[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- what's the [bleep]?
The mouse chewed right straight through my bowstring.
- My hope of having
a good deer hunting spot are crushed.
[groans]
- if I can't bring a fixed blade with me,
cause I chose the multitool then I just have to forge one.
It's almost done.
- I'm just gonna sit for a second.
I am so dizzy and nauseous.
I am afraid that I poisoned myself.
- This is jordan. I am officially tapping out.
I find myself continuingly thinking of my daughter,
but the difference is, at home,
I can look into the eyes of my wife,
I can look into the eyes of my son.
And I see a part of her there,
and that soothes me and that comforts me,
and I don't have that here.
[dramatic musical sting]
♪ ♪
male narrator: In "alone's" most terrifying location yet,
ten participants face the deadliest predator
in north america.
- There he is right there.
- Grizzly bears. - Hey, bear.
- There are a lot of grizzly here.
I'm gonna have to live with them.
- Go on! Get!
- Every second we're on the land, we're being hunted.
- Holy [bleep], mountain lion.
- He's circling around my shelter.
Narrator: Bone-chilling cold...
- Winter is coming.
- You combine the wind with the rain and the cold,
this place could make the arctic look easy.
- Oh, [bleep].
Narrator: And complete isolation.
- You cannot hide from yourself
mentally and emotionally.
- Ah!
- There's no place to go.
- I am suffering from loneliness.
Narrator: Who will survive?
- Yes! Yes!
- This could be the end.
- I don't want to tap, but I don't want
to die either.
- You have to suffer before you can succeed.
[gagging]
narrator: The last one standing wins.
- At what point do I push the button?
♪ ♪
- I had a really strange dream last night.
So...
I'm sitting outside of a restaurant with joe rogan,
and howard stern walks up and sits down.
Before they go in, howard turns to me and said,
"hey, why don't you come over to my house later on?
"bring the boys.
I've got two. They'd get along fine."
and I said, "all right, man. Sounds good."
that's it. [chuckles]
the belt's really tightening up.
It's a little concerning.
I've been fishing several times,
but nothing.
♪ ♪
oh, yes--
aw, damn it.
Take it, take it. Take it, take it.
Oh...Aw.
Come on, come on, come on, come on.
Son of a bitch.
Fishing is supposed to be relaxing.
It's the most stressful fishing I've ever done.
♪ ♪
the closest deep water
where I think the fishing would be decent is
a quarter-mile down to the big rock.
So today, I'm gonna start on a landing net.
I just need something to dip down in there
and get those fish because
I'm gonna end up losing them if I don't have a net.
Alder wood.
I need some alder wood.
♪ ♪
this is not the area
that I was hoping it would be.
Yeah, that'll work.
♪ ♪
my chances of killing a deer are very low.
♪ ♪
the more I think about it, I don't know if those deer
are gonna be down here
until late with this weather being so mild.
And so fishing maybe the ticket for me here.
I think I'll give this net to koi when I get back.
He'd like that.
I have to make fin something.
♪ ♪
[whistling]
♪ ♪
[grunts] there we go.
I'm gonna lay the net.
Ready to rock and roll.
Man, yeah!
♪ ♪
the fish ain't gonna know what hit them.
♪ ♪
all right.
Let's try it out.
I think the lake level came up some.
I've gotta be careful.
♪ ♪
[hisses] no, don't do that!
[groans]
yeah.
♪ ♪
thought it was gonna sink for a minute.
You have to be careful...
About that stuff.
♪ ♪
come on, fishy, fishy.
♪ ♪
nada.
♪ ♪
I need food.
I don't know how far this thing is going.
It could go over 100 days.
Oh, [bleep].
There are some very strong-willed people here,
people that are not going to give up easily,
and I cannot out-starve anyone.
♪ ♪
- freshwater snails.
It's gonna be an interesting meal.
Gonna have some snails.
[munches loudly]
wow, really crunchy.
Not much meat to speak of, but...
Hmm.
Not a bad flavor.
It reminds me a little bit of clams...
With a lot of grit. [chuckles]
♪ ♪
I've been fishing a lot.
I haven't been successful,
and I don't wanna give up.
So I'm gonna do a fish trap.
I've been eating a lot of random stuff:
Ants, crickets,
lots of edibles, but it's not enough.
