Original subtitles

♪ ♪

I got a fish!

Those lines out there are actually going to do some good.

Fresh fish is a pretty amazing resource to have.

No joy on the fish basket.

There's nothing in there.

Sometimes you don't always like what you see.

Maybe you need to change some things.

I can't believe this is happening.

My net is gone. Oh, my god.

This is very bad.

If I can't produce any fish, I'm done.

That looks like a tail.

Mousey feast.

Not a task for the feint of heart.

This is gonna be a bitch.

We have to film it, and we're totally alone.

Nobody knows what it's like here

except for the ten guys out here doing it.

Time to get shelter.

There's nobody here but me.

It's just so hard doing this alone.

I'm scared to death right now.

I feel like I'm starving.

Pretty sure I just saw a cougar.

Oh,.

The last man standing wins $500,000.

I don't want to go home. I want to win.

This is the chance in a lifetime,

but it's not worth dying over.

♪ ♪

I'm going to do something really risky.

I'm about to pull down my structure

with the idea that I'm going to build a yurt

within the next day or two.

So, insane.

But I'm just going to go for it.

That's how I work best, is just having a goal

and just breaking it out and busting it up.

So what you're about to see

is me deconstructing this thing

and having an open shelter.

And go.

♪ ♪

Why would I even want to move?

Moving could bring greater access to resources.

That's really what it's all about.

The First Nations people lived down by the sea,

because you have fish year-round in the river

and then you have all the fish

trying to swim into the river, like the salmon.

If you're living out in the wild,

you want your walk between your daily needs

to be as short as possible.

And so I'm realizing

that maybe my camp isn't in the best spot.

Food isn't close.

♪ ♪

I'm just tired of hauling stuff up and down that hill.

♪ ♪

First load,

one of many.

♪ ♪

A move is a big deal.

It's a huge deal energetically, emotionally.

It amps everything up.

I've got to be able to establish a safe place

to rest my head for the night.

And I got to hope for good weather.

I could go over there and be hit with a storm.

But there's food over there.

I got to go where there's food;

otherwise, I'm not going to make it.

♪ ♪

So, folks, this may not look like much,

but this is the future site of my yurt.

Right now, I'm going to clear out an area,

find a nice circle space that's about eight foot in diameter,

except I have a low-hanging branch.

This guy right here is right in my way,

so I'm going to climb the tree and drop it.

A little dangerous, considering I'm the only person out here.

♪ ♪

So I've got about four or five hours to make something happen.

♪ ♪

Whoa.

About took off my leg.

Good thing I had points of contact

and moved real fast.

Cat-like reflexes.

♪ ♪

Okay, now I have this space above me clear,

which is huge.

Now I can do some of the work that I really want to do.

♪ ♪

You know, how I feel physically here is tired.

There's a lack of simple sugars and carbs here.

And it's amazing how having sugar in your body

changes your chemistry.

Working on just proteins and fats, I feel slower.

Walking up a hill is like,

"Oh, my gosh, this is, like, the longest hill in all the world."

Moving around is a little bit

more sticky and tricky, for sure.

The energy isn't there.

bird chirps

Yes, little birdie, I'm making a house.

I will be your neighbor for as long as I possibly can.

And hopefully, one day,

a bunch of people in a boat will come and get me

with oatmeal cookies, my girlfriend, and pumpkin pie.

I can't operate without sustenance in my body,

doing the stuff that I'm doing.

Like, I'm out there swinging an axe

with my head reeling

because I haven't put enough calories in it.

That's dumb.

♪ ♪

I feel a lot better today.

Well rested, no rain.

But you probably can't see it;

it's snowing ever so slightly.

Snow!

Not very much, though.

♪ ♪

Very cool.

♪ ♪

Anyway, I'll probably work on more traps today,

'cause that's--I mean that's how you get food out here.

Let's go ahead and check, uh-- check the traps out, actually.

♪ ♪

Let's go to trap number one.

♪ ♪

Dang it.

Nothing.

Oh, well, can't win 'em all.

Let's go to trap number two.

Definitely went off.

♪ ♪

Moment of truth.

♪ ♪

Huh, wind must have blown it over.

Let's check trap number three,

which is basically right by it.

♪ ♪

Hey, hey!

We got something.

Maybe one little mouse, but, hey, that's food, so...

♪ ♪

It's a trophy to me.

♪ ♪

Deadfall traps are getting more and more frustrating to set.

I'm not getting myself a sustainable amount of food.

I haven't been able to catch more than one mouse a day,

and that is nothing real substantial.

I always have, in the back of my head,

I have this duty to my wife to protect her

and to take care of her and to comfort her.

