Original subtitles

This is Britt. I think I'm ready for you guys to come pick me up.

It's killing me to be away from my family.

I really got to get some meat. But not when you got foxes taking all your bait.

He seems to know it's a trap. I give up on him.

I can't believe that. I miss my family and friends. I just feel sad being up

here on my own. My shelter is coming along great.

Tonight, I'm moving in.

I never went this long on this minimal food. It's eating at me inside.

That fish is out there.

Fish head soup in your cup.

Ah, this delicious-y, chunky goodness keeps you going all day long.

Just try it.

Ah, fish head soup.

Too bad you taste like poop.

No goofing around today.

Motivated.

That snow keeps getting further and further down in the mountains across the

way.

It's getting to be cold.

So I'm hoping it's not going to be a... There's a foot and a half of snow.

Surprise!

I need to get the shelter done.

I have been working on my shelter for about 14 days.

The only question is, do I have the strength to see it through?

This is quite the goal I've set myself.

My shelter plans are to have a shelter I can stand up in and a

fire inside so that I can be secure for winter.

My design idea for the wall is a bamboo.

Waddle. So they're woven.

Takes a lot of sticks to make this.

But I'm going to do a double thick wall.

And cram the space between with the bamboo.

So I can insulate between the two.

And keep me warm.

Man, this is coming out awesome.

I can't wait to finish my shelter and light the first fire in there.

I'll have somewhere to be safe and secure and comfortable while I'm waiting

on a snowstorm to end or four days of rain to end.

Getting winded.

Fish head soup is running out of energy.

A lot of calories burned up.

I'm really not happy with the amount of fish I'm catching.

I'm having a hard time of it.

It's slowing me down and it's stealing my energy.

All right, I think I'll work on cutting bamboo out of here today.

I just noticed this is

just covered, turned up. chunks of turf.

That's boar sign right there.

See that? There's a trap there.

They might not look like much.

They might not look like much, but I'm so excited. I love to get a boar.

I could be eating something more substantial.

You know, a pig could go quite a ways.

I think I'm going to set a boar trap probably right up in the middle so

things come up and over.

snags him, I can go up and dispatch him and have him for dinner.

Maybe tomorrow I will try and set that up.

So I'm going to do just a pit.

With some bamboo spikes under there, a boar could fall in and down under spikes

and do them in.

I'm going to keep going.

I got to get more traps out there.

It's going to mean a lot to my sanity, you know, to get more food.

Maybe dig this out a little bit and put some bamboo spears in here.

That's working good.

I got the spike pit dug and covered lightly.

There's the pit trap on the other side of that log right there.

Just being a pig. I don't want to go that way.

Oh, here's a log.

I jump over the log.

Boom.

I want to build another trap today.

I'm going to put two stakes in.

Paracord across.

A nice sharp spike.

And wind up a spike.

This string is pretending to be fish guts. It's in between my split stick,

which comes apart.

And when he comes and he worries at him, ah, yum, that split stick falls apart.

Spike comes around.

All right, so the little animal comes in like this.

Do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do. Mmm, yum. Some gross little worm.

Fish grubby bits.

Yum. Follow me up into here. Let's go.

All right. Woo-hoo.

Oh, some more grubby bits. Let's pull that apart. Split stick breaks in half,

and Spike comes around.

Whop.

And hopefully that's the end of his little life so I can eat him.

Oh, look at this.

That's quite the piece of wood, eh?

It looks like a saw.

I like mine better.

I got to have something to eat. I can't live on air.

My traps haven't worked. My dead falls.

You know, I give up on trying to catch that fox.

I'm just wasting time.

My fish resources are dwindling, it seems.

Not biting like they were.

I go to bed hungry most nights, most nights.

Got these big logs here.

It'd sure be nice to make a raft so that I can get to this other river over here.

It's a bigger river, and I have a feeling there'll be bigger, like,

rainbow and brookies in there.

I desperately need fish every day.

So this is the one I'm thinking.

I want to cut a notch at both ends, like a dovetail.

Idea of the dovetail is now I can cut a piece of wood, the same angle, and pound

it in, and it's going to stabilize my whole raft.

Every once in a while, you just get so negative. You get a feeling of, like,

despair.

To be honest with you, right now, there's nothing I would like better than

to go home.

But I'm not a quitter.

I'm going to keep plugging away.