I need fish.
♪ ♪
all right, the funnel that'll lead them inside.
Pretty small hole, but
those fish are pretty thin
there in the shallows.
I hope it works.
♪ ♪
I'm here to win it.
And I'm doing this for mike.
My husband has a brother.
He has down syndrome
and he lives with us a month out of the year.
When they asked me, you know,
"what would you do with the money?"
I said, "we would have mike more."
$500,000, that would allow him to live with us full-time.
♪ ♪
and he's so amazing.
He's our guy.
Yeah, there we go.
♪ ♪
feeling a little more hopeful about fishing.
♪ ♪
out here, you do have to just
keep, keep trying-- keep trying new things.
If it's not working, try something else.
♪ ♪
I feel like I can be here.
I just need a way to get food.
Okay.
♪ ♪
- we got the line, we got the lures,
we got the stuff, we got the me.
Let's go, chad!
♪ it's time to go fishing ♪
♪ 'cause it's gonna be fun ♪
♪ I'm gonna see some fishes ♪
♪ and I'll catch everyone ♪
♪ in my pot tonight ♪
♪ 'cause I'm gonna cook you up ♪
♪ and I'm gonna catch you, right ♪
♪ and I'm gonna do it, what ♪
[vocalizes]
oh, it's not too windy.
♪ ♪
I'm in such a brutal area for fishing.
I've got one reasonably close deep channel,
and my strategy is lures.
They say there's a fine line between fishing
and standing on the shore like an idiot,
so I'm gonna see which one it is.
Oh, oh! Oh, I had a bite.
Oh, oh, oh! Oh, snag.
[groans] please don't snag.
[sighs] I don't want to go in!
But I don't wanna lose it!
♪ ♪
whew, man! I'm sucking right now.
♪ ♪
oh, it's cold. It's cold.
♪ ♪
aw, it's deep.
♪ ♪
there we go. I got it.
♪ ♪
wow.
I'm gonna get back at it.
I'm not gonna give up.
I don't just need a fish.
I need a win,
for my mental state.
♪ ♪
I'm thinking about my wife today,
since it's her birthday.
Just, uh, feeling it a little bit.
Feeling the remoteness from my family.
♪ ♪
[bleep]!
From my normal life.
Feeling a little defeatist.
But remembering to stay in the moment more.
That's what it's gonna take for me to win this.
♪ ♪
oh, yeah. Yes!
Yeah!
Yes!
Oh, it's tiny.
You are not getting away, my friend.
Oh, I'm gonna eat you in a stew.
Pretty. It's pretty.
♪ ♪
I'm imagining one of the other contestants
with a big-ass fish,
and here I am
with a tiny little fifth of a pounder.
♪ ♪
I mean, he's tiny.
Let's not-- let's not build this up
to a hero kind of ordeal.
This is no hero fish.
♪ ♪
all right. Let's eat this soup.
♪ ♪
roast up these bones.
Who knew that roasted bones,
so good?
Of course, I just talked about how great that meal is,
and I'm already, like, hungry.
♪ ♪
well chad,
you can't win them all.
I'm gonna do my meditation,
'cause I think it's time.
I think it's that time of day.
♪ ♪
I'm like,
judging my whole life.
I'm afraid that people will look and say
that this person doesn't have skill level.
I mean, this is what I do professionally.
Like, I get paid to teach survival skills.
And I'm, like, out here, and
it's just been all my failures in front of the world.
So I'm doing these meditations where I meet up with my wife.
She's the one with the mental and emotional fortitude
in the family.
[inhales deeply]
and I can feel her energy.
I can feel her presence strongly.
[exhales sharply]
I miss her bad.
♪ ♪
- there she is.
A work of art.
The mountain-forged nail knife.
Quick in the hand.
I used some snare wire.
Fashioned a little guard,
a little blade stop.
Actually pretty strong 'cause it's stainless steel wire.
Multi-layered.
See what you can do with a--
a rusty old nail you find on shore.
[imitates whooshing]
let's try it out real quick.
♪ ♪
people are either gonna like me, or they're gonna think
I'm the weirdest [bleep] out there.
♪ ♪
all right.
♪ ♪
look at that.
I'm splitting wood with my...
