Original subtitles

[dramatic music]

♪

Yes!

The biggest rock bass I have ever caught!

Physically, I can hold my own for a long time doing this.

But emotionally, this is getting more difficult.

The isolation is getting to me.

This is all I can handle!

I'm starving.

It's getting worse day, by day, by day.

Please, God, help me.

I can either lose this, or I can gut it out and win it.

I want to win this bad.

Oh, boy.

My whole gill net is out.

I'm gonna try to set it up from the kayak.

♪

[yelps]

[screams]

♪

- Who are you when everything's been stripped away?

[bleep].

- It's basically fighting an inner battle all day long.

- It's scary out here in these woods.

- I have not had a serious meal in a week.

- If I can't get a fire, then I can't stay here.

- It's always in the back of your mind,

"Well, I could tap out."

- Putting up with this filming bull[bleep]?

- 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 leaving this place.

[moans]

- That prize money would be huge.

Yes! [growls]

- Believe me, I'll keep fighting.

Every step of the way, I'll keep fighting.

Whoo!

- $500,000 can make things better for us.

♪

How long is long enough?

♪

♪

Ah!

Oh.

I am drenched in freezing cold water.

♪

About 85% of my clothing is wet.

♪

Once they're wet, they're very difficult to dry

in this environment.

♪

♪

Right now, I feel pretty weak.

I'm like an old, old man.

♪

[boat engine rumbling]

♪

Oh, I'm sorry, Shauna.

I'm sorry.

I tried.

The water is freezing.

♪

Sorry to to my love, Shauna.

To my family, my son.

My friends, everybody I let down.

I was pretty sure I was gonna be here

for a number of more days,

but all my wool clothing is on me.

My thermal clothing is on me.

♪

And most important, the only pair of boots

that are dry are wet inside.

Tonight, I wouldn't...

I wouldn't make it.

♪

[groans]

It's devastating when you tried so hard.

You lost so much weight, as I have lost.

So much strength.

Like, really ruining my body

just to push it one more day

and another more day.

For love.

♪

I would do anything for my family.

And I did.

♪

I didn't quit because I ran out of love, did I?

I ran out of body heat.

♪

I mean, like I said, it's the bush.

Things just happen.

You plan and plan and plan

and then the bush finds a way to surprise you, anyway.

♪

Some things work out, and some things don't.

♪

In the end, nature rules.

We're just part of it.

♪

♪

- You got that $500,000 reward over here.

"Hey, look at me."

♪

"You want to tap?

"You could have 100, 200, 300, 400,

$500,000, boy."

♪

"$500,000.

"If you want to sell your house...

you could with me."

♪

[grunts]

Going nuts out here, man.

Frickin' nuts.

♪

But I owe it to myself to give it, you know,

110% out here.

So that's why I'm not gonna tap today.

What I think I'm gonna do today is,

I think I'm gonna make at least one hand line.

What I'm gonna do is tie a rock to the bottom

of the fishing line, tie probably four hooks up,

tie that piece of styrofoam up at the top to be a float,

and then I'll just tie that line off to a rock

or something over there.

You never know.

I mean, it could be-- I could get a fish out of it.

I'm pretty hungry, I could use a fish.

Could use anything.

♪

We'll see what that does.

Also, I'm pondering the idea of trapping birds.

All right, well I cut part of my gill net off here,

and I got a little piece of rope.

All I'm gonna do is just kind of prop this gill net

up on this rock as best I can.

And then I'm gonna take some bait and crush it up

and kind of throw it down inside of this gill net

so a bird, when he lands, has to land on top of the gill net

and we'll see if he gets tangled up.

It seems to tangle just about everything else up.

So we'll see if it can get a bird.

♪

I don't care what kind of bird I catch.

I just want to catch something, man.

I don't even care if it's a bird,

I just want protein, that's all I want.

I just want something to eat.

♪

How long can a person go out here?

♪

If there wasn't a tap button, you might go--you know,

guy might be able to go another couple of weeks, who knows?