My other board's going to slide in here. It's going to be tapered the opposite

way.

I'm going to put some planks across, and then we'll see if it floats me.

Oh, that's cold on the feet, man.

Boy, cold water. I can't imagine being totally submerged in that.

This isn't very good.

This one board is not sitting very good.

It's too unstable.

I'll flip it easily.

And I don't want to swim.

Yeah, that's cold, boy.

Ooh, I don't like this.

I'm not into killing myself over it.

Cold water is no fun.

Yes, it's discouraging, but the whole thing is to get through these

situations. That's what outdoor survival is about.

I'm just going to press on.

Good thing.

Good thing they're waterproof, eh?

Fairchild is my name.

Cutting firewood is my game.

Can't laugh at yourself? Who can you laugh at?

Oh, yeah.

All right.

Life is good.

I love my house.

It feels like I'm coming home when I come up the trail and into my little

front yard.

I've made...

A place of safety and comfort.

And it's awesome.

Now it's time to have a relaxed night and do what I want to do as I feel like

doing it.

I just love the silhouette of the mountains.

The stars coming out.

I do really want to...

I've slept out on the beach at least once while I'm here.

Tonight feels like a good night for it.

Maybe I'll have a visitor.

Or at least have the stars and the mountains and trees for company.

At home, Tyler and I sometimes sleep out on the porch and watch the stars.

Every time I look up, there's more stars.

Whoa.

I don't know if you picked that up, camera, but it sounded like a...

A limb falling over?

A limb falling down?

I really would like to know what makes that

noise.

What?

That could be dangerous.

That was close.

I think everything's okay.

Get to bed.

I have to keep an eye out for big cats in the area.

My philosophy on pumas has always been, if I see one, I don't have to worry

about it.

And if I don't see one, then I'll be dead.

If they want to...

Eat me. They're going to.

Okay. That's it for tonight.

everything's on everything looks good we've got

battery

time on the card

what the

I'm hungry.

I haven't caught a fish in weeks.

And I am skinny.

Can't sustain myself on the diet that I've had.

Not through the winter.

Come on, baby.

Take a bite.

Nothing's hitting.

Some of the water's frozen in certain spots.

The cold is pulling the fish away from the shore.

I'm concerned, you know.

My food sources have dwindled to barely anything.

Sure, I can get greens, but I need protein.

We don't have squirrels around here.

Rabbits and hares. I haven't seen one scat or rabbit track or anything like

that.

I know I can trap mice.

I've done it before.

And I've already seen them eat the bait that I had for fish.

And I've seen I've got rocks in the area that would work well. Everything is in

the area that would allow me to hunt and to trap and survive for six months.

But they asked me not to hunt rodents because of the haunt of ours.

The hantavirus is extreme in this area.

You can mess yourself up.

When I know that I can survive in an area, when I know I can sustain myself,

and we have hantavirus, that is so disappointing.

I feel like it's going to be a hunger fest.

Okay, well, the raft works.

It floats me, but it's very unstable.

I'm going to add a couple of more good pimbers to it, and we'll be getting

across the lake and to the river, do some fishing and stuff.

This is my last log for the raft. It's a nice big one.

For one more little bit of stability.

Boy,

that's pretty heavy.

I'll get it there.

It is very difficult, but my entire life depends on this.

You know, this is financially the greatest opportunity of my entire life.

It's the only chance of being able to build my daughter a house.

That's what keeps motivating me on on days like this when I feel like going

home. And the things that I want to do for my daughter are so important to me.

My future spiritually, emotionally, everything.

Everything depends upon a victory here.

Made it.

I want to slide this log in between there.

I just hope that I have enough length of paracord to get around all of these.

That completes the raft.

We're good to go.

Our voyage begins.

I got to get across the lake and to the river, do some fishing.

Got to try something. I have to get more fish.

Sure don't want to fall in the lake.

Yeah, boy, oh boy, I don't know how cold it is.

Well, we're sailing.

A fast-moving trout might flip it over.

Whoa.

Little way to go. We're halfway.

We made our maiden voyage in the Titanic.

We didn't hit no icebergs.

So that's good.

So here we are to check this particular spot.

I got him.

It's a decent fish.

Look at that guy.

Oh, boy.

Now we got a fish.

Oh, man. Glad I came to this spot.

Look at that guy.

