Original subtitles

Oh, yeah.

Dungeness crabs. I love them.

Yes, that's number six.

Woo! Hi, sweetheart.

Woo! I've been able to catch so many fish. I do not need more salmon. We're

going to let you go today. Woo!

My surf line caught me this today. And now my bayou deadfall is down again.

Bazinga! The kayak is finished, but it's very unstable.

I can help myself out with an outrigger to stabilize my boat. It's working fine.

Now we're talking.

Who are you when everything's been stripped away?

Scary out here in these woods.

I have not had a serious meal in a week. I can't get a fire and I can't stay

here. It's always in the back of your mind. What? Tap out.

Putting up with a filming boat?

Running into a predator is 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.

Very,

very happy the boat is working as well as it does.

The outrigger is a success.

It stabilizes the boat. It's basically right now quite difficult to capsize it,

even if you try it. So maybe I'll cross to the river and check out to see if

maybe the salmon are running. Hit that salmon run.

But still, it costs energy to get there and back.

I only have some food for the day or so.

I have to find those salmon and have a steady income of food from the ocean.

There's a leak.

There's a leak.

I hope I didn't puncture it already.

Yeah, like an inch and a half of water in here already.

In half an hour, that's going to be good.

I think I need to go back right now.

Can't have that.

Yeah, there's water in here.

I don't even know how or where, but on the side there, she got punctured.

Every time there's another problem to solve.

Oh, God, yeah, there's a hole.

There's a hole there, and that's probably it.

That's all it takes.

I'll do some tests, but I think I could try to patch it.

Lift tarp is very heat sensitive, so you can't really do it very hot, but it is

repairable. The black plastic I have here with just the right amount of heat

can seal the little hole as long as it's not too hot.

It set me back on my plans a little bit though.

This is my limpet song.

This is my limpet song.

Making fun of Lucas is wrong.

But this is my limpet song.

I am very, very happy that I discovered that I can catch crabs with a hook and a

line. And I can't tell you how much that means.

To have a tangible, visible, repeatable source of food gathering.

I'm going to grab my fishing pole and see if I can get some crabs and some

fish today.

And I'm pretty sure the tide is still going out, which is a

good thing.

All this fishing is reminding me of my dad, you know, and our family had a

house at the beach on the Jersey Shore in Point Pleasant, and we would go down

there every summer, and my dad was an excellent fisherman.

Those early childhood memories are coming back to me really strong.

I caught a fish.

It's not a big fish, but there's other ones down there. I'm going to try and

catch some more of them because I get to eat fish stew today. I'm a happy man.

But that's not much of a landing pad right there.

I'm just so afraid of falling in. That water is frigid.

I have to be really, really careful.

How good you are at wilderness survival can very well come down to how well you

can walk on slippery rocks.

Yes! Oh, come on, get the line.

Yes, and he's bigger than the other one.

Yes, look at that. That's two large fish. I'm not done.

I am not done fishing.

So I'm going to leave these guys over here.

I think I'm going to move on.

I'm going to go back there and try and get yet another one of these.

Come on. You love the Olympics.

Got him.

Look at this bad boy.

That's going to be a good meal.

Time to pack it up.

Oh, come on.

This is a tragedy, people.

I get my third fish over there, come back, put him on the stringer, left the

stringer with my tripod up here on the flat, up on the flat part of the rocks

up here.

Stringer's gone with both my fish.

It's not here.

It is gone, gone, gone.

There is no way that fish wiggled all the way from here up on the flat all the

way down there in the water.

I'm thinking something came by, swooped down, and grabbed him.

Well, I wasn't looking.

Man, I can't believe that.

I have one fish now.

Rather than a three-fish stew, it's a one-fish stew.

And I still don't know if they got back in the water, which to me is

inconceivable.

Or if some giant bird of prey swooped in. A raptor, that's it. A raptor came

in, swooped in, and took off. A bald eagle.

That's what it was.

Yeah, when I wasn't looking, a bald eagle came in and took my fish.

Both of them.

Because up here, they're not the national bird. You know what I'm saying?

They have no love for us Americans.

American eagles now down south.

American eagles. No, that's an American. I'm not going to steal his fish because

he's a patriotic man. He's proud of his country and I'm his symbol.