♪

I mean, you'd go till you die, right?

♪

- They say if you do something for three months,

it's no longer an experience.

It's a lifestyle change.

♪

And that's kind of how this is starting to feel.

♪

My lifestyle is now the hermit of Desolation Cove.

♪

Physically, I am getting weaker and weaker.

♪

It's getting to the point where

my body's starting to really ache and really hurt.

♪

I'm feeling my age.

♪

Everything that I do-- all the tasks,

all the energy that's being expended,

is coming from me,

and there's not a whole l♪ of me left.

But if I take a rest from it, I don't eat.

♪

If I don't go fishing today, I don't eat.

I literally am living hand to mouth.

♪

I've lost a lot of muscle mass, and to have to stand there

all day and do a task like fishing...

it's painful.

♪

Maybe a younger man would have a better time at it.

I don't know.

♪

There's a lot riding on me staying...

unbroken out here.

If I allow myself to get injured, I'm done.

♪

Yes!

♪

No!

Ugh!

Oh, my knees.

Ugh.

[moans]

♪

[dramatic music]

♪

Yes!

♪

No!

Ugh!

♪

Oh, he came off the hook!

Ugh!

Oh, and I banged my knees bad.

Oh.

Ugh.

Oh, that hurts.

Oh, he fell off the hook!

Oh, they're here, oh, my knees.

Ugh.

Ugh.

You know, I'm 50.

It's got to...

it's got to put a drag on anybody.

It's gonna take a while

just to recover from this,

and I wonder how much my body can take.

♪

- When you watch this at home, it must seem so easy.

"Well, all he's got to do is just gut it up and sit there."

♪

It's not that easy, man.

I've already been out here 60 days.

It ain't like it's been a week.

It ain't like it's been 10 days.

It's been 60 frickin' days, man.

♪

I hope my friends and family are proud of me...

for how difficult a journey this has been.

Holy crap!

Holy crap.

What the hell have I done?

It takes a long time to get your feet wet

when you're first being dropped.

Red alert, stick--God.

[bleep].

Piece of [bleep].

Get the [bleep] out of my way, you [bleep].

At first, it's more physical than it is mental.

♪

[bleep] you.

You're starving.

All I think about is food.

I've never been this hungry ever.

Little baby fish.

Oh, and I him go!

The emotional aspects of being alone, so far,

haven't really reared is ugly head with me.

I have a mouse in my house.

That stupid mouse follows me when I come down here.

I'll turn around, and there's the freaking mouse.

I swear to God, if that thing freaking chews

my sleeping bag up, I'm blowing this place up.

I'm gonna have to make a change.

It's not the world that needs to change;

it's me that needs to change.

It's my outlook on life.

♪

And I hope while I'm here, it will help me find

what that outlook needs to be.

[laughs]

Oh, my God.

To get out of that confining space,

to be able to see this, man...

just the emotional uplifting this is gonna give me is huge.

This new location has given my self-esteem

an incredible boost.

That's a big one.

Oh, man, that's pretty good, actually.

♪

Sure is pretty country.

There's things worse I could be looking at.

♪

Bazinga!

Just frickin' squished like a damn pancake, baby.

Yeah!

This is the toughest physical challenge I've ever done.

♪

If you look up "wore out" in the dictionary,

my face is right there, just like a mug shot.

Just wore out.

♪

Once you get really far into it,

then it becomes very, very mental.

Damn it.

My needs on day 50 are completely different

than on day 30, because my mental aspect

is going down the tubes.

I'm struggling with giving it all I got,

'cause there damn sure ain't a lot left,

I can tell you that right now.

♪

I don't remember ever giving up anything in my life.

My wife's gonna be-- in her heart,

I know she's gonna be...

I know she's gonna be disappointed in me.

[fire crackling]

I just feel like I'm letting her down so bad, man.

Please, God, help me.

Please help me.

[sobbing]

Please, God.

Please.

[sobs]

I knew I needed some suffering in my life

here, in this journey, in order to change.