She's pregnant,

and so I always want to be the provider for my family.

I am pretty bummed that I have to miss

seeing all the progression and--

that's what's been really exciting so far,

is just to see how things go along and,

you know, watching the baby grow.

Yeah.

Not being to take care of you and the baby,

emotionally it's hard to take.

Not a lot of meat.

But I do like the taste of actual meat.

♪ ♪

Being away from my wife,

it really puts me in this weird place

where I doubt my purpose.

And that really just wears on me.

♪ ♪

Either I'm just nuts or the mouse doesn't taste that bad.

♪ ♪

Probably nuts.

♪ ♪

Now, I wouldn't really recommend doing this at home.

♪ ♪

Well, obviously.

♪ ♪

Ah, yum.

One mouse.

♪ ♪

Night's quickly approaching.

It's gonna get cold.

As you can see, all my stuff is just behind me.

I don't have a roof over my head tonight.

I didn't quite get far as I'd like today.

I mean, and that's about as vulnerable as I've been.

Out here, it's just me,

just me perpetuating, maintaining.

I just don't always know what to do.

♪ ♪

It's so cold.

♪ ♪

Before I left, my mom said,

"Lucas, it really just comes down to making good decisions."

Trust your instincts.

And I think you'll do wonderful.

I think you should watch your back

and just always be alert.

And--and do what you need to do.

Keep yourself warm, and just hope that you'll be okay.

Yeah.

♪ ♪

I'd like to think, for the most part,

that I am making good decisions.

But it's damn cold.

It's about as damn cold as you get.

♪ ♪

It could be really dangerous for me.

♪ ♪

Just hanging on to life by a thread.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

Good morning.

It is frigid.

I mean, I'm even sleeping in gloves here.

Yeah, it's, uh-- my water is frozen.

I mean, it's not solid ice, but it's frozen

around the outer edges of the--all the canteens

and containers of water.

And I slipped my boots on

and went down to check the shoreline

just to see where the tide was at,

and in the time it took me

to walk down there and straight back--

we're talking, I don't know, 10 minutes, 12 minutes--

my extremities, fingers and toes, no good.

Bone-chillin'.

♪ ♪

Wow, this is frozen, man.

You can hear the blades of grass cracking under your feet.

♪ ♪

So, yeah, way cold.

Way achy.

The outermost half of my foot and my hands

is still very numb.

If you're wet and it's this cold,

you can die within hours.

You can be in some serious trouble,

no matter how many years you've been a bushman

or a woodsman or whatever.

If you get complacent, it can kill you.

I'm back in the bed covered up.

You know, bundled up and put everything I had on.

And I'm grateful for every blade of grass

that went in to building this little mattress,

'cause it's insulating me now.

You want to be up off the ground when it gets this cold.

This is the wise thing to do:

stay inside and keep your body as warm as you can

on a day like today.

This is the view inside my little cave here.

That's my wood supply that I have laid in.

And I was just noticing that I didn't hear a drip anymore,

and the reason is, is the drip has frozen.

And I have icicles in my bedroom.

So the next time you think it's cold in your bedroom,

look for icicles.

♪ ♪

Just waking up.

Oh, my gosh, is it cold.

It's freezing, and my bag is covered in dew,

and it was just cold last night.

I got to get this yurt done today.

It's all about the yurt.

♪ ♪

Having a fire in a structure is always a hazard.

So how I'm going to counteract my structure

from going up in flames, since it's made of canvas,

I'm going to create a small half-moon structure

out of pounded-in logs

and then blind that half-moon structure with rocks,

things that don't burn.

And it also will retain heat

and also will reflect the heat towards me.

I love a yurt.

For me, it's about getting a warm place set up

so that I can get as dry as possible at the end of the day

and I can be warm and cook my food and have the rain off me.

That's huge. That's paramount. That's number one.

I love having walls around me.

Makes me feel pretty safe.

When I smell a bear or hear some animals poking around,

I know I've got a few minutes to grab my deterrent

or whatever I've got to scare 'em away.

I'm going to cut a hole in the top.

That's where the smoke goes out.

So got to make sure everything's looking good.

Otherwise, it's bad news.

♪ ♪

This ain't easy, this whole making decisions

and trying to figure out everything as you go.

I'm bound to make mistakes,

and I've probably got a few more in store.

Today I'm going to be a little bit more easy on myself.

Well, looks like I've just created

the world's largest smokehouse.

Ay-yay-yay.

♪ ♪

Got to tell you, my fingers and toes are numb.