Up here, these Canadian eagles, they don't know who they are. That's what it

is. They just don't even know who they are.

And they'll do things like that.

They'll swoop in and steal your fish.

It's a beautiful day right here. I'm just watching the tide go out.

Ooh, the sun. The sun came out, which is really nice. So I'm just going to sit

here.

I've got a couple of sit spots here.

A sit spot's a place that you go every day and you just sit.

If you don't have a place in nature, it could be your front porch or your

backyard, as long as there's birds around or trees around or something like

that, and animals and everything around that.

They all get used to you.

I haven't heard any salmon going up this river since that one I caught with my

hand. So I think the salmon run is just about dry. So this is my last chance of

catching fish.

My friend the seal is out here.

What you doing, little seal?

Huh.

The harbor seal seems to be fishing in my fishing spot.

I wonder if there's not something in that gillnet and that seal is fishing

it. Or maybe it's just there randomly. I mean, it's been there before.

It could just be hanging out there.

Seems to like it right there.

I need a fish today, you know.

So I'll try and redeem myself from my dismal performance yesterday of losing

two fish.

Try to get something to eat again today.

I'm really, really, really stoked about the possibility of getting a large crab.

I mean, some of these crabs, these big Dungeness crabs, they have claws that

rival lobster claws.

They're huge.

They rival lobster claws.

Giant.

So, yeah, that's what I want to do today.

I have caught crabs out here. I can do it again.

Now, being able to crab also is contingent upon having dead fish.

I need a fish head or two.

It's not like you can just go down to the fish market and say, hey, do you got

any fish heads for crab bait?

And they're like, yeah, here.

I'm going to try everything I can think of to get food out of this bay.

Basically, that's what my job is right now. It's to experiment with new food

-producing devices, methods, or game plans for getting proteins, eat food,

out of my bay and into my body.

Yes.

Gotcha.

When I was a kid, we used to get blue claws. We'd just take a fish head and

tie it to a string and drop it in the water, and then you'd just wait. And if

you had two blue claws on the same fish head, you could just pull them up.

Yes.

There you go.

Fish number two.

I'll eat one, and I can use the other for crab bait.

Crabbing, that's the order of the day.

See if I can get some crabs the old-fashioned way with a fish head.

It's an experiment.

And if it pays off, I got a giant crab in the pot.

So, yeah, I'm going to try it.

Now, the idea here is to tie on the fish head.

All right, now, the whole idea of this thing is the crabs will grab onto this

thing, and then you can pull them out of the water.

Really not that complicated.

But they've got to sit there for a while so that the crabs can

figure out that they're there.

I lost my line.

Dang.

Oh, I'm just filling.

Oh, my goodness.

And I lost my line.

Dang.

Oh,

I'm filling.

Oh, baby.

Oh, slipped on the rocks.

Oh, baby.

Oh, my goodness.

I just took a dunk.

This went in up to my waist.

Oh, my goodness.

All right, all right, all right.

Yeah, I get to go home now and make a giant fire and dry everything I own out.

I lost my heavy monofilament line when I got dunked. I'm not happy with that

situation at all.

Hypothermia is a very real threat.

I mean, I'm feeling the cold right now.

And I'm not going to risk my life out here for any personal goals or...

Any amount of money.

I'm going to get in my sleeping bag because I am cold. I'm really getting

chills, body chills right now.

My clothes are off, still slightly damp. I can feel that.

And I know if I stay in here long enough that they'll dry just with body heat.

But I've got to get warm.

All it takes is one stupid decision on my part and I can be out of here.

Because there is no backup for me.

There is no one to help.

The most amazing resource you have in a survival situation is that other person

who is there.

Therefore, the people in your life, you know, they are the most valuable asset

you have for getting through life.

I don't have that right now.

I am alone.

I don't know.

And it's possible that I can tap out.

I could.

I mean, I really don't want to.

If I can't get one, if I really am at risk of hypothermia, I'll tap. I know

it. So I've got to, got to, got to keep one.

