Original subtitles

This is it. It has begun.

God.

I hate this place.

This is bad.

I gotta get out of here. This is feeling like the toughest thing I've ever done

in my life. I guess I'm officially tapping.

Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. I'm finding all kinds of water in my tent.

I believe I hear neighborhood residents.

There's a bear outside.

Get out of here!

Who are you when everything's been split away?

Gary out here in Eastwood.

I have not had a serious meal in a week. If I can't get a player, then I can't

stay here.

It's always in the back of your mind. Well, I could tap out.

Putting up with a filming booth?

Running into a predator. It's not an if, it's a when.

Get the hell out of here. I see you. Get out of here!

I'm living a hand-to-mouth existence.

Yes!

$500,000 is a lot of money. It's just going to keep getting harder.

It's not the world that needs to change. It's me that needs to change.

Rained like a son of a bitch all night.

I woke up this morning to, Mom!

Mom!

Mommy!

And I woke up.

I'm looking around.

It was the geese flying in.

There you go.

Thought my girls were waking me up.

Today, the rain slowed down a little bit, but I know it's going to get worse.

I already set up a fire shelter, like a place that I can count on having a fire

every day.

Something that's dry.

So, I'm going to take this here ridge pole.

I'm going to carve in a couple notches into this tree.

And this tree, kind of like a divot notch. And so I can wedge it into the

tree a little bit and then tie it down with some fish string.

What I'm most scared of is after the adventure, after this is all done and

we all go home, I'm scared of what's next.

It's like, what's the next thing that's going to capture you the way this has

captured me?

You know, when I was home,

My mom brought up the fact that there is gypsy blood in our line.

Maybe that's where I get all this from.

The need to run, the need to go all the time.

Change of scenery, change of pace.

A new adventure.

I want to tell my kids that you can do anything that you want to do. I want to

raise.

strong women in this world.

Then I'm going to pull my tarp over, five foot up, and then maybe out.

Check it out.

If you think you can do it, try it.

If you want it, go get it.

I think that that's a huge lesson, especially for my daughter.

Our journey this morning begins.

Yay.

I do things a little differently. Whereas most people are probably sitting

around surviving, I want to keep active to try to stay sane.

I'm going to explore the area a little bit and go from there.

It's kind of ingrained in you in the military to just constantly go 100 miles

an hour.

You are prepared for what's going to happen. You know a lot about what's

going to happen.

I was in the Army for about 15 years.

Recently got out.

For the majority of that time, I was either a sniper or working down at the

sniper school.

There's a huge suicide epidemic in the veteran community.

I started noticing some of my friends that had gotten out of the military, and

they were having a real hard time transitioning into civilian life.

I came up with the idea of taking guys out on hiking trips. I think there's a

connection with nature there that can be really helpful, and to me, that's what

keeps me going.

All the years in the military, if you have one thing, it's going to be this.

So I have two blades. I have one just regular, and then the other one is

serrated.

Being in the military, you still have people around that kind of keep you

going, and you have a mission and a purpose to do together.

So you still have that human interaction.

Very few people have ever gone out by themselves, completely shut off from

everybody. For me, going out in the middle of nowhere, completely reliant

upon myself, it is that challenge that I've always wanted to put myself

through.

I'm going to head into the woods. I'm going to be looking for signs of some

sustainable food.

You never know.

I feel like if you...

Sit in one place, you might miss a whole lot of stuff.

I have a duck.

I have a little duck that's hanging out.

I don't know. I might leave him. Depends on how hungry I get. It might be dinner.

The bird up there is either trying to tell me something or trying to tell

everybody else that I'm here.

Life alone on Vancouver Island.

My goal is to be out here for the entire year.

So it's survival of the city.

I spent eight years teaching pilots and air crew members how to survive behind

enemy lines. You know, if they got shot down, what would they do to survive?

Once you get the shelter and the water figured out, firewood and food.

I plan to eat some seaweed this morning.

I want to show you the different kinds of foods there are on the beach.

There's this type of seaweed, seagrass.

You eat down at the base where it's white.

And it is quite sweet.

Very good.

I believe also you can...

Eat the rhizome.

And that's very sweet as well. Kind of like candy. I mean, it's so sweet.

Bull kelp has this long tail that goes

down and around and way off out

there.

You can eat the vine as well.

Normally you slice it into little rings, and then you cook it.

I'll have salt water that time.

So that is breakfast.

And it looks like we've got low tide.

So I'm going to go ahead and try and put up my gill net.

So I've got this freshwater creek flowing into the cove.

I'm going to put my gill net right out in front of it.

Perhaps that's the best place to put it. I'll find out.

