Boys vs. Wild - Intro

Pretty much every kid everywhere has got a character from some movie, book, video game, or television show they idolize and try to emulate. Now, that character could be anyone from MacGyver (strong choice), to Leonardo from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (also a strong choice, but I preferred Raphael), to that pasty, sparkly guy from those vampire books (not a strong choice in my opinion, but no judgment). Our heros are as diverse as we are.

For myself and my brother, a couple of people we really looked up to in our formative years were Bear Grylls from Man vs. Wild fame and Les Stroud from the more intense, albeit less popular, Survivorman. These guys encapsulated our thirst for adventure and brought it to home theaters nationwide, foraging for food atop Patagonian glaciers or skydiving into the Kunlun Mountains of Western China, armed with only the clothes on their backs and some basic survival tools like a pocket knife, rope, and the occasional flint firestarter. They were conquerors of the wilderness, vanquishers of nature, masters of their own fates. We couldn’t get enough.

I think I was probably ten and Carsen was sixteen when a challenge arose. We were plonked in front of the TV, running whetstones over our knives and watching Bear Grylls crunch down on a particularly swollen grubworm when our dad came home from work.

“Y’all boys know he just does that for the pictures. He drinks beer and eats steak with the camera crew when they aren’t rolling,” asserts our dad.

“Well yeah, but he still does the cool stuff,” was our argument. “He’s still cool.”

“No way. That ain’t nothin’ like what surviving in the wilderness really is.”

“Oh yeah? How would you know?”

“Boys I have fought panthers with nothing but an unloaded flintlock pistol! I could survive circles around this amateur!”

And so on. My memory fails me as to how we got ourselves in the mess that followed, but I know there was a lot of back-and-forth and some dismissive hand-waving involved before we arrived at the correct conclusion to the discussion -- Carsen and I had been indoctrinated with television propaganda and the only cure was, of course, to live out our favorite show and rough it in the wilds, for real.

The stipulations were as follows: we could each fill a backpack and our pockets with whatever we wanted from home except a lighter/flammable fluid. We also got a gun of choice; I selected my trusty 20-gauge youth pump and Carsen brought his 12-gauge semi-auto. We had enough ammo for a small militia, mostly just birdshot for small game but also a box of slugs in case we ran up on a panther or black bear.

Most of the space in our packs were taken up by two tightly-folded army hammocks, but we also stuffed in some firestarters, twine to set snares, the aforementioned ammunition, flashlights with extra batteries, a first aid kit, waterskins with maybe a half gallon each, a little trail mix, some beef jerky, a military-style mess kit pan, a couple cans of soup as a last resort, and a couple changes of socks. On the outside of our packs, we strapped sleeping bags and full canteens of fresh water.

To make it interesting, our dad was willing to offer financial incentive -- each night we stayed out in the woods was a crisp Benjamin Franklin for each of us (up to a maximum of five nights so our mom didn’t have a meltdown). This was smack-dab in the middle of winter break, which meant we didn’t have to worry about school attendance; however, we did have to worry about the cold. It was right at freezing when we set out, and it was only going to get colder overnight.

But, a little chill never stopped Les Stroud or Bear Grylls, so a little chill wasn’t about to stop us either. Besides, this was back when a hundred bucks was a lot of money, and even if we only earned one each, we’d come back wiser and tougher having roughed it in the wild.

So began day one…

-Simon