Good night.

i caught a fish it's uh low tide and i'm gonna go check my gill net but i was out

at the point and i saw this chum salmon swimming in the shallows and there's

nothing in my gill net that i could see and i saw this chum salmon swim and i

really almost wanted to jump into the water and grab it

And then it got caught in my gill net. I watched the whole thing.

Probably about a couple of hours ago it got caught. I just had to wait for the

tide to go low enough for me to grab it. So it's in there, and I'm going to go

get it.

Oh, my God, are you kidding me?

Sugar.

Oh, this is a bummer.

So I had a lovely salmon, and you can see here.

Just part of the head is in my net. Not even enough that I could, like, take

part of the head off and eat it. Like, the seals ate every bit of this thing.

See, they really saw this lift.

It's about competition now. The seals know that I've got a gill net.

I need protein.

Fighting the seals for food is going to be bad.

Last night, I spent a lot of time here by the fire repairing that hole.

She is stable, which is fantastic.

Everything here takes longer than anticipated. The boat took 19, 20 days

to build and patch and fix.

She's a good boat. We'll just be extremely careful putting her into the

water, taking her out, still stubbornly wanting to go out around the corner,

check out that creek, catch the salmon run.

I'm just wanting to find big amounts of food.

If I can reach a salmon run before it's over and harvest the greatest number

possible of salmon, however many, the more the better.

I'm very happy to see the boat finally really seaworthy.

As far as sailing, she goes.

beautifully well.

Listen a little bit to the sides.

Hopefully get to places and find some abundance. I'm starting to really need

it.

I... on around the corner, I'm seeing a lot of seabirds over there. That is

exactly the sign I was looking for.

Okay, here we are.

I did reach the fabled river.

I see just a few salmon carcasses here on the banks. I don't see any

salmon going up the water.

I don't see any black bear sign either, which would be another thing to be

expected if the run was happening.

And yet there's a bunch of seagulls here, and there's a bunch of eagles.

This right here is a kind of shallow place where it would be ideal to just

stand here with a hook like this.

Grab them.

But I don't see them.

Here is one of the carcasses.

I could have missed the whole thing.

Well, I haven't been filming much today. There really hasn't been a whole lot

going on.

The boredom is starting to set in now.

It's pretty boring to just sit here and tend the fire, which it keeps me busy. I

mean, it's less boring than other things I could be doing, which is basically

nothing.

Now it's starting to rain.

I need to find something to do, man, because I'm bored.

Ain't nothing going on.

Well, I'm on my way to making a spoon.

We'll see how it works out. I'm not the most crafty guy that ever walked the

face of the earth, but I'll do the best I can.

The hard part here is the calorie gain.

I could be doing a lot of things, but you want to try to not do very much, but

on the other hand, you're just bored out of your mind.

Well, there's a knot right where I... Jeez, a whiz, man.

A freaking knot.

Damn it.

I'm at the point now where I'm going to have to really start conserving energy.

I've still got energy to do stuff, but it's going to take its toll on me for

too long.

I've got to just focus and make sure I don't hurt myself.

I don't know, man. It's tough. It's tough without the calories.

All I'm doing is just taking the point of my knife and just trying to slice

little slivers out of this bowl of this spoon.

I feel pretty good doing these little minor tasks because I'm not really doing

anything. All day long, I'm not really doing anything.

Keeping your mind busy really affects your emotions, even with the lack of

calories.

It keeps your attitude up.

I like it, man.

Hell yeah.

It's not bad for a few hours work.

I got limpets and periwinkles and stuff.

I'll be boiling in no time.

These are the dog days, man.

I mean, I've done everything I've come out here to do, and now it's just trying

to suffer through.

If there wasn't that big prize at the end, I'm not sure how many people would

have stuck it out this far.

I know I'm not sure I would have.

Of course, that's kind of key right there is having a fire, having something

to do.

My mind is fully occupied by keeping this fire going.

It was occupied earlier by building my spoon.

If I'm just sitting here looking at the rain, it makes it tough.

This is the stuff that will pull me through here, man. If I can keep my

freaking mind busy, this is the stuff that can pull me through.

Stop. Let's get moving.

look at my net because the tide's low enough.

But hopefully, knock on wood, I'll catch something.

Let's see.

Did I catch something and the seal stole it? Or did I catch nothing?