Man, if I had five of those to smoke up.

Would that ever be great?

The biggest fish I've caught since I've been here.

And now I'm in the groove.

My spirits are just roaring high.

I'm certainly glad that I made up my mind to be more positive.

So I'm legit just like lounging here.

I am so hungry for vanilla cupcakes with vanilla icing

and sprinkles.

It's ridiculous.

I was literally, I think I dreamt about them for four hours last night. And I

just kept eating them. And I was going into all these offices and stealing the

cupcakes and leaving until security would find out that I don't work there.

My survival style comes down to every calorie counts and every move needs to

be calculated.

It's a slow, steady pace, and you just have to be consistent with it.

I conserve myself so much here, so much.

It's probably on the verge of a little bit of craziness, but, you know, it is

what it is. I'm not out here to...

do anything, but just stay as long as I can.

Boom.

You have to get up here, no matter how bad you feel, and be like, I'm on badass

mother effer.

Every morning, you have to get up and feel like that, or at least tell

yourself that, and take that persona on to do this, because you can't come out

here and be, oh my god, I'm...

It's just emotional and hard.

Like, come on.

Get your shit together.

Do what you got to do.

You know?

What do I always say?

You got to just be a big beer-drinking, red-meat-eating badass.

I got to get some food in me.

I'm really hitting an energy lull today.

I really want to stay out here, but I need sustenance. I need something that's

going to keep me going.

Since I can't trap mice, maybe try a little different way to catch fish.

Trying to learn from the land.

I've seen flies around here, and fly fishermen, they always, you know, make a

tie in their own flies.

So I'm making a fly.

I've got some feathers.

I don't know if you can see it very well, but we'll see what happens.

I'm excited to give this one a go.

Come on, fish.

Turning 50 out here at six months time.

There is not a more beautiful 50th birthday that I could ever imagine.

Haven't caught anything yet.

I feel frustrated.

Come on.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Come on, bud. Come on. Yeah.

Oh, hell yeah.

That one's huge.

Oh, my God.

17 inches.

Biggest one yet.

That is beautiful.

I was worried I wasn't going to be catching any more fish.

That's a lot to eat.

Oh, thank you.

It has eggs in it.

Oh, my gosh. Look at how many eggs.

That

is a

lot of protein.

That's some good food.

This and this are keeping me out here.

Thank you.

Coming up on my trap here.

Nothing.

Something has nibbled off the gut from this trap.

My bait stolen.

I reload it. Give it another try.

I do need to get more traps going for me.

Something better.

Well, I got to work on the shelter some.

All right, here we go. Time to get up over the hill.

I need stones for my fireplace up there.

That rock's heavy.

Look down there.

That's the lake way down there.

All right, onward and upward.

All right. Pretty tired.

I came here, I say I was a trapper.

You know, nothing's changing about that.

But we're not in an environment here that is crazy rich in fur-bearing

animals. And that's basically what you're trapping.

For me personally, I think it's not even worth trying to set a trap.

Do I have access to what I need as a trapper I am with the tools I use?

No.

You give me five steel traps, they'd all be out. They'd be out already.

That might be a totally bad way of looking at it, but I

don't know.

My thing, evaluate everything, every calorie counts.

That's not worthwhile to me.

I think of other people out there. Are other people crawling up and down a

mountain every day?

Man, I love it. I love the sense of adventure and doing stuff.

But I can't hike up that big hill. I'm too big of a guy to hike up a big hill

to go look around.

It's unrealistic for me.

I'm pushing my limits as much as I possibly can.

Well, I made it all the way up.

That walk took a lot out of me, a lot that I don't have to give on my low

-calorie intake.

But this is why I'm here, this is why I'm doing this.

I'm a maker.

Making is my net.

God might have given me dyslexia.

But he's gifted me the ability to make stuff with my hands.

And I would never trade that for the ability to do anything else.

The inner walls are done.

It is looking good.

It goes all where I like it.

I need to make a broom next. It's about my shelter.

It's in my nature to always be building and creating.

All right, do more lashings, and it's all done.

If I spend too many days just doing nothing, I get mighty antsy.

Thought of doing a little something for my daughter, Abby.

A little rabbit.

Because Abby's almost a rabbit.

Always jumping around.

It's like, what else do you want to do?

What do you want me to carve a Santa Claus out of?

