Original subtitles

Hypothermia is a very real threat.

If I can't get warm, I'll tap. I miss the salmon run altogether, but I'm lucky

maybe I can fish offshore.

Finally, things are happening for me.

I'm trying not to think about tapping, and I'm thinking about tapping all the

time. There damn sure ain't a lot left, I can tell you that right now.

Very empty net. Nothing caught in it. I'm going to go check out where the

bears live, see if I can steal some food. I have a weird feeling that

there's a cougar over here. All right, yeah, I've gotten far enough.

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. If I can't get a player, then I can't

stay here.

It's always in the back of your mind. Well, I can 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.

Sun is actually out today.

In between clouds coming and going, but oh boy, that's good.

The night was cold here.

Actually quite cold.

The thing is with the humidity here, the chill factor is much colder than a

thermometer would tell you, I believe.

Anyway, mostly interested in finding some grub.

Some food to carry on a bit and see what the day brings.

It is really quite cold for kayaking.

The temperatures here are definitely making it quite uncomfortable to spend

an hour inside of the kayak with wet feet.

But right now, I'm starving.

I have to find those fish offshore.

See how it unraveled?

Now this here will unravel by itself.

The whole thing unraveled very fast, which means it's really honking deep

here. I'm going to set a smaller one now closer to shore.

Huh.

Interesting.

I see some sort of like a blue container that the high tide brought here. That

could be a major treasure.

Let me see if I can focus on that.

It's hard to focus, but there is a blue barrel of sorts. This is all

fogged up.

That could be a major score right there.

I'm already starting to think what uses it could have.

It's too cold being out on the water. So what I'll do now is pitch my kayak.

And then I'll go check that barrel.

Oh my goodness.

The weasel just ran right behind my back.

As in, reach down and touch a weasel right behind my back.

Both of them.

They could care less that I'm here anymore.

They might be minks. I keep calling them weasels, ferrets. I have no idea what

they are.

It's either a marten, a mink, a ferret, or a weasel. I think weasels are

smaller. These are quite large, like that big.

And now they're in there fighting with each other, yelling at each other. They

do that all the time. They squabble.

But you can tell they love each other because they're always out there every

day doing their thing, and they would never think of doing it alone.

Oh, that sun goes away. It gets cold here quick.

I've got to expand my hunting territory or my fishing grounds or whatever you

want to call it.

Until now, at extreme low tide, I was always headed out to the reef, and that

was my primary fishing area. And now I decided, okay, let me check out this

side of the cove and see if I can expand my fishing opportunities.

This is looking promising, folks.

This is like finding the Northwest Passage for me in terms of opening up

new territory to fish.

For fishing bait out here, there's nothing better than limpets, and there's

some really big ones out here.

To have that whole west side of the cove open up like that, it feels like I just

got a raise.

You're struggling along in life, and things are really tight and really

tight, and then all of a sudden you get a big raise, or you get a big bonus.

And, like, life kind of eases up a little bit. Oh, wow, we can go grocery

shopping. I can't fill up the tank all the way. Life just got easier.

Whoa, rainbow!

Check that out.

Oh, wow. Get the camera on that.

Can we get it? Yeah, cool.

Beautiful rainbow.

I think I'm going to move on.

I do have to take a look and explore further along this coast.

This tide pool, it's a deep one. It's like, you know, like four feet deep.

Oh, baby, I get to do some crabbing tonight. Cool.

Oh, man, when they're in the rocks like this.

There isn't a whole lot for them to grab onto.

Come on, buddy.

You know you want the limpet.

Got it.

Oh, and he's a big one.

Yes.

I see a big one right here.

See, he's in defensive mode now.

Look at the claws on you, buddy.

Come on, eat the limpet.

Got him.

Oh, and you're even bigger than the other one.

Yes!

This is like crabbing heaven.

This pond is the best thing I've found since I've been here.

And that's long-term what I need to keep me fed.

This is a pot full of Dungeness crab.

And I am happy.

Gotta get through the dog days.

The dog days don't mean anything.

All I'm doing is suffering.

Why are you suffering?

I'm trying to make life changes.

Why can't you just change without the suffering? I don't know.

Sometimes the good in life is right in front of your eyes.

But it takes a little suffering to see it.

Oh, my goodness.

I wonder what my wife's doing today.

The longer I'm out here for, the more I realize how lucky I am to

have a wife like I do.

Sometimes I kind of start to take for granted situations.

I try to not let that happen, but sometimes it does happen.

I really am going to try and do more fun things with my wife.

It's gotten into a rut where, like, every time I come home on Friday or

Saturday night, it's like I'm talking to people on the computer. I want to be

left alone.

And that's no fun for her.

I love you, Rachel.