Oh.

The seals got into my net and ripped a huge gaping hole

in it.

Oh, man. Those seals.

Yep, there was something here.

And the seals got in and tore my net apart.

This is a hard net to break.

The fish can't break it.

There is just no way.

All those seals.

What am I going to do? I'm going to battle with the seals. Like, I can't get

my fish.

I'm going to have to try and repair it.

This net's kind of like one of my lifelines, you know.

I really rely on this net to be able to get me food.

The seals are taking that directly out of my mouth.

So if I'm not able to get food on this line, well, that's not good.

So I'm moving it up, taking this whole thing out and moving it up.

That's a big deal, moving the gill net. It's going to expend a lot of calories

and time, but that needs to get done.

I am not happy with the seals today.

Not happy with you, Seals, wherever you are?

Boy, we're competing, that's for sure. It's hard for Seals and I.

You know who's winning?

They are.

Thinking through my situation, what it is.

Yesterday it was frustrating to reach that creek and see the salmon carcasses

there. I missed my big window of opportunity while I was building the

kayak to reach that window of opportunity.

I've had a good talking to myself about the options of this place and the

resources, where the abundance is.

The salmon are hit and miss. I certainly was hoping to hit.

I don't think I want to put all my eggs in that basket, and I've been too

stubborn about that, I believe.

I've been using an approach that I tell my students not to use, which is trying

to push my idea on the bush.

The thing is that...

The waters here, just judging from the amount of seals around, are very, very

rich. I want to try and learn how to fish offshore and spend more time right

here in these coves near my shelter, minimum energy expenditure, and try to

see what I can catch.

Today I want to concentrate on making a proper jigging stick to fish from the

kayak.

Years ago, I spent the winter with the Inupiat Eskimos in northwest Alaska.

Wonderful people, the Inupiat.

I have very fond memories from that time in the native village of Kotzebue.

I saw a type of jig they use, just a bent branch basically.

It lets you store lots of thread on it and deploy it easily.

So it's the next best thing to a modern fishing rod.

I spend quite a bit of time in the forest just looking for the right stick.

So after a lot of searching, I found one that I think can do the trick.

I just try to make things beautiful, besides useful.

Scratch out some beautiful lines. Make it a little bit animal-like.

Make it so that the objects that you use, everyday objects, become

meaningful.

These little things that are emotional assets, they can carry you. If it's a

rough day, that can be just the difference between wanting to leave or

willing to go another day, maybe another few days, and then conditions get

better. Who knows?

There we go. This guy is ready for traveling. Got about 50 meters of line

on. There should be plenty of them.

Missing the darn salmon run was frustrating and discouraging, but it

made me realize that maybe I was being too stubborn with just one plant. So I

want to diversify a little bit more.

Listen, listen to what the bush, what this place has to say. Maybe there is an

extreme abundance right here at my feet in the cold.

There is other ways to get food here, and it's maybe right in front of my

door.

And I'm learning bits and pieces every day.

Every day there's some new thing that I'm realizing about the tides, about the

winds, about the currents, about the forest.

Each day has its own rhythm dictated by the land, and I just try to adapt to it.

Look at this fantastic fish.

Oh, my God.

Finally, things are happening for me.

Finally. Oh, thank you.

Thank you. Finally, all this effort.

I'm so glad.

Make a big difference.

If the fishing continues the way it was today, I don't see a reason to leave.

Good morning.

Today, what's on the agenda for today?

I'm going to start cooking early afternoon.

I've got a bunch of limpets to add to my stew.

So that's going to take a little bit of a fire because I want to boil it for

about an hour.

Boil some of the liquid down just a tiny bit, thicken it up.

Nothing really to do for a few hours, so I'm just going to cut some wood.

Keep my mind occupied.

Every day, I've done the same routine.

Wake up in the morning, process firewood.

Check my lines.

I'll check my traps.

If I catch food, I process them.

Make a fire.

Get me a rolling boil.

And then I'm cooking.

Eat dinner.

Grab my tea.

And then waiting and waiting maybe three, four hours for darkness.

So just crawl in your sleeping bag and go to sleep.

Every day that I spend here, nothing's different.

It's boring.