♪ ♪

I dry my socks, and then I dry my feet,

and then I put my socks back on my feet

and dry the socks some more.

You've got to take care of your feet.

♪ ♪

I wish my camp was on the other side,

'cause right now the sun

could be hitting my camp right now.

Instead of my fingers going numb right now

because I'm in the cold, dark shade,

it'd be getting warmer and warmer.

It's only going to get colder.

♪ ♪

Winter is definitely here.

I didn't expect it to come this soon,

but it's here and it's here for good.

My biggest concern at this point

is the onset of hypothermia.

If that temperature drops just a little bit more,

I mean, that could end this whole thing.

♪ ♪

That's my gloves that were left out here.

You can see I can't even bend 'em.

They're frozen solid.

It is definitely cold out here.

♪ ♪

It is epically cold tonight.

Man, my hands are like ice.

It's, like, bone-dead cold.

It's silent.

Everything that's alive is just, like, hunkered down

and just trying to, like, get through the night right now.

It's crazy cold tonight.

My hands are numb. It's very cold.

Wintertime is here.

This is the first time that I'm actually worried.

If I get hypothermic tonight,

I'll be forced to quit this thing.

This is rough. This is as tough as it gets.

So cold.

♪ ♪

It's so cold.

It's so colc]

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

It is frigid.

It's the coldest it's been.

It's been snowing. There's snow flurries out here.

So down we go to the trusty shoreline

to see what can be seen

and consume whatever we may find there

that is palatable.

My hands are numb.

♪ ♪

Not numb, not feeling numb.

Numb as in painful.

But I go by the time of the tide,

not when I feel like eating.

All right, what a beauty.

What a beauty.

Yeah, that's nice, huh?

Look at that.

This has scales instead of skin, though,

so I'm going to have to dress it out a little differently.

So, yeah, I scraped the scales off.

Look at that beautiful pink meat.

That is going to be some new kind of delicious, right there.

Look at that.

That's food.

So I'm going to wash that off, and into the pot he goes.

Not only did I find a fish, but I found a duck.

This is really a blessing for me today,

because I'm going to get some nutrients off of old Daffy here

and see what meat I can get from him

and throw him next to the fish.

Into the pot he goes.

Clouds are moving in again.

I'm always fighting against something--

dark or weather or tide times.

If there's something challenging about this place,

it's definitely the weather.

After a while, it just does kind of grate on your nerves.

Every time you get ready to do something, boom,

the deluge strikes.

I've got to keep going if I'm going to eat.

I was not aware of a full-on blizzard.

I've got snow packing up on the lens of the camera.

Guess that'll do it.

At least get a shot of my meal.

I've worked so hard to get it cleaned and prepared.

All right.

Just cleaned up the fish and the duck.

Look at that. Is that not a thing of beauty?

Kings eat no better than I.

I put a little sea lettuce in there for something green,

and I'm going to put a lid on and cook it low and slow.

Basically, I'm just going to steam all that in

and let the flavors of the duck and the flavors of the fish

shake hands and love one another.

So all that's going to happen today is cook a meal and lay in.

♪ ♪

My mind's just racing

thinking about my lack of calories.

It's kind of like a downward spiral right now.

If I'm not careful, eventually I'm going to crash.

I lost my net. It's gone.

I need to figure out how to get more food.

I need to figure out how to fish every day.

So I need to set up a system to do that easily.

I want to set up some trotlines.

This place is literally transformed at low tide.

See that grass line way up near the trees?

That's where high tide goes.

It goes just shy of the trees.

This is all usually underwater.

It's incredible.

♪ ♪

You know, my over-arcing plan

was to figure out how to have automatic food

by setting up trotlines or by setting up nets,

whatever I got to do, traps,

but just get food coming in on a consistent basis.

It is just really tough.

♪ ♪

Making some bait.

♪ ♪

Look at that one.

It's going to bait a hook really nice.

By having my bait station right here next to my trotline,

it's going to create a bunch of scent

that's going to attract fish to this area.

They're going to find my hooks

with the bait hanging in front of their faces.

So hopefully they'll say,

"Oh, that's what I smelled. Perfect."

♪ ♪

And I got 'em.

♪ ♪

So there's my first trotline up.

I've got four hooks baited.

All ready to go.

Once high tide comes in,

it's going to dip them all under the water.

One of them is already touching the water.

And I should be good to go.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

It's intense out there today.

Like, it's blowing pretty hard.

I don't know if you can see how gray it is,

how nasty it is out.

What I'm concerned about is the fact that my traps,

they're way out there,

and I hope they're not getting beat up.

If they are, I lose a big source of food for myself.