I grew up with my wife, basically. I mean, we were 17.

It was always us against the world, you know, to sacrifice for the kids.

My son told me once that I was his hero.

He was older, too. He was like 21 or 22.

For going to work every day and supporting him and the rest of the

family.

Even though he knew how much I didn't like it.

It's an awesome thing to be called a hero from your kid.

It's an awesome thing.

I need to stop dwelling on, well, I wish I would have changed that or I wish that

this would have happened or whatever and start realizing that I did a pretty damn

good job and my kids love me for it.

And they turned out good.

And move on. Now there's a new aspect of my life. And that means paying more

attention to my wife.

And stop being so damn sad about having to go to work all the time.

It's just part of life.

Look forward to the little things in life.

Well, this is a big find.

A barrel with a net around it. It sure looks like it's been out on

the water for a long time.

I stand it up to help the draining.

Oh man,

look at all these muscles.

These are deep sea mussels. I wonder if they would have the red tide thing.

Just in case I'm going to collect them, get a plate of food right here.

I'm thinking this barrel must have come, it's been in the water for a long time,

must have come from a long ways out at sea.

My guess is that it would be, these guys would be less exposed to

the red tide thing.

Anyway, that's just a hungry man's theory.

Oh, there's another bunch of mussels here, okay.

These guys have to come to the refuge with me just in case.

The mussels, I'm pretty sure, are safe.

And if they're not, they may make me sick like a dog. I don't know.

This is a tremendous risk.

But that's the bush for you.

Anyway, back to the shelter we go.

And...

tossing what we have in the pot.

This is a very difficult decision, but when you go hungry so long, it puts a

warm plate of food in a completely different perspective.

I'm confident it should be all right.

I think it should be all right.

So here we go. I need the food.

Like I said before, life is risk.

Nobody survives it.

So bon appetit.

Last night, I did get a whole pot full of mussels out of the outside of that

barrel, and I just ate them.

I didn't get any tingly feeling on the tongue or anything like that, like they

say that's a bad sign and all that, so I'm confident that they were healthy and

free of any red tide contamination.

Absolutely delicious.

Oh, boy, that reminded me of Spain, a pot full of mussels.

That really reminded me of my country.

Anyway, that's the news from over here.

Happy and healthy, have a full belly.

Let's see what the day brings.

in the peaks.

So yeah, I guess winter is here.

And it feels like it. It's cold.

It's really cold. I keep going out and doing little errands like getting some

debris and coming back and warming my hands by the fire.

Going to get some firewood and coming back and warming my hands by the fire. I

keep doing that over and over because it's really cold.

Today is my youngest son's eighth birthday. birthday last night eight

years ago we were home and my water broke and

i remember going down and asking bo to babysit colton for the night because

dad and i were going to the hospital to have quinn and

it was uh yeah howdy came early this morning so

I'm missing his birthday.

I've never missed any of my kids' birthdays ever.

I hope you have a wonderful, wonderful birthday.

And I'm sorry I missed it.

And I was thinking about you.

I think about you and your brother every day out here.

Every day.

Wow, that's the first time I get the most of that. I miss my kids, you know.

Wouldn't. It's been gone a long time.

The salmon runs.

Drawn out.

So I'm not getting fish really much anymore.

That's getting to be definitely an issue. Something I need to focus on is

getting enough calories.

So now, time to go get some plantain and yarrow.

And then I'm going to be trying to come back and warm my hands to the fire.

All right.

There's yarrow.

See all the stalk sticking up. Oh, it's cold.

Lots of yarrow.

Plantain, where art thou?

It's all kind of yellow.

Yeah, there's plantain out. It's cold, but it's...

It's not looking very good.

Yeah, it's looking way past deadability here.

This looks frostbitten.

A lot of dead plantain here.

I don't know if I'm going to be able to harvest any.

Oh, yeah, this is all dead, too.

Oh, bummer.

See it, but it's all dead.

Dead, dead, dead.

I got cold.

Now I don't have those green food sources anymore, so it's not looking

very good.

I'm craving all sorts of food, but there's nothing left.

It's kind of a buff.

It's cold. It's rainy. It's windy.

The high tide is already in.

To get the low tide, I had to get up way early, and it was raining, pounding

rain, so I didn't do it.

So there you have it.

My camera's totally fogged over, I can see.

And kind of a crappy day to be here in Desolation Cove. It puts the desolation

in Desolation Cove, definitely.

The tide and the weather control everything that I do in terms of getting

myself fed or even preparing things for my camp. On a day where I'm locked in,

I'm kind of stuck in here just kind of biding my time and waiting it out.

My hands are numb.

Sometimes it feels like I'm just kind of putting up with it all out here.

And I don't like feeling that way.