Every day, that low tide, high tide transition, I'm going to look forward to

going out and checking my traps.

I really hope I get a fish in there tomorrow.

Looks like we should get out the tennis rackets and start playing tennis, right?

I'm going to go walk, see if I can find some more edibles this morning.

There's my seaweed spot.

My goodness.

Check this out.

It's a very large pile of bear poo.

One.

Two.

Three.

Four. That's still steaming.

Five.

Six.

I've got friends already.

And I thought I was going to be alone out here.

I've been looking around through the woods.

I have to look for the most sustainable food source.

And I'm not seeing too much as far as wildlife signs.

I don't see really any scrape marks on a

tree I just walked across.

We're going to start heading down to the beach, see what we can find down there.

The biggest thing I'm seeing right now, as far as resources go, is the inlet, is

what I'm thinking, that most of my food is going to come out of the water.

I don't see my little duck friend. I've got a duck that hangs out over here. See

if we can find him.

My duck somehow dead.

It's pretty weird.

I'm not sure what the hell killed this thing.

There's no bite marks, no blood.

I don't see any tracks.

So this is a pretty big decision.

On one hand, if something killed this thing that somehow infected the meat,

and I don't cook it well enough, and I get sick, that sucks.

On the other hand, if I get rid of it, because I can't leave it here, because

all it's going to do is attract cougars and bears, more than likely a cougar.

I'll get rid of it.

It's getting rid of a lot of meat.

So I've made my decision.

I'm not going to eat it.

That kind of sucks. I was really hoping this dude was going to give me food when

I really needed it and not have to waste food when I don't.

All right.

Mr. Duck.

Nice knowing you, bro.

And take care.

Do you have duck funerals? Is that a thing? I don't know.

Anyway, we're going to throw this dude out into the bay.

Hopefully he'll get drug away and not wash up on my beach again. That would

suck.

Yeah. Bye.

Bye, duck.

Wasting food is a huge thing because you're running on minuscule calories.

It's pretty disheartening.

But the risk of me potentially getting sick from some crazy bird flu or

whatever this thing died from, it's not worth it.

So here's a little bit of my hemlock

tea.

I have big plans for today.

Food is a priority.

I'm not a fisherman.

And the ocean is super abundant. There's tons of fish in there.

I just haven't figured out how to catch them yet.

So I need to go to what I know, which is the land.

Every single year, my dad, all my uncles, my grandpa, we would basically

go up to our cottage that we have in northern Michigan, and we would go out

hunting, and, you know, it was always just, like, so much fun.

Here he is in the senior picture.

We're going to miss him.

I think just as a young man, I was just... Not knowing what I wanted to do

with my life, I know that I loved being outside. I sort of had just a very, very

strong connection to the natural world.

Just being outside in nature does a lot for my spirit.

So how long do you think you're going to last?

Last one standing?

Hopefully.

I've never really been a conventional type person.

Currently, and for the last eight years, I've been working for a survival school

in southern Utah.

teaching sort of primitive skills.

And this is a huge test for me. You know, this is sort of like a culmination

of all of the years of training, like all of the books that I've read, all of

the going out and doing it and getting in the dirt time.

I want to look back on this experience and 10, 15, 20 years from now. And I

want to say like that experience definitely propelled me and helped me

grow and made me a better human being.

Experiences like this don't really come along that often.

Being able to procure food, I mean, is going to be the difference between me

staying like a couple of weeks and me staying a couple of months. So I'm going

to set up some traps.

So these traps are super, super simple.

Great for a game ranging from a mouse to

maybe a rabbit.

Dead falls themselves can be used to take things as large as a bear.

That'll loop around there.

The weight of the rock will be here.

So the rock will be pressing down on this.

And then there'll be a bait stick, which is running from your toggle

to... the end of the rock or the end of the log or whatever you have.

So what will happen is a creature will come up, pick off that bait stick.

That will cause the trap to trigger and then the rock to

fall and collapse on the animal.

So it's actually a very humane way to kill it.

In the forest, there aren't really any rocks.

So I have to make do with what I have.

And that's probably like, you know, 25, 30 pounds of forest.

So a pretty good amount.

And we'll see, maybe I can get something by the morning.

This place is very beautiful.

If you could live just off beauty, then you'd be pretty full here.

But unfortunately,

we need food to survive i need to figure out this food situation

i don't know if i'll have the energy to do this

What I intend to do is head over right away before the tide comes up and makes

it more challenging and difficult to get over to the gill net, check and see if I

have a fish.

There's the gill net.

I really hope I get a fish in there.

I see something dark out there, and, man, it looks like a fish.

Holy moly, it is a fish. Look at that. Thank you, Jesus.