How about I crawl up, I cut the tree off and carve a life-size Santa Claus?

Like, it just comes down to ridiculousness.

If people came in here and they were just balls to the wall, pushing as hard

as they can, just wore out by the end of the day, they are in a world of hurt

right now.

And I think if you lined up whoever's left out here with me, I know I can

persevere longer.

I know that my body's going to hold out longer.

I mean, man, I feel positive. I feel I'm on the right road. I feel I'm on the

right track.

I know that day can come that I'm victorious out here.

Feeling like I'm running low on energy.

And I am taking it right to the limit of my strength.

The shelter, it pretty much does me in, you know.

One thing for me to put in 11, 12-hour days at home, but I have the calories to

keep me going.

But here it's different.

More and more I'm concerned that my body is just not cut out for this.

absolutely stunning morning.

Mmm.

Ah.

We're feeling great. Today is an amazing day.

I wanted to give a little updated tour of the inside of the place because we've

rearranged. We've put in some shelving so we can have wood on the inside for

our cold, cozy nights.

Life out here is all about finding a rhythm and flow.

Today, we are going to start work on the sauna. And I use the word sauna kind of

loosely. It's more like a sweat log style with a tarp.

You may think, look at that hippie, building saunas and wind chimes and

useless things.

But to me, nothing about what I've done has been useless.

It really helped break up the day and structure my mind. It creates a life

here for me.

This is probably the biggest moment in my life in terms of massive

self-growth.

I feel new responsibilities coming on.

The idea is we're creating a dome.

Like so.

And this is kind of the last, you know, I think big hoorah of just being

Callie, you know.

Okay, well, we got some moment of truth happening here. I'm going to take the

tarp off the woodshed and put it on the sauna.

Hopefully it fits. I did not measure, so fingers crossed.

This is a roller coaster. This whole journey is one big ride with ups and

downs and twists and turns.

There's major adjustment happening here and questioning.

Wow. If we had made this sauna any bigger at all, it would not

have fit.

We have successfully created the dome structure.

We made a little place where our hot stones are going to fit. And then we

pour water onto the rock. The cold water on the hot rocks creates steam.

River rocks are notorious for exploding in the fire. So I'm taking some

precautions like the grate, just in case of any explosion of rock.

Well, we're at it. I wanted something soft to put my feet on. So I decided to

make a moss walkway to the sauna.

Just make it even more magical.

And the rocks that are going to be for the sauna are in the fire right now.

They've been in there for about maybe four hours.

Pata motherfucking Gonia.

Who are we really at our core?

I don't know, you know.

Who I'm going to discover is inside of me at the end of this.

I know I feel resistance.

Even when I'm bursting forth with the most joyful gratitude, a part

of me is still missing my home.

Missing the old me.

I am dying many deaths daily.

I was up all night last night.

contemplating this and i'm starting to feel closure coming through this journey

These are some hot rocks.

Extremely hot.

Time to sweat.

Wow.

It's already warm in there without even pouring the steam on.

All right, now's the hard part, which is getting undressed in the cold.

It's an age-old tradition, you know, to go out into the wilderness until you've

received what you need to receive, and then you, on your own volition, come

home. There's something about sinking into a deeper, even darker place.

Oh, my goodness.

Oh, this is absolutely

happening and working.

I feel the next big shift in this journey coming on.

The next phase for me is children and partnership and land ownership and

deepening of my business.

I'm starting to feel closure coming through this journey.

I feel that return and I call home again.

Okay, guys, well, I've got some pretty surprising

and shocking news.

I was up all night last night contemplating this, and I've just

decided that my journey here is over.

And I just feel like...

It's time for me to go.

So I'm doing it.

I'm calling in.

Hello?

Hi.

Yeah, it's me.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah, get me the president.

Yes, of the United States.

I don't care if they're in a meeting. This is an emergency.

Mr.

President, it's go time.

Got you.

It's not even on.

I don't even know how to work this.

Just kidding. I do.

But are you kidding? Please do not say you fell for that.

No way, Jose.

I am.

We're just getting started.

Out here, you can't just go out and just start burning calories. People don't

like my strategy.

I don't really care.

I am losing a lot of weight. If I don't catch a fish, I may not be able to stay

here. Oh, damn it. So I have three spider bites that are infected.

That's really not good. I got a fish on there.