As soon as I get bored, I start wanting to work. And as soon as I start wanting

to work, I start cutting wood again, exerting myself a lot, burning calories.

I got enough frickin' wood here for ten days, probably.

The length of the days are really starting to get to me. I'm just trying

to get the day over with.

They're really lasting a long time.

I am wore out.

If you look up wore out in the dictionary, my face is right there, just

like a mugshot, just wore out.

It's a struggle to get out of bed in the morning.

I just don't feel like getting up.

What's really irritating me is time.

Every minute is dragging by, barely moving.

Tick.

Tock.

Tick.

Tock.

I don't know what to do with myself.

Just sitting here watching the world go by.

After a while, there's just not very many redeeming qualities about this

place.

I just feel like I want to crawl up in bed and not get back out again.

All I do is go to sleep, dream about food, wake up and be like, oh, that's

right, I'm here.

I'm still here.

How many more days, man?

How many more days of this?

How long can a person go out here?

It's getting tough, but I still don't want to go home. I want to stay out

here.

I want it to be over.

I don't want to suffer anymore.

But unfortunately, I might have to suffer a lot more.

So here's the deal.

I finally did break down a little bit and start crying.

And I'll tell you why.

Yeah,

it's hard out here.

Not for the alone thing.

I thought maybe I'd get in my head with my demons and my own issues back home.

But that's not the case.

It's just freaking hard, man.

it's freaking hard eating a freaking sea snail and calling that dinner and Doing

it over and over and over again I'm trying not

to think about tapping and I'm thinking about tapping all the time You have to

keep freaking plugging away keep plugging away. You always have to just

give it your all Give it all you got man And that's what I'm struggling with is

giving it all I got because there damn sure ain't a lot left, I can tell you

that right now.

So I moved my gill net and the seal is still eating my fish off my line and off

my gill net.

Calories definitely the last couple days have been down without having any fish

and only relying on the limpets.

I've cut my energy expenditure down to try and conserve calories.

Feeling just a little bit off.

I'm a little spacey feeling.

really light-headed.

The salmon run is almost over.

Yeah, anything left.

It's a sort of game, like the seals have their niche, and the bears can also eat

it in the river, and they can also eat it in the higher intertidal area when

the tide is out.

So the bears and the seals aren't really competing. They don't really overlap.

Well, I am right in the middle, so I'm competing with both of them.

Yeah, very empty net.

Nothing caught in it.

I need to eat to sustain myself.

You know a good survival strategy?

Scavenging for food.

If the seals weren't stealing my food, I'd be fine.

Scavenging is a great survival strategy.

Lots of people use it. Maybe not in our culture, but it works.

All right, I'm going to go check out where the bears live.

I mean, they come here, but they're Main River.

See if I can, uh...

Steal some food from the bears.

Because, you know, hey, if they're done with their carcass, I'm cool eating it.

Yeah.

See the path on the right side of the screen?

That's a bear path right there. That's how the bears get down.

I'm going to take their path.

See you later. Wish me luck.

We all scavenged some food. I'm going to go take this bear trail.

Look at that.

Someone's been eating well.

If there's anything left that the bears have been eating that still looks decent

enough that I can chop it up and put it in my frying pan, I'm eating it.

Hello! Human coming!

I'm, like, on their trail, so I want to let them know, because it's a mom and

cub.

I just want to let them know so I don't surprise them, you know? I want to make

sure they know they're coming.

That's when they do things like chars.

They're on their tree. Oh, yeah, there's salmon.

I'm not going to eat that piece. Yeah, it's not big enough.

Oh, no.

Human timing. Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop.

I've got a weird feeling a cougar over here.

Huh.

i just feel like back in the others it's really strong feeling a mountain lion

i have pretty good senses right in here somewhere

all right yeah i feel like i've gotten far enough here i'm worried that

predators keep stealing my food and i'm hungry and to eat

all i'm doing Why are you suffering?

Why are you suffering?

I'm trying to make life changes.

My green food sources are freezing, I think, with the weather. That wasn't

very good.

There's ice falling out of the sky. The wind is bone chilling.

It's weather like this that makes people tap out.

Oh, man, look at all these muscles.

They may make me sick like a dog. But life is risk.