Troll-forged knife.
That's pretty cool.
People will be like, "biko sucked at getting food.
"but man, he forged that knife
"and he built a pretty cool shelter, so
he's not totally worthless."
[chuckles]
♪ ♪
I definitely expected to catch a fish by now,
so it's been kind of disheartening.
And it ain't even gotten tough yet.
This is not an easy place to survive.
♪ ♪
got to figure out fishing.
I'm gonna make a fish basket.
Try it out. It could work.
♪ ♪
we shall use willow.
[nasally] "willow."
what a great movie.
"out of the way, peck."
oh, I hope I can catch a fish soon.
I'm gonna be sexy when I get out of here, though.
No more fat biko,
or maybe I'll be malnourished and weak.
♪ ♪
I wonder how everyone's doing.
I wonder if anyone has tapped out.
A bunch of grizzly bears, not a lot of food.
♪ ♪
come on, there's got to be somebody
who's ready to go home.
Anyone got the time?
Is it other contestants tap out o'clock yet?
I'm gonna do my best, either way.
♪ ♪
damn, that's ugly.
♪ ♪
oh, well.
I don't have much care.
♪ ♪
[branches snap]
[dramatic musical sting]
[water splashing]
♪ ♪
holy [bleep]! Those are bears.
Grizzly bears.
Go on! Get!
♪ ♪
looked like a couple of cubs.
Hey!
[air horn toots]
♪ ♪
hopefully mama's not around.
♪ ♪
freakin' heart's racing.
[exhales]
they're a lot bigger than I thought.
♪ ♪
got my adrenaline pumping.
♪ ♪
I've never been anywhere
where grizzlies exist,
so this is a first for me.
Knowing that these things could cause serious harm
to you, it's a scary thought.
They're moving through my area,
and it's something that's in the back of my head
all the time.
♪ ♪
I got freakin' shoreline ptsd.
♪ ♪
I'm gonna go deploy my fish trap.
Here we go.
Hopefully I don't run into a grizzly.
♪ ♪
even with starvation
and grizzly bears coming into my camp,
I just got to keep keeping on.
I've got a lot of weight on me.
But if I'm gonna stay here a long time,
I can't just starve the whole time.
♪ ♪
I hope that as time goes on,
as I get things more set up and more comfortable,
that I get more bold in food production.
♪ ♪
- I kind of wanna have a cook shelter.
It's a little bit of protection for the fireplace.
It will be better than being out
in the wind.
Whew!
[inhales deeply, exhales sharply]
I just feel really...
Just super weak.
♪ ♪
just get some more food in me.
Maybe that'll help.
♪ ♪
I'm still finding tons of edibles,
but you have to eat a lot of it.
It's just low-calorie food and low fat.
♪ ♪
throw some...
Fireweed leaves in there.
Hopefully, there's something in the fish trap.
Getting some fish soon can give me enough energy
to sustain me.
I need some bigger meals
to be able to stay out here.
♪ ♪
so I have a confession to make.
I've been so concerned about salt, salt intake.
Like, we need, we need daily salt intake.
Like, it's really critical for all of your body functionings,
and I don't have the salt source,
so I have been eating my own mucus.
[chuckles]
oh, my god. That's so gross.
Yeah, so when my nose runs,
I just eat all the mucus,
and it is very salty.
It is much less salty than it was at the beginning,
so I know I'm depleted,
but it kept me from losing so much.
I feel really guilty for all those kids I told
to stop picking their nose and eating it all those--
all these years as a teacher.
Go ahead, kids. Eat your own mucus.
Like--
[laughs]
oh, my god.
♪ ♪
you do a lot of disgusting things out here
that, like, you just would not ever think
that you're gonna do,
but you're really trying to stay
in whatever way you can.
♪ ♪
I need to get food.
For me, fishing is the only thing
that will sustain my tiny,
wiry body.
♪ ♪
okay, let's go down and check our fish trap.
♪ ♪
I think the fish basket
is probably my best bet.
♪ ♪
I don't feel like I'm in a very...
Sustainable pattern.
More fishing disappointment.
I just feel like I can't win, you know?
[sighs]
and then, you're right back down again.
Up and down.
♪ ♪
I don't really think of myself as, you know, that hardcore.