Oh,.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

So I get out there,

and tied up in my lines, there was a bird fishing it.

I don't even know what it is,

but he's a fisher, that's for sure.

He's got a beak that tears.

He was wrapped up in my nets real good.

He's probably not tasty, 'cause he's a meat-eater.

And he's got a belly full of my fish.

♪ ♪

If you've ever had to not eat, if you've been without food,

it's just such an awful feeling.

So I'm so grateful for any food that I bring in.

It really is truly a gift.

I feel like I'm living paycheck-to-paycheck,

except paycheck is food-to-food.

And so when you get food, it's this near-spiritual experience

of just deep gratitude,

especially 'cause I'm eating meat.

It ate my lunch, so now it's lunch.

♪ ♪

I've been a vegetarian for almost three years.

It wasn't that I had this big falling out with animals;

I just decided to try it,

and my digestion felt incredibly stronger.

I didn't feel sluggish.

♪ ♪

Meat is just--it's the heartier substance.

Sticks with you longer.

But there is a difference, to a point.

You know, you're taking something's life.

And it doesn't weird me out.

I grew up eating animals.

Like, you know, bigger things eat littler things

and so on and so forth.

But, you know, it's still, like, a more powerful experience.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

I tell you what;

you appreciate food to such a higher level out here.

I mean, really, when you get something, it's like Christmas.

And when you eat it, it's, like, so special.

So special.

Nobody taught me, really, how to butcher.

I had to just teach myself.

See right here?

♪ ♪

I'm sure I'm losing weight out here,

but having food on my so-called plate

has been such a blessing.

I'm so grateful for it.

Here we go.

♪ ♪

There's nothing wrong with that.

♪ ♪

That's good.

Hmm, tastes kind of like steak. Yum.

Got some fried fish to go with it too.

Here.

Wow.

Well, it turned into kind of a bum day at first.

It's turned into a better day.

♪ ♪

Ever seen a vegetarian eat meat like this?

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

So not a good end to the day, emotionally.

♪ ♪

I don't know; something just hit me

just like a pile of bricks.

Just started losing it.

♪ ♪

It's like right now, I would just give so much

just to see--just to see my wife and talk to her.

♪ ♪

I've been out here for so long, and I'm so sick of it.

Sick of everything.

Everything about this place is gone.

For the first, whatever, few weeks,

I was happy seeing these beautiful views

and just soaking in this place.

♪ ♪

It was new to me, and it was exciting

and everything like that.

But after you've been in one spot

for so, so long, it's terrible.

It's like the worst, worst thing on the planet.

♪ ♪

I'm so just done with it all.

I'm ready to leave. I'm ready to go home.

But I just want to keep pushing and pushing and pushing.

But after a while, man,

just not being able to contact your family

or not being able to contact your wife is just so difficult.

It just reminds me, you know, how much I love her

and how much I love all these people in my life.

And when I get home,

I'm just not going to take it for granted at all.

And it's raining again.

Just to make things a little happier,

it did start raining, yeah.

I just want to--

At this point, I just want to go home.

I want nothing more to do with this place.

Living in the woods is not the hard part of this thing.

It's the fact that you're away from the people you love.

That's the hard part.

I'm so sick of this place.

Sick. Sick of it, sick of it.

So sick of it.

Good night.

♪ ♪

Heading out to go check my trotline.

♪ ♪

Another frosty day in the northwest.

♪ ♪

Looks like the tide is in right now.

My stuff might still be underwater.

And, as you can see,

straight out there is my trotline.

The difference between high tide and low tide here

is astronomical.

I mean, during low tide,

that's dirt for, like, a quarter mile or something.

I'm just gonna wait to see if the tide is coming or going.

It's hard to figure out if the tide's--

If it's coming in, I mean,

I'm not gonna walk in that water.

The water would be over my boots.

With freezing temperatures right now,

the last thing I want to do is get wet.

I haven't gotten a lot done the last couple days.

I'm trying to conserve calories.

I'm trying to stay positive.

But I'm not getting it done.

I think maybe if I imagine I'm trying to provide for my family,

maybe I can provide better for myself,

'cause I know if they were out here with me,

I would be a different person.

-This is it. -Wow.

A bunch of pictures with us, huh?

-Mm-hmm. -Just me and you.

Yeah.

Oh, us dancing in the puddles.

Yeah.

Oh, look how young you are here.

-Yeah. -My little pumpkin.

But now I'm much more bigger.

Yeah.

If they were out here with me, it would be like--

I'd be a maniac

and I would be a game-getting machine.

Like, right now, what I'm getting

isn't good enough for my daughter and my wife.