I'm really looking forward to this tide cycle to catch up to low tide in the

morning and praying for decent weather to take advantage of it.

We haven't had a cold like this in the daytime since I've been here.

This is the coldest it's been.

See, this isn't like home where you can come in and get warm and do something.

Here, getting warm is the activity.

It is the thing that I'm doing right now. I'm getting warm.

And this is the only way I got to do it.

And I'm going to stay here until tomorrow morning.

Yeah, there's definitely a storm brew or something. I mean, there's definitely

some gusts.

So, anyway, I'm going to go hydrate and then just hang out in my

shelter.

Every day is so long here now.

Every day takes like 48 hours to get done with.

The novelty stage is way over with.

I really can't wait to get out of here.

It's a beautiful area, but when you don't have calories and you don't have

anything to do, it sucks.

A good book would do wonders for this place.

Yeah, I'd say there's a little bit of freezing rain going on out there.

It's almost like it's snowing. It's snowing.

I'd be interested to see how folks at shelter held up.

It'd sure be a shame if there were a few folks at shelter that got wrecked and

they had to tap early.

It'd be a crying shame.

Not my shelter, though.

I don't wish any evil or any bad on anybody.

But after shelter collapsed and they were okay, I'm

just saying.

Man, it's really going to town with the freezing rain stuff.

That's not snow. That's not rain. That's ice hitting.

Oh, yeah.

See, that's ice pellets.

So it kind of cracks against the... Dang, that's a lot of ice pellets.

The wind is bone-chillingly cold.

And seriously, the only thing left for me today is to get warm and stay that

way.

This place is like the ultimate fake-out when it comes to weather.

Not even 5 o'clock in the evening, and I'm down for the day.

Someday when I watch all this, I will be smiling.

I will be surrounded by my family.

I will be warm, clean.

physically fit, and eating ribs.

Yeah, it's weather like this that makes people tap out.

I think today I'm going to forage for some food because I need to get some

protein. It's not raining, so I'm going to put my boots and my gaiters on and go

up this back hill and see if I can get up there.

It was raining really hard last night, like all night.

I don't know what today is going to do. It's hard to tell. The weather here

changes so quickly.

I have no idea.

I'm going on a little hike to look for mushrooms.

My green sources have dried up, but mushrooms should be still here.

I'm going to hurt myself. I've got to watch where I'm going.

Let's see.

All right.

Come on, mushrooms. Where are you?

Under this big tree.

This may be just a waste of calories. I don't know.

I'm finding mushrooms, but I haven't found any edible ones yet.

Our one thing definitely not to be edible.

I love the deer fern. It's so pretty.

A lot of horsetail around.

That's all of this.

It's around. It's got the silica in it. It's really good for cleaning.

For getting my teeth clean.

The horsetail.

It works better powdered.

I can't get up that. There's no way.

Darn.

And I think the best, most likely scenario is for me to go, oh, there's a

huckleberry.

Oh my God, there's like this one.

It's so sweet and delicious.

Mmm.

That right there was worth it.

Oh, it's so good.

Wow. It's where I only found one?

Usually I find tons and I get this whole big thing of them.

There's nothing here.

I don't want to waste any more energy and calories.

So I think instead I'll slowly meander back to camp.

This is bad.

I'm not getting fish anymore.

And my green sources have really dried up.

Just one huckleberry, everything's gone.

I need to find food out here.

I think about my kids all the time.

If I don't keep myself busy, my mind wanders back to them.

It's been difficult.

I got some projects I need to work on today.

Make some pitch glue, because I'm out of that completely.

There are things that I can do to make my life better out here, and I have to

concentrate on doing those things every day and not get bogged down thinking

about things back home.

This is solid pitch.

This is like finding the mother load of gold.

Look at this.

This is an entire chunk of spruce resin right here.

And there's more of it.

It's got to be close to a pound of the stuff in here.

What a find.

What an amazing find to have a wet weather fire resource like that just

fall into your lap.

And I'm anticipating a lot more rain for the rest of the time I'm here.

I'm going to use this shell to melt the pitch and the coals.

And then with the shredded cedar, I can throw that in there and mix it all

around and make more fire lighter.

I really, really, really try not to dwell on the negatives of being here.

That just tears you to pieces.

Yeah, it's cold and it's wet and it's lonely.

Add in hungry.

I just have to suck it up and deal with what's going on today and make tomorrow

a better day.

Now today I made tomorrow a better day with this gigantic abundance of pitch.

And tomorrow I'm going to make the next day a better day.

That's enough fire lighter for weeks.

A lot of sleep in here, man.

It's just unpleasant out.

And there's nothing to do.

Wasting the day away.

Well, one good thing about today is it looks like my Paiute deadfall has been

sprung.