Any more?

Oh, yeah.

There's a halibut.

There's another fish right there.

Three fish. Man, today has just been a stellar day. Three fish.

Come on. Thank you, Jesus.

I don't intend to eat all three fish.

I think I'd get sick from eating that much. I intend to cook them,

and then I'll bury it nearby here.

The only thing that could make this better is if I was in a restaurant

eating this with Barbara.

If you were going with me, we could share body heat.

Without you to help heat, I need this much bigger bag.

Barbara is just this kind, compassionate woman.

I am blessed that she loves me and likes being married to me.

Before I went in the Air Force, my two brothers and I, when we were 8, 9, and

10, we were sent to an orphanage.

I got kicked out when I was 15.

Those are really, really painful memories.

I have three children. I'm a grandfather by three.

When my daughter passed, she was only 10 years old.

That's going to work on me. And so my main motivation is I want to prove to

myself that I can deal with my painful past and hurtful history.

Just know that in those situations where I'm alone, without Barbara, those

memories are larger than they are ever at any time.

You know, it's work, and I hope that I can get through the tough times.

That fish is on the plank.

There'll be...

lean days and at that time i'll have these fish laid up in my hole in the

ground refrigerator i've got them stacked one on top of the other and

i've got that moss on them and that seaweed from down below and maybe mask

the smell the temperatures are are cool enough here that it'll keep for two days

but i don't think it would keep for longer than that hopefully that'll be

There for me tomorrow morning and some bear or animal hasn't dug it up.

I'm completely relieved.

My gill net caught three fish.

Hallelujah. Give me more. Give me more.

I am going to be eaten like a king out here.

Well, my trap was triggered last night.

I can't believe this.

Nothing.

It's both a good thing and a bad thing.

It's a good thing because they triggered the trap.

It's a bad thing because I'm definitely running pretty low on fuel.

I haven't really eaten any meat.

Just some mushrooms.

That's about it.

I'm so disappointed in myself right now.

But I can't let it get me down.

I have to adapt.

And that's really the name of the game of survival is just adaption. So

hopefully this works.

So I don't know.

I got to try something now. I got to try to make a living off the sea.

I mean, I just need to take advantage of as many food sources as I can.

I need to have my gill net out.

One thing doesn't work, then try another thing. And if that doesn't work, then

try another thing.

The land will show you and it'll teach you what you need in order to live out

here. But, you know, if you're not open to it or if it doesn't want to show you,

then it won't.

Maybe I just need to be doing something now.

I've got to get my beach working for me. If I don't start catching fish, I'm

gone. So I have a pretty big problem.

I can't believe this.

And I can't stay here.

Now I need to do the rest of my home here. I got to get the rest of this

protected. And so I just, I got to get after it here or I'm going to be

screwed.

When it rains really bad, I get all this stuff that goes inside my tent.

And being in this environment, your bones get cold pretty quick.

So I was thinking about making a front door.

If I do that, I can stay out here as long as I want to.

It's going to take a log and go across here like this.

So that covers that pretty good.

And I can still kind of see out if I need to.

It's not great seeing out, but it's a little bit at night.

If I go to about here, then I hang a lot of those ferns off of here.

They're long, and they'll go all the way down.

The ferns act like shingles on a roof, with the hopes.

that when it rains, it sheds off instead of inside of my tent.

Trying to see what's going on here.

See that?

I'm just tying her up like this.

Kind of weaving her in there.

Nice and thick.

The better my house is, the warmer I am, the safer I am, the drier I

am, the happier I am.

Put a few more in there. We'll call it good.

Look.

And I put it up here like this.

Pull it.

Wow.

Not too shabby.

I can still see out. See what's going on. Hello.

I always look angry.

Why is that?

I'm not an angry guy.

I just look that way.

I'm happy to be here. So why, when I look at my freaking face,

do I always look like I'm about to punch somebody?

I very rarely punch anybody.

Who are you when everything's been stripped away?

When everything you've relied on to have a sense of life or purpose or meaning is

gone?

How long can you live with yourself by yourself?

And as a divorced man, I guess I'd be figuring out that answer.

I am leaving behind my three kids.

I'm going to miss you guys, all three of you, terribly.

I wish I could take you guys with.

No.

You haven't literally wiped your butt with moss.

I was a pastor for 15 years in Brazil as a missionary. And my three kids have

been through so much. All the different things that have gone on in the last

couple of years. You know, the divorce and moving back from Brazil.

It's all been difficult to bear up under. Are you sure you want me to do

this? Dad.

This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

Your whole life has been building up to this, I feel like. If anybody deserves

this, it's you. If anybody's prepared for this, it's you.