♪

This journey has opened my eyes

to just how lucky and how fortunate I am.

I need to stop being such a half-empty kind of guy

and just be more positive.

♪

I can either lose this...

[sighs]

Or I can gut it out and win it.

♪

I freaking want to win.

I want to win this bad.

What I have to do is just man up

and go as long as I can.

♪

But survival here is not easy.

It's just not easy.

♪

♪ How long can I take it?

♪ How long can I take it out here? ♪

♪ How long can you take it, boy? ♪

♪ How long can I take it out here? ♪

Not very much [bleep] longer, man.

Not very much.

♪

♪

- When I went down after that fish,

I injured myself severely.

I bruised my knee something fierce,

and I got to wait a couple days

for these knees to kind of heal up a little bit.

I wonder how much my body can take,

and at what point I would start being very unwise

to continue.

I wasn't in bad shape when I came out here.

I had been working out steadily for months,

getting ready for the potential

to maybe do something like this.

Thank you for the ride.

So that's it.

You're just, like, gonna leave me here?

You're just leaving?

I am home.

This is hard work.

This is not an easy thing to do,

and it's unrelenting, is what it is.

♪

Oh, my goodness.

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

I won't make it.

That's the catch of the day.

Some kind of gnarly-looking seaweed.

Starvation really does get to you.

My body's disappearing, and it is scary.

There is nothing in my gill net.

It mocks me.

I want to do well, and I'm sick of being the dad

that always has to say no.

"Hey, can we go out--" no, you can't.

"Dad, can I have--" no, you can't.

Can't afford it.

So, yeah, that prize money would be huge.

Two weeks out here and no fish to show for it.

That's embarrassing.

I have to learn how to fish these waters.

I'm really hungry.

♪

Yeah, baby!

I'm going to have a meal!

I'm going to have a meal!

Oh, that is good.

I haven't been able to fish these waters

close to a week or so.

My gill net has been destroyed every place I've put it.

This cove tears everything to shreds

again, and again, and again.

Part of me just is screaming to go home.

But I can't do that to my kids.

I pray for my kids every night.

♪

And I really miss 'em.

♪

That's the hardest thing about being here.

Everything else, I can handle.

I can't bail...

on the opportunity...

to help my kids the way I can

if I just see this thing through.

I'm just going to focus in on my little tiny universe here

and making life as good as I can in it.

What's your Sleep Number?

♪

The only thing that's worked for me so far

to get food out of the cove

is a hook and a line.

Yes, that's number six, folks!

Whoo!

Suffice to say, this is the feast of a lifetime.

This place, it changes.

It's kind to you, and then it's rough to you.

It's like a very fickle place.

It can turn on a dime.

I lost my line.

Damn.

Whoa.

Oh.

Ugh.

Oh, I just fell in.

Hypothermia is a very real threat.

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

The weather just has been brutal.

We haven't had cold like this in the daytime

since I've been here.

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

Kind of a crappy day to be here in Desolation Cove.

It puts the "desolation" in Desolation Cove, definitely.

In the beginning, there was lots of days

which I didn't eat anything.

There was lots of opportunity and fish and things going on

out there, I just didn't know what to do with it.

I didn't know how to get it.

And now that I do, I'm consistently hitting on fish.

That's how survival goes.

[growls]

Dinner!

I know that, emotionally, this is getting more difficult.

Definitely.

There's that hierarchy of human needs.

If you don't have air, you're not gonna think about water.

If you don't have water, you're not gonna think about food.

If I have food, then I start doing things

like missing my kids.

I start thinking about the fact that I'm alone.

I'm beginning understand and learn

how human contact is a basic human need,

that we really do need this social interaction.

We're social creatures, and we're not designed

to live alone.

♪

Missing my kids is wearing on me.

♪

The daily strain

is, you know, wearing on me.

It's hard work.

Recovering from an ordeal like this at 50

is not the same as recovering at 25.

I know that for a fact, that it's gonna take me longer

to get back into decent shape.

