[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- I'm gonna do this, man.
I'm gonna do this.
I'm gonna fight this thing out to the last breath.
♪ ♪
- OK.
Game on.
♪ ♪
- I got him.
narrator: In "Alone's" most remote location yet...
- Yes!
narrator: Ten participants set out
to survive at all costs. - [grunts]
- Our goal is stay alive.
♪ ♪
- [inhales sharply] [grunts]
narrator: Battling extreme isolation...
- There is no camera crews.
You are really alone.
- It'll eat at you, tear you up.
- God, why?
- It's a battle.
Nobody ever comes out the same.
- Oh, man.
- It'd be impossible to.
narrator: And fierce predators.
- Some big bear is right outside my shelter.
- Predators like that damn sure gonna kill you.
- Please don't rip my face off.
[animal growls]
He bit the hell out of me.
narrator: They'll endure merciless wind...
- Been over 60 hours, and it has not let up.
- I can hear the trees falling down around me.
narrator: And bitter cold.
- This whole place has turned into a frozen hell.
narrator: Last one standing...
- It's a moose. Wow.
♪ ♪
- Whoo!
- No. No.
narrator: Wins.
♪ ♪
- The significance of a big game kill
is monumental.
♪ ♪
[bleep].
Can't hit a shot you don't take though.
- OK, now, I will see if it'll stay floating.
Feels good.
♪ ♪
Bon voyage.
- No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
My quiver came off my bow.
♪ ♪
[bleep].
This is when you really have to dig deep.
And it ain't OK to give up.
- [laughs] Yes!
Holy shiz-nickels.
Look at all this roe.
Can't waste it.
♪ ♪
[coughs] [retches]
- My intention is to build a log cabin.
- I know that I will thrive out here if I'm comfortable.
- It's gonna take a lot of grit
to do what the ten of us are doing.
And I know I can do it.
Whoo!
♪ ♪
- Day one has just begun. That's amazing.
I am free! Yes.
I've been waiting for this right from when I found out.
And it's absolutely amazing.
- There you go.
Now I'm completely alone.
What have I done?
[laughs] [bleep] got real now.
It's real.
- And we are here.
Feel like [bleep] damn William Wallace.
Freedom! [laughs]
- It's time for me to get started.
I'd love to soak it all in,
but I got a feeling that I'm gonna have plenty of time
to do that.
- There they go.
Oh, my gosh.
I'm all alone now.
[laughs] It's kind of good to be alone.
♪ ♪
Huh.
Wow.
I think it got super real right now.
There's so much going through my head.
Just feel a little discombobulated,
if you know what I mean.
You know when they talk about drop shock?
Someone just got drop shock, and that is me.
♪ ♪
Huh.
[exhales]
I feel a little overwhelmed--
too much to do.
♪ ♪
OK. Here I go.
♪ ♪
Come on, Ann. You can do it.
I'm gonna put my stuff over here.
Jeez, do I have the stuff? Holy buckets.
It's like Christmas.
So I'm gonna--
I'm gonna set up my shelter somewhere near here.
I guess you guys are back there,
just thinking this is frickin' hilarious.
[laughs] Oh, my gosh.
I'm just kind of anxious
and a little concerned about food,
but the first day, I think getting the shelter up
is what I'm most concerned about.
And remember, I'm a survival expert.
Don't try this at home.
♪ ♪
Get those arms out. OK.
Now I've got the squirrel.
I am a organic farmer.
Farming, it's a lot of work.
It's sunup to sundown.
Every year is different.
Some years, you have a lot of rain.
You might have an early frost.
You got to think on your feet.
Ingenuity is my secret power.
Look at. Do you see my coat?
I coated that in birch oil.
It's waterproof. I mean, this coat--
oh, it's like cigar.
It's like--it smells really good, I think.
I've got a lot of things going for me.
I'm a quick shot with a bow.
I can tan hide, smoke hides.
I know what I'm doing when I get into the animal.
I know all my plants.
Right here, staghorn sumac.
I'm small.
My metabolism is kind of light.
The shelter is pretty much finished.
I live in a wonderful place with a wonderful guy
named Tom.
- Hi!
- Oh, there you are, cleaning a northern.
My daughter, her name is Saffron.
Sometimes, she's my rock.
She's her own independent person,
and she's doing pretty well.