Let's check out and see if there's anything in it.

Oh, look at that.

Little mousey.

Squished.

Flatter than a pancake, baby.

I got to clean this boy up.

Oh, yeah.

A mouse? Back home, I wouldn't have eaten him.

Here, it's like, skin that sucker up. I'll slurp that sucker like a damn

popsicle. I'm just like, give me that sucker.

And believe me, I've been looking at the slugs, too. It's just, I don't know.

Some of them have, like, brain-eating parasites or some crap. I don't need

that. I don't have much of a brain anyway. I don't need something in there

living with me.

Hell, I'd have more voices than what I know what to do with then.

Little parasites talking back and forth.

Chowing on my brain.

This freaking place is getting old, man.

It's getting really old.

How much longer do I have to do this?

How much longer do I have to stay out here?

Next time I do this, I'm going to request a sunny spot.

Preferably with a lot of sand and drinks with umbrellas in it.

Screw this hardship stuff.

I am done with this.

Done.

I looked at my gill net, and there's nothing in it.

The frost is here, and my food sources have really dried up.

All right, it's limpet time.

It's harder to live off just limpets than it is off of fish. There's less

protein. You have to gather a lot more.

I'm feeling the changes in my body, and I'm definitely getting weaker with less

food.

therefore less energy expenditure to try and make sure I conserve those calories.

All right, that's done.

I'm still not feeling lonely, but definitely missing my family a lot.

I think it was the trigger was Quinn's birthday.

I mean, not like I haven't been missing him the whole time, but I'm really

starting to miss them more.

I'm still balancing really wanting to be home with my kids and kind of fulfilling

what I wanted to do here.

You know, I wanted to do this so they'll be proud. I wanted to do this for myself

and show that I can do this even with MS.

And I've tried to compartmentalize and just be here, you know, instead of

thinking of home all the time.

But it's getting harder to do that.

It definitely is.

I am thinking about...

When that time might come when I feel like I've accomplished what I've wanted

to accomplish.

When is that time the balance switches and I just really need to go home?

I'm so torn

It's day 56, if I'm not mistaken.

And a bit of a special day today.

In season one, this would have been the last day Alan was out.

So if this was season one, what that would mean is that I would get to see my

love today.

She would come here and we could get out of here together.

This being season two, I'm guessing it will still go on for a while.

Right now, I'm going to go out on the kayak for a little bit.

56 days.

I wonder how much longer.

I don't mind being out here, the cares of bush life and all

that, making do by yourself. I know how to handle all of that.

But I am somehow gaining such a tremendous deep

appreciation for my wife. I just miss her. It's something fierce.

So many things I want to say to her and I can't.

Can't call her, can't talk to her.

There's scarcely a minute that goes by without thinking how good I have it at

home and how blessed I am with a partner I have.

Which, of course, makes it harder. It would be so easy to just make the call

and be back with Shauna tomorrow.

There is the real temptation here to leave, just to be with my wife.

I came out here to prove to the world what skills I have and what I can do and

all that.

I'm satisfied with what I've done and what I've learned out here.

Sure. The big prize can help my family out, make things better for us in the

future, make things easier.

But I have put it into perspective.

I realize more and more clearly every day.

I already won the big prize, and the big prize is my wife, Shauna.

And getting out of here and going back to her arms.

is a big enough surprise for me right now.

That button to go back home is so tempting.

Feel sad leaving this place

Wow,

I did it I'm leaving this place

I need to get home to my kids, you know. But over two months I've been away from

them and I know they need me. I just feel it in my gut, you know.

I love it here.

I feel like I could just stay, you know.

Maybe most people leave and they're like, oh, but I'm happy here.

Living out in nature is kind of my thing, so it's been great.

Just so grateful for having had this opportunity.

But, you know, the pull of children.

You only get one chance at raising your kids.

And I just feel them tugging at me.

This has been my home for two months.

I built a home here.

It feels like home.

A lot of me really doesn't want to leave.

The wildlife is used to me. The birds don't alarm call when I walk through

because they know that I'm part of the ecosystem here.

I have this interaction with these bears where we'll all be out foraging

together. And we're all comfortable with each other.

I'm not just out here. I'm out here living with MS.

I happen to have MS, but it doesn't have me.

I feel my healthiest when I'm out in nature.

This is the best possible place that I could be.

I will always carry this place in my heart.

And I'm just so grateful for this experience.

But in the end, I found out what my limit was, and that was love.

Love for my children.

They need their mom back.

Pretty close to tap day.

It's close!

My whole gillnet is out there.

Oh, boy. It's going to be really hard to survive without it.

Oh, dinner.

The resources are really thinning out now. No hope in sight for a good meal.

The isolation is getting to me. I am lonely. I need a hug.