But this is hardcore. [chuckles]
it's a big mental and physical challenge.
For me, it's been much more physical.
Just the lack of food.
My mind feels relatively
strong and clear.
♪ ♪
this is very challenging, you know,
to keep going amidst setbacks.
♪ ♪
- I've got a mustache.
It's gigantic.
That's a mustache.
[vocalizes]
♪ ♪
I don't know how to groom it.
If I can get a handlebar...
♪ ♪
these guys.
♪ ♪
handlebar mustache.
♪ ♪
I need to remedy my sleeping situation.
All right.
I've had two spine surgeries,
and sleeping on spruced boughs and gravel
gets kind of rough.
Every day, I wake up,
and my whole left thigh is numb.
♪ ♪
so I'm gonna make a suspension hammock bed,
which takes me completely off the ground
using rope I found on the beach.
♪ ♪
not a lot.
Maybe it's just under four feet.
What I'm gonna do
is make a stranded
woven bed
using this
as my supports.
♪ ♪
I don't know what box to put myself in.
I'm not a survivalist. I'm not a bushcrafter.
I'm barely a homesteader.
I bought 40 acres and built a house on it.
♪ ♪
who thinks this is gonna work?
♪ ♪
I think it is.
For me, my skill set is that
I'm not afraid to try it
and I'm creative at problem solving.
I seek out the challenge.
[grunts]
so if I desire to do something,
I just do it.
It's just like buying 40 acres
and being told there's no water in those hills
and moving your family up there
and digging four holes in the earth until you find water.
And then, I found water.
People would usually say that's a scary situation,
but that's how I live my life.
♪ ♪
I didn't grow up with a dad.
And I learned a long time ago,
I'm the only one that can stop me
from accomplishing anything.
I am.
♪ ♪
so, let's test it out.
♪ ♪
[moaning]
perfect.
This is gonna change
my sleeping.
Awesome.
And I'm off the ground.
[sighs contentedly]
beautiful.
♪ ♪
- so I'm totally breaking every single safety protocol
in my handbook.
I'd say I'm about 40 feet up in this spruce tree,
but, man,
check out this view of the lake.
Isn't that fantastic?
I've been thinking about my family a lot today.
It's not gonna help keep me focused in the game,
but it's hard not to.
I love them, and I miss them.
♪ ♪
I'm doing everything that I've been trained to do,
but I can't focus my mind and my emotions enough.
Let's go, chad.
I just need to change my mental approach to this.
Be here now.
Go to the survival mind,
'cause that survival mind is not concerned
with your emotions.
It's not concerned with your frustrations.
It's not concerned with your mental hurdles.
It's only concerned with,
what is the most important thing to keep me alive.
I keep feeling breezes inside the debris hut,
and those are gonna be not so much fun
when the temperature really drops.
Being cold is a big calorie burn,
and I can't afford that.
I have the least fat of anybody on my body.
I don't have that much to lose,
and if I'm burning calories by shivering,
it's gonna be a bad situation.
♪ ♪
there's nice, soft,
cushy grasses here.
So I think that's gonna help
both for water shedding and insulation.
♪ ♪
thank you, my friends.
Thank you.
The grasses, the mosses.
There's no such thing as enough debris.
Oh, [bleep]. [hornets buzzing]
hornets.
♪ ♪
mm-mm, don't get me.
Ah, [bleep]!
Ah, [bleep].
Whoa!
[bleep]!
[groans]
[buzzing continues]
[bleep]!
It's the end of that.
Little bastards got me.
Look at them all.
[sighs]
♪ ♪
look, they're all over my little pile here.
♪ ♪
got my handful from them.
[sighs] well, that sucks [bleep].
♪ ♪
let's go home, chad.
♪ ♪
this is a very unique challenge.
You can't let the negative thoughts
get the best of you.
Ah, [bleep].
♪ ♪
gosh, what a blessing it is to be here.
I mean, it's hard as [bleep]. [chuckles]
♪ ♪
it's hard to have failures on television.
It's so hard on your mind and your emotions,
so [bleep] hard.
Anytime I've ever done this,
it was for, like, a week at a time,
but that was, like, planned 10 days.
This is, like, unplanned,
who knows how the hell long I'll be gone
from my family, and my life, and blah, blah, blah.