It's gonna take more effort,

and it's gonna take some discipline.

And the longer this goes, the harder that will be.

And I...

I'm looking forward to the day when this is done.

One way or the other.

♪

[wind whistling]

♪

- Oh, God, I feel like puking.

♪

All right, settle down.

♪

I ain't never quit nothing in my life.

♪

- I need to ignore the fact that I have

that little black phone in there,

which is could use to call...

base camp and tap out.

It's a matter of, yet again,

confronting the fact that I'm out here surviving by myself.

♪

Until I get rescued.

♪

[sighs]

♪

Do I want to?

Can I?

I'd like to.

My mind won't let me, man.

♪

Wow.

♪

I mean, the level of exhaustion is off the charts right now.

And my neck is killing me.

♪

♪

♪

[dramatic music]

♪

♪

I did the best I couman.

[crying] I did the best I could, man.

[sobs]

- Mother Nature, she's a tough cookie, eh?

Yeah, yeah.

♪

Mentally, I broke.

I didn't just quit, I broke.

♪

It's just been emotionally trying, dealing with all

the cravings and all the hunger, and I'm just done with it.

I'm starving.

I don't need to go hungry anymore.

I'm done.

♪

The only reason that I wanted to tap

was because I was gonna die.

I was gonna have no calories left.

You can't tap until you leave everything out there, man.

If you tap before you leave everything out there,

what the hell did you sign up for?

♪

Being out here has, indeed, humbled me.

It has made me realize

that I'm not quite as tough as I think I am.

I don't have the skills that some of the other folks do,

but I got some pretty good willpower.

What I've really discovered about myself is that...

I have to focus on

what my wife talks about all the time.

Just stop worrying about the fact

that you're grinding away and working,

and just think about the little things in life.

And what I've come-- and I've always known this--

but my family is frickin' awesome.

And I need to start showing my appreciation for that.

This has been the hardest thing I've ever done

in my entire life.

This'll be one of the greatest achievements I've ever done.

But it's just super, super disappointing

I couldn't make it to the very end.

It's like I always tell my kids

when they were in sports, you know?

Leave it all on the field.

Did you give it your all?

If you did your best, that's all you can do.

You can't ever do more than your best.

I did my best, man. That's all I can say.

♪

♪

- How do I answer the question,

"How long could I survive out here?"

Well, I don't know.

♪

Keep going, David, keep going.

Don't stop now.

♪

is is hard.

I get hungry during the day, and I miss my children,

and I don't have any body reserves to draw on anymore.

♪

So if I don't get food going in,

I have to burn me, and I don't have a whole lot

of me left to burn.

♪

But to give up...

I feel like I would be giving up on my kids' future,

or a chance at that future,

and I just can't bring myself to do that.

It's not about the money for me.

It's about the money for my kids.

Because right now, I don't have any way to help them

go to college, and to me, that is huge.

♪

Yes!

Thank you, Lord.

Look at the size of this fish.

I have stew tonight!

♪

I think I'll know when I'm not making it anymore.

But right now, I feel like I am.

♪

- 104 over 72 is your heart rate--

uh, blood pressure, sorry.

♪

- I got a lot of questions about recovering

from a thing like this, but I guess that can wait

for, uh, me to actually be done with it.

I'm not done yet.

♪

You know, heading into day 70 soon,

and I feel like I could keep going.

♪

Of all the people that get a chance to do this thing,

I get a chance to do it.

♪

You know, other people that applied for this thing

and maybe got a chance to do it--

I get to do it.

So, yeah, I want to do this.

Why go home now?

I'm eating crab--I am eating Dungeness crabs

practically every night.

Why would I go home now?

♪

You know, somebody said to me right before I left,

"Boy, 50 doesn't slow you down at all."

And I'm like, "Yeah, baby."

You know, that's what...

[tree branch cracking]

♪

[exhales sharply]

[dramatic music]

♪

Why go home now?

♪

You know, somebody said to me right before I left,

"Boy, 50 doesn't slow you down at all."

