If you haven't watched it, the show is about adventurer Ed Stafford surviving alone on a desert island, Oloura 200 miles southeast of Fiji for sixty days and, as the title suggests, he's naked. He is dropped off on the island with nothing but a cameras and "what God gave him".He's had a pretty cool career up to this point. He attended the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst and became a commisioned officer in the British Army in 1999. He commanded platoons in the Devonshire and Dorset Regiment. After leaving the military he became an expedition leader with the charity Trekforce, leading community and conservation expeditions through Belize, Guatemala and Borneo. He's also walked the entire length of the Amazon for charity, a feat that landed him a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records. So yeah, quite a guy.
I am liking the show. At first I though it was just going to be another boring reality show. But, as he goes through his first day you can see that he is really terrified that he may have made the wrong move here. His first task he sets for himself is the hunt for fresh water, which he finds, but there's never enough. Food is another problem which he seems to be overcoming. I found myself laughing at him as he explores the island and comes upon things that have washed ashore. Plastic bottles, a shirt, a rugby ball. Discarded trash that you and I would take for granted.
But then he makes fire and the joy he has from this really got to me. Something so very simple,that I carry in my pocket and can have at anytime being such a major necessity. I've done survival training and had to make my own fire, but not in a situation where I wouldn't have been rescued if I had failed. Of course I am sure that there's an emergency plan in place for Stafford as well.
I am splitting this into two parts. Going to finish the second and last episode this afternoon.
JS
No comments:
Post a Comment