And I don't care.
Anybody can judge me all you want.
You are not out here doing it.
So who the hell are you to judge?
Just sit there and eat your popcorn and your chips
and get all fat
while I'm out here starving!
For your [bleep] entertainment!
♪ ♪
to entertain you.
I'm going [bleep] crazy out here
to entertain you.
What the [bleep] is that?
[bleep].
You're [bleep] sitting at home eating right now!
You're not out here. You're not out here.
Who the [bleep] are you to judge?
♪ ♪
- my teeth are, like...
♪ ♪
like, totally discolored.
Like, I saw that and I was like,
"what the hell?"
♪ ♪
I don't know, something I'm eating
or just maybe just the malnutrition.
I have no idea.
♪ ♪
right now, it's really pretty dire.
The fish trap was really discouraging.
♪ ♪
today, I might kind of look around
'cause I've definitely seen some grouse.
I need to get some food.
♪ ♪
and the bow.
I feel like I need to...
Cinch my pants again.
Thank goodness for these layers
or these pants would be
falling right off me.
♪ ♪
I know that I'm under 100 pounds at this point
and I know that this is dangerous territory.
Okay.
Despite eating as much as I possibly can
of a variety of weird [bleep],
I'm trying my hardest to get as many things into my body
as possible, and it's not working.
If I can't get food,
then I can't-- I can't be here.
♪ ♪
take it easy.
I need to move quickly.
♪ ♪
grouse.
I've seen the scat a couple of different times,
and they are near my living area.
Let's just sit and listen for a while.
Oh, wow.
♪ ♪
I'm just too skinny.
I was afraid that losing weight,
it might, like, bring up stuff from when I was young.
I had an eating disorder for years,
and looking back,
it's so disturbing,
you know, that punishment of self.
♪ ♪
I was plagued
with horrible thoughts about myself.
I don't think anybody deserves that.
♪ ♪
I'm just so glad
to have made that shift years ago
into a different way of being and thinking.
♪ ♪
I think it's become a lot more important for me
to be healthy and strong.
♪ ♪
I'm gonna head back.
♪ ♪
you know, this body is all we have.
So I think there's a level for us all
of, you know, willingness to push ourselves,
and, for me,
I'm not going to push myself
into any more of a danger zone than I'm already in.
♪ ♪
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
[exhales slowly]
[exhales sharply] okay.
♪ ♪
I start having these chest pains.
Oh, boy.
No amount of glory is worth harming yourself
to the level that starvation can do.
[sighs]
I think this is enough.
[yellowbrick buttons beeping]
I am officially tapping out.
♪ ♪
I made a moral decision
for my health and my future
that I have no trouble making.
But there's intense grief with the loss of--
of what could have been.
♪ ♪
a picture of my guys.
There was the hope we'd have the money to have mike, but...
♪ ♪
[sighs] it's okay.
I love you guys.
♪ ♪
I'm coming home to you, honey.
♪ ♪
- hi, michelle. What's going on?
- Well...
I've been pretty beat up by this place.
[chuckles]
I just can't procure enough food.
The hardest thing about leaving this space,
I think, is the "what could have been," you know?
If you had made different choices,
maybe things would have aligned in a different way.
But in terms of the experiences I've had,
I feel really good about them.
I feel like I'm taking a lot of...
Magic and heart with me.
♪ ♪
I took myself to a point
where any further, and this could be really bad.
I know what it's like to lose your health.
When I was young, it affected every part of my life
and the quality of my life.
I felt like I was too far gone
to pull myself back up into functionality.
Having a strong, healthy body is
one of the greatest gifts that you can have in this life.
♪ ♪
- ♪ a-bow hunting, we shall go ♪
♪ a-bow hunting, we shall go ♪
I think am on to something there.
I might develop that a little more.
All right.
Wish me luck.
♪ ♪
it's so frustrating
to not be able to catch a fish,
and so, I feel like I need to focus on hunting.
That's really the only option I have right now.
♪ ♪
this style of hunting that I like is
a method of still hunting,
where you move through the woods
very, very slowly.
♪ ♪
a large portion of the time, you're just stopped
and you're looking and you're listening for wildlife.
