 10 or 15 mile side loop. Once in 40 below zero I carried a pint jar of hot cocoa wrapped in heavy socks -- after a few hours it had turned into a milkshake. I ate it anyway.

Trapping is rarely lucrative and always unpredictable. Like all good trappers, we carefully monitor our traps and pull them out at the first sign of a decreasing population. But, in spite of our light touch, we must deal with regular natural cycles.

Lynx, for example, are decimated when their principal food, snowshoe hares, are in short supply. One year there are lynx everywhere. The next, we may see a lot of tracks, but note they are made by only a few animals driven to endless travels by starvation.

Then we pull our lynx sets, even though many of the remaining big cats will die of starvation or be eaten by others of their own kind. Years may pass before another cat track crosses our trails, but then the hare population builds up and their predators follow and once again, soft, warm lynx pelts hang in our frozen porch.

Since our livelihood depends on the land, we -- like most hunters and trappers -- are fiercely protective of the wilderness. We fight roads, clear-cutting, public land sales, and other forms of human development tooth and nail.

Ironically, our wilderness income is driven by markets thousands of miles away. When our primary catch, sable (marten), became extremely popular in the late 1980s, we sold prime rabbit-sized pelts for $100 each. Five years later the USSR broke up and cash-hungry Russians flooded the market with stockpiled sable. At the same time, warm winters and animal rights protests cut deeply into the popularity of fur coats. Marten pelts plunged to an average $35, a 65 percent decrease.

A trapper lives a solitary life. My sister and I usually split up during each 10-day circuit. In that time I will not see another soul. That's the way I like it.

We don't get to a town from October to May. Mail is flown in to our tiny community, and we visit friends when we go to pick it up. National Public Radio keeps us abreast of world-wide events even at the farthest reaches of our trail,

Being a woman doing "a man's job" means putting up with skeptics -- "Do you catch anything?' they ask. But trapping requires more stamina than brute strength. I don't worry about what other people think and I've never had a fur buyer turn down my catch because I am a woman.

Income seems secondary when I head out into the morning gloom of a short winter day and the sun finally clears the majestic Alaska Range, gilding snow- covered spruce and casting diamonds across the snow.

Life on a northern trapline may be rugged, but nothing can undermine the unspeakable beauty of the land, the camaraderie I have with my dogs, or the inner peace at the end of each day , knowing exactly what I have accomplished and where I stand in the fierce natural world around me.