And I'm like, "Yeah, baby."

You know, that's what...

[tree branch cracking]

♪

[exhales sharply]

Oh!

[crying]

I did this for you guys.

You know that, right?

[crying]

- Oh, my goodness. - [sobs]

♪

You did it.

- I did it. - You did it.

♪

- And you came all this way just to tell me that.

Oh, my goodness.

♪

Oh.

♪

I get to go in that boat today, don't I?

You're coming home.

- I get to come home. Oh, my goodness.

♪

- So I want to see what you did.

- Let's see what I do. - I do.

- Let see how I lived. - I've been waiting.

♪

This is my cove.

♪

It is absolutely beautiful.

- Yeah, it doesn't always look like this.

- [laughs] - It does not always--

when it's sleeting and the wind is howling through here

and stuff-- no, this is idyllic.

This is, like, the perfect day.

♪

I've never had money in my life,

so I have really no idea what I would do if I had money.

I'm pretty enthusiastic about figuring it out.

Now, there's some things I want to do

to help you guys, and, uh...

Yeah, beyond that, I don't know.

I mean, I just...

I just have to survive that.

♪

[helicopter propeller whirring]

♪

I'm ready to go home.

Yes, we get to ride in a helicopter.

♪

♪

I do have a love/hate relationship with this place.

You get up in the morning,

and you confront the realities of your situation.

Some days it's great, and some days it's horrible.

But suffering has value.

We avoid it at all costs.

We would never want to go back and repeat it,

but it has value.

It's a part of life.

And nobody gets through life without suffering.

Nobody.

The question is, what do you allow it to do in you?

You can allow that suffering to make you bitter,

angry...

just a wretched person.

You know, you can allow that suffering

to eat away at your soul.

Turn in on itself and just chew you apart.

Or you can look for the deeper meaning in it.

My philosophy on suffering

is that God's trying to teach me something.

And I know that...

I know that, in the end...

I get to keep those lessons.

And the pain goes away.

♪

And the pain goes away.

♪

- Oh, back in the world of laws.

I was bound by a different set of laws out there.

I was bound by the laws of nature.

I was bound by the laws of the wind

and the tide and the weather.

Nature dictates its own terms to you.

You know, it was allowing me to survive

in that cove on its terms.

♪

The thought of my kids kept me going

the whole time I was out there.

There was a lot of days where doubt and fear of quitting

would come up, and I would just think of

Karina, Daniel, and Erin...

and how they gave me the freedom.

They knew that I had to do this.

And I get to go over there now and tell them

it's all gonna be different,

and that feels really good.

I'm really looking forward to this moment.

♪

I missed you guys so much.

I missed you, too.

Oh.

Get in here, girl.

♪

- My God, you look so different. - Daniel, what happened to you?

- You're like a foot taller. - [laughs]

Seriously.

I'm done, I'm out of the bush.

I'm home.

I'm gonna be h for a while now.

What's the news?

What's been going on?

So did you think I'd be gone this long?

No.

- Yeah, you thought I'd be back sooner?

You thought I was gonna win.

Well...

I did.

What?

I won.

[cries]

Wow.

♪

Everybody else left.

Except for me.

♪

- I know you-- I wish I knew it!

I wish I knew it.

I didn't know-- I didn't know I could do it.

You guys gave me the confidence to do this.

Daniel, Karina, I am now the dad who says yes.

[both laughing]

Okay?

I'm the dad of yes.

"Dad, can we do it?" Yes.

From now on, everything's different.

♪

I am totally at peace with my world right now.

I have seen my kids.

I'm just riding this wave of exhilaration.

Nothing can bring me down.

The bush is something which will always be in my blood,

but I regained a sense of gratitude

for the life that we have out here.

♪

I certainly value human company

more than I ever have before.

♪

Human company is something

we can't afford to take for granted.

The most valuable facet of your life are your relationships.

♪

And to not value them

is a real detriment to quality of life.

And I realize that now more than ever.

♪