The littlest noise can mean
the presence of an animal.
[birds chirping]
the key is total awareness.
You have to be very present
and calm,
because if you have other things on your mind,
you're not there.
You're not present.
♪ ♪
[thrums]
♪ ♪
well, that's awesome.
Some fresh deer sign.
That gives me a little bit of confidence
that we're gonna have some deer here.
I've been struggling a little bit.
That gives me something to look forward to,
which is exactly what I needed.
Maybe, you know, I got a chance
to put a deer down.
That's good. That's...
That's really good.
♪ ♪
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- whoo.
I'm feeling kind of ragged today.
A little worn.
Overall, kind of rundown physically.
I need to step up my food-gathering game,
so maybe instead of an hour of grasses,
I'll go fishing.
I gotta get catching. I gotta...
I gotta turn my luck around.
I need the food. I just need the food.
That's all there is to it.
♪ ♪
so much crap to carry, chad.
So much crap to carry, including you.
My trusty sidekick.
♪ ♪
my famous maker.
At this rate, you'll be my infamous maker.
♪ ♪
I'm not living up to
what I want to live up to as a survivalist.
It's important to me, chad.
It's super important to me.
You just don't understand, do you?
How could you?
You're just an inanimate damn object.
♪ ♪
I'm trying.
I'm doing everything that I've been trained to do,
but my awareness is not where it needs to be
personally, for me, to be successful.
♪ ♪
just started realizing that
over the last 13 years now,
I've had my wife
to help keep me focused on the right things.
So I'm gonna sing my song, my wife's song.
Why not?
♪ ring ring goes the dinner bell ♪
♪ all of mama's children come a-running up ♪
♪ from the gut ♪
♪ to what she's put ♪
♪ on the table ♪
come on. Catch a big boy.
♪ coal's still hot ♪
♪ and the sweet smell of wood smoke ♪
♪ the three stones she uses ♪
♪ and the wood spoon made from oak ♪
♪ daddy gets the firewood ♪
♪ ♪
♪ he washes off in a cool gut stream ♪
♪ after climbing a coconut tree ♪
♪ for his family ♪
♪ oh, what a sight to see ♪
♪ as he returns triumphantly ♪
♪ ♪
[chuckles]
[sighs] okay, that's it. Done.
♪ ♪
I've been gone for weeks now.
And what the hell, I got a beautiful,
amazing family.
♪ ♪
that's more important in life
than winning a competition.
And they are not gonna judge me.
So, go ahead.
Judge me all you want.
I'm ready for it.
[yellowbrick buttons beeping]
good morning. This is matt.
I am officially tapping out.
♪ ♪
oh, chad.
It was hard. It was hard.
But you know what?
Family, friends,
the people around us is more important than my ego.
And I think this
has made me a better person.
As hard as it is professionally to quit...
Here they come, chadical.
It doesn't make me a failure.
It's just a failure.
And that's a huge difference right there.
I've never allowed that for myself.
This is the end of our time together, chadster.
I will miss you.
I will totally miss you.
I'm ready to go.
Yeah, I mean, I had an amazing experience.
And I realized that I wasn't happy being alone
and I didn't wanna fight it.
I totally miss my family.
I totally miss my friends.
I totally miss my life. I miss all of that.
And if people I want to call it a failure,
then I accept that failure.
I don't wanna be driven by the fear of judgment.
I wanna be driven by what's in my heart.
♪ ♪
my ideals
have not matched my heart
for years now.
My ideals say
that the solo survivalist is
the ultimate of the survivalists.
♪ ♪
but now, I'm realizing
that that's [bleep].
♪ ♪
this ultimate survivalist dies alone.
When he passes on,
his kids are alone.
♪ ♪
and even deeper than that,
I realized that family
is more important
than anything else.
♪ ♪
- well, let's see if we can catch something.
Jacket make too much noise in the bushes.
In case I happen to see one of the three deer
that's around here.
Maybe two deer.
They ain't many.
That's for sure.
♪ ♪
I found one little ridge
where I can access that patch
where I was finding that fresh deer sign yesterday evening.
♪ ♪
I tell you, things that
normally I wouldn't even
take a second glance
kind of wear you out
when you're not eating every day.
♪ ♪
I'm seeing more fresh sign in here.
