Man vs. Wild – To the Extreme . . .

Apparently Les Stroud’s Survivorman was a little to tame (and honest) for the viewing public as now we have something to fill the needed gap between the hokey “Survivor” and Stroud’s humble and realistic take on making it in the out-of-doors.

In Man vs. Wild, seasoned adventurer Bear Grylls strands himself in popular wilderness destinations where tourists often find themselves stranded or in danger. Once there, he finds his way back to civilization, demonstrating localized survival techniques along the way, including escaping quicksand in the Moab desert, navigating dangerous river currents in Costa Rica, building a snow shelter in the Alps and spearing fish in Hawaii.

Ok, so here is my problem – and don’t get me wrong – I love survivial shows – I just don’t like the whole idea of a person being “against nature” in some sort of struggle to the death.

Nature isn’t cruel or out to get us. Nature just is. And in the end, nature always wins.

Among turn of the century naturalists there were two different schools of thought – the “let’s cut it all down and make it comfortable” and the “let’s learn from the Indians how to live gracefully off the land.” I’ve read both kinds of books and though Francis Buzzacot’s illustration of how to make a table out of the stump of a downed tree is indeed very clever, it is the later type of outdoors guides that we can really learn from.

“We do not go to the green woods and crystal waters to rough it, we go to smooth it.”
– Nessmuk (George Washington Sears)

Go check out the Man vs. Wild site on Discovery.com –
http://dsc.discovery.com/fansites/manvswild/manvswild.html