I am not married. I do not have a girlfriend.

I am as free as a man can be at this moment.

Knowing that I have their support and the fact that I am a Christian, I am a

believer, I think it will be a strength.

You're going to do great, Dad.

I've been through all kinds of stuff in my lifetime, and when I look back on it,

I think, I wouldn't be the person that I am now if I hadn't gone through that.

In terms of immediate survival, you know, fire, shelter, water, I think I've

got that.

I could stay here until I starve to death.

But I've got to crack the code of beating myself out here. I just have to

do that.

I've got to get my beach working for me, which means I'm going to try and set out

a trot line here.

One line with a bunch of hooks on the end.

I've got some of that green rope that I salvaged.

And these are going to form the base of my trout line.

I think I can put four hooks on this, maybe three.

I should have baited these after.

I want fish.

What are the odds of me catching fish on that? I have no idea.

But if I can't make this cove produce food, I won't make it.

All right, I'm turning in for the night.

I'm just feeling some heart sickness.

It's a mild pain. It's not like excruciating. It's just a low-grade

feeling in my chest. And maybe I was

responding to something I ate, you know, all this new stuff that my body's not

used to.

But I don't think it's that. I think I'm just thoroughly, thoroughly missing

Barbara.

I felt this kind of heartache when I was in the orphanage.

And on Christmas, they would gather the boys around and

open presents.

And they never did call my name because there wasn't a gift for me there.

And I remember going to bed that night and the heartache.

It feels like that now.

They don't call this alone for no reason.

Miss you, baby.

My heart's heavy.

Coming out to check my trot line.

So much for a sunny day.

Somebody over there is getting a sunny day, but not me.

I've got four hooks in the water, and that's a good thing.

I'm banking on fish.

That's the catch of the day.

Some kind of gnarly-looking seaweed.

I've got to fix this thing and rebait it.

That was kind of depressing. I pulled it up, I got caught with seaweed, and I

lost one of my hooks.

All the crabs were gone off my hooks, though, so whatever...

Something down there likes crabs.

When you don't have anything to eat, you feel like you have nothing to show for

all that you've done.

If I don't start catching fish soon, I'm gone.

So I have a pretty big problem.

I can't seem to find my ferro rod.

Yesterday, after I got the fire, I usually set

it aside and then put it right in my bag when I'm done.

I was really tired yesterday and so...

I don't remember putting it in my bag, and it's not in there now.

But I was able to sort of rewind the footage

from yesterday, and I can see the footage yesterday right

when I got the fire.

I set the ferro rod down, and it rolled down the fire pit into the

fire.

So now I'm just sifting through the fire pit.

I don't know what happens when a rod cuts in a fire pit.

Does it just burn up?

I don't know.

I hope I can find it.

There's no way I can be here without a fire.

I can't believe this.

It's not here.

Nothing you can do about it.

And if I can't get a fire, then I can't stay here.

It's really as simple as that.

Day seven.

This is my girl.

Say good morning.

Good morning, Bowdoin.

Good morning, happy Greta Tuff.

Aw, isn't she cute?

Cute.

Bowdoin. She's giving you attitude. See that?

Hello.

So today is Greta's side. Put a picture out. It's Greta day.

I flip them over every day.

So one day I'll be Bowdoin on the front, and then the next day is Greta on the

front.

I'm extremely thirsty.

My goal this morning is going to be to get a fire started.

Fire must happen today for me.

I'm going to be a thirsty cat.

You got to raise my girls to be smart and strong.

Strong is huge.

Life is so short. You got to get out there and live. You got to listen to

music and you got to dance and you got to love.

My God, we're all going to die someday.

And then what?

What do you got to say for yourself?

You got up and drink coffee at the same coffee shop every day of your life? What

kind of a life is that?

I want my daughters to have that sense of adventure, you know?

And they just feel like, yeah, I can do that. I can go there and be that and see

that. Thank you.

Thank you, fire gods, for giving me fire.

Just when you're just about to run out of hope,

you just keep plugging away, folks.

Just keep working hard.

Never give up.

Only give up, only stop.

When your heart says stop, but never give up because the challenge is hard.

Does it literally take everyone else to fly on a certifier?

Is it just me?

It must be just me. It's got to be just me.

I can't lift my thumb. I can't lift my thumb. I can't lift my thumb.

I don't know how deep it is.

I'm so disappointed in myself right now, but I can't let it get me down.

When you're out here in the woods, it's just amazing how hard everything is.

Come look at it.

Getting collarbone.

I heard like a crazy noise.

It's a bear.

It's like a whining and a huffing and a sniffing right here at the back of my

head.