♪ ♪
[growling]
♪ ♪
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- michelle, thanks for being here with me.
- Thanks for having me.
- Everybody who's been on "alone"
knows what it's like to lose a lot of weight.
When did you realize you were nearing the end?
- You know, you look at your hands,
and you don't recognize them.
And your body becomes a fearful thing.
You notice you're losing weight,
but you're wearing so many clothes
that you can kind of mask that for a while.
And then, you see yourself without clothes on,
and it's like-- [gasps]
I kind of washed myself,
and that's when I looked at my body and went...
Yikes.
My mouth filled with this sweet saliva taste
four days prior to me tapping,
and that's basically ketosis--
when your body's eating whatever reserves it has--
so I knew--I knew things were going downhill.
My inability to procure fish
was what led to me having to tap.
- Let's talk about your food gathering.
In a survival situation, you have to be willing
to eat anything that other people will not consider doing.
You were eating ants, crickets, snails.
- I ate whatever I could.
But I found a little bit of a fish carcass
along this trail.
I gathered whatever I could find that I knew is edible,
and even maybe some things that
are on the questionable side.
I wanted to get as much varied nutrition as I could,
so I was definitely pushing that envelope
of just trying anything I could eat.
Mmm.
- You used the cow parsnip stalk to blow on your fire.
But cow parsnip can give people an allergic reaction.
What happened?
- I'm still not certain exactly what it was
that was causing my illness,
but I did feel that there was a connection
between the stalk and the bouts of nausea
and pain I was having.
And so, when I was putting that together,
I thought, "ooh, this-- maybe this isn't cow parsnip.
Maybe I hadn't identified it correctly."
wow.
Water hemlock and cow parsnip looked very similar
in their dead phases.
So then, I got very concerned that
maybe I had poisoned myself with water hemlock.
I'm worried that the tube
is, um, not cow parsnip.
- What was that like being so sick and alone?
- I've spent a lot of time in the wilderness by myself,
and honestly, that was one of the scariest times
because I wasn't certain what was going on.
I had another just intense wave of...
Nausea.
I really had some panic
because I thought, "oh, my gosh,
"I'm so far from nearest hospital.
I could be in deep trouble here."
I'm just gonna sit for a second.
[exhales]
and there were moments where
I was just holding the yellowbrick,
ready to push that button
in the event of things getting worse.
And I came through the other side, luckily.
- Yeah, you did. - [chuckles]
- your bear experience was epic.
There you were on the beach calmly eating rose hips,
and this big, beautiful bear comes swimming at you.
- No freakin' way.
It was again one of those kind of surreal,
like, shocking moments.
And, you know, minding my own business, eating rose hips,
and all of a sudden, I'm like, "oh, my gosh.
There's a bear right there."
it's gonna dock up into brush in here.
And then, I'm like, "okay, how do I feet out of here?"
you know, get, you know, with all my gear and my stuff.
And so, I was able to do that
to kind of just let him continue,
and then he caught a fish right then.
He's got a freaking giant fish in his mouth.
- You must have just wanted to rush out there
and grab that thing right out of his mouth.
- I went and got my pot
and followed him, hoping for scraps.
- You were like a raven walking behind him.
[both laugh]
- absolutely.
But he left me nothing. - Aw.
I can't imagine how you felt in that moment.
- Super disappointed.
I was like--really thought
I was gonna get some nice chunks of fish,
so...Yeah.
- What will you remember most about this beautiful place?
- Aw, the beauty, the promise of each day.
It's just an extra ordinary gift,
and every single day I was out there,
I felt like the luckiest person in the world.
I believe we carry the stories
that we've lived with us,
but we also carry the places.
They have this impact on us,
and, you know, that changes you,
and it's with you forever.
- Michelle, thanks so much for sharing your story.
It was a pleasure to meet you.
- So nice to meet you too, nikki.
♪ ♪
- now, I have the shakes.
I'm feeling nauseous. [groans]
[retches]
- it's pulling all the air in from over there,
just bringing the smoke inside.
I'm gonna end up asphyxiating myself tonight.
- Something has been here.
It tore up my fire pit.
[bear growling] hey, bear.
- Let's read my personal rules list.
Don't push the tap button.
♪ ♪