Like, I want the best for them.

It's just interesting

what you're willing to do for yourself is different

than what you're willing to do for your loved ones.

Man, this place really felt like

a land of abundant resources a couple weeks ago.

I had salmon and all these geese around and everything else.

♪ ♪

Doesn't feel that way anymore.

♪ ♪

I just hate that the tide is messing me up.

♪ ♪

What else am I gonna do?

♪ ♪

I don't know.

Need to be careful what I do,

because I can't do too much more

before I run out of calories.

I need to figure out how to get more food.

This is just a very hard time to live.

♪ ♪

The weather broke a little bit.

I haven't found much, because there's just not much happening.

It's just the same old thing.

I'm just kind of in a rut now.

I just kind of goes day-to-day, you know?

Just regular old routine.

♪ ♪

At this point for me, you know, psychology's definitely there,

the mental aspects of it.

I mean, I've done this.

I know I can do it,

not just survive but thrive here,

so it's like, what's left to prove, you know?

Um, kind of--I don't know.

And then you get to thinking, you know,

I--just little stuff.

I'd rather be home reading a book to my kids right now.

My daughter Joanna, the oldest,

she kind of understood what was going on,

and she asked me, she said, "Do you have to do this?"

And I didn't really know how to answer that.

I mean, in a way, yeah, I did have to do it

but not in a way that she would--

that I could convey to her.

Good job.

But when she asked me that, "Do you have to leave?"

Oh, close miss.

I thought, well, no, I don't have to,

but I really, really want to, you know.

I miss home a lot.

But I don't know.

♪ ♪

Just one day at a time.

♪ ♪

c]

♪ ♪

Been out here for over a month now.

♪ ♪

You know, I feel pretty good about being out here.

And having a shelter is so crucial to, like,

enjoying this experience.

I just feel safer.

But, really, the shelter's not about that.

It's just about the ice

that settles on the ground at night.

It's about having a place to organize your things,

having a constant.

So the yurt has proved to be really worth its time.

I'm going to start looking at making it a bit more efficient.

In my yurt, I have an open ceiling in the very center

where smoke comes out.

I need to build some sort of umbrella on a stick

so when it gets rainy, the smoke can still go out

but the umbrella covers it and allows for rain protection.

♪ ♪

And I also want to get a crab pot in the water.

And what else do I want to do?

Oh, yeah, I'm working on a stringed instrument.

♪ ♪

When I get started on these projects,

sometimes it's hard for me to stop.

♪ ♪

I just want to show it to you,

just peeled off all the-- the bark.

It's gonna be kind of like a lute or a guitar.

♪ ♪

See how that's relatively flat?

This will be the face, where there's playing.

♪ Ding-didda-ling-ding-ding- ding-ding ♪

Starting to gouge out the acoustic area,

so the hollow area that makes an echo sound would fit right here.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

And so what I'm carving right now is the bridge,

and this transfers the sound down to the sound box.

So now I'm carving the little pegs

that will go in these holes up here

and tighten up our cords.

♪ ♪

So I'm taking a moment to burn out

the sound box a little bit more.

♪ ♪

Check it out.

I put on my first string.

It's not--it doesn't have the face on it yet,

but check it out.

I just got the face put on.

In the next week, I'm going to start looking at making a sauna.

♪ ♪

Before I left, my mom said, "Lucas, please don't go crazy."

♪ ♪

And I said, "Mom, that already happened long ago."

And she laughed.

♪ ♪

♪ This is my two-note song ♪

♪ This is my two-note song ♪

♪ Cheery and happy and fun ♪

♪ This is my two-note song ♪

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

♪ Been in the woods too long ♪

♪ This is my two-note song ♪

♪ Been in the woods too, been in the woods too ♪

♪ Been in the woods too long ♪

♪ ♪

♪ Could use an apple pie ♪

♪ I could use a pumpkin pie ♪

♪ Instead I eat sea bird ♪

♪ Instead I eat up clams ♪

♪ Eat weeds stewed up ♪

♪ I never wash my hands ♪

♪ 'Cause I don't got no soap ♪

♪ And I don't got no sink ♪

♪ I wish I had a drink ♪

♪ I'd pour myself a drink ♪

♪ ♪

I haven't found anything for a few days,

'cause life has just been that bad here.

When you think for as long as I have

out here in the woods, alone, it changes you.

I've not eaten the past couple of days.

I feel like I'm starving.

damn it, I wish I was stronger.

Just don't know if I got it in me.

Oh!

I'm definitely losing it.

Not good mentally.

I am not good in the head right now.