The money would bring opportunities.
You don't make a lot of money farming.
It would be nice to get a better water system
and be able to hire someone to work our store.
I am 56, even though my mind
just says I'm still 20.
That's a pretty nice shrimp.
People see, like, this older lady.
They don't see what's underneath.
I've been training for this basically my whole life.
Never leave home without an axe.
I've always been driven.
I'm competitive,
and I'm gonna be there for as long as it takes.
♪ ♪
OK.
More boughs.
I think it's gonna be enough for tonight
because I have stuff to do.
OK.
Well, packed up.
I got my bow.
I'm just gonna walk around and see
what's going on out here, you know?
♪ ♪
Found some berries.
I see a lot of different types of berries.
There's more hedgehog mushrooms.
And the different types of mushrooms
and other starchy vegetables are out there.
There's another one. Yay.
Things are looking up. So many possibilities.
My survival philosophy is trying
to become part of the landscape.
If you're not fighting it, it's actually less work.
Oh, my.
I found bear scat.
♪ ♪
Somebody else is here besides me.
♪ ♪
Once I get my shelter up and it starts to turn cold,
I do plan on bear hunting here.
I'm very excited that I see animal sign
♪ ♪
I'm wore out.
Well, I'm gonna try cooking these mushrooms.
Not much of a first meal, but there's more
where they came from up there.
Getting big game, that would be awesome.
But big game doesn't just show up
at your doorstep, you know?
It's gonna be a lot of work.
And I am just psyched.
I think that looks done.
♪ ♪
Mmm.
♪ ♪
They're good.
♪ ♪
Can't believe how tired I am. Wow.
I got to go to bed.
♪ ♪
- Oh, yeah, a bar of soap
would definitely be handy here.
Nice and careful.
These rocks are a little slippery.
♪ ♪
Oh. Whoo-hoo! Yeah.
Yeah. Whew.
[grunts] Yeah.
♪ ♪
That'll let you know you're alive.
Ooh.
Cleaned all the private parts.
No bragging rights getting out of here, whoa.
Wow, that smells so much better.
You need to get the body clean, you know?
Just like home, eh?
We're going hunting.
Name's Wyatt Black.
We're good.
I'm from Ontario. I have a contracting company.
There's dinner right there.
The thing that makes me best suited
for this challenge is my diversity.
I'm not a master of anything...
A point over.
But I'm good at a lot of things.
There we go.
I can shoot a bow. My hunting is good.
Camouflage.
I've got my own honeybees.
I preserve. I dry.
I smoke.
The boreal forest is like home.
This is my world.
I grew up hunting, fishing with my father
and my grandfather.
It's the same forest that I go moose hunting in
every year.
I'm gonna find everything I need to find.
I'm gonna find the fish.
I'm gonna find the moose.
I'm gonna find the squirrels.
If I can't win this show here, I can't win it anywhere.
It's my element.
Love you.
I'm a proud father of two wonderful boys.
I've got a beautiful wife.
I've been blessed, but I have not left a legacy.
I would like to open a wilderness school.
So that 500 grand,
I'd like to sink into something that could
truly make a bunch of other people's lives better.
My humble abode.
I've been cold before.
I've been hungry before.
The hardest thing I am gonna face out here is being alone.
I plan on being out here till the end.
Keeps that fire going good for us.
And it ain't done until they hand me a check for 500 grand.
♪ ♪
And we need to get fishing.
Too much screwing around here, boys and girls,
too much screwing around.
Think we'd better get this damn gillnet tied.
♪ ♪
Fishing is gonna be my number one.
I know where the fish are gonna be.
Lake trout are gonna be on the shoals.
The pike are gonna be in the shallows.
The walleye and stuff are gonna be following.
If there's gonna be a stream,
the whitefish are gonna be going up them.
I grew up catching those fish.
First set of strands.
The priority will be to build a rod,
build a gillnet, build lures.
First one.
I need to get a gillnet built quick.
It fishes 24/7 for me.
Keep it at a nice, small size.
I'm hungry.
Help me out, eh?
I'll be gathering food to start.
Building my permanent shelter will be a methodical thing,
a slow thing.
For right now, my temporary, that's all I need.
♪ ♪
I got lines blowing every direction.
I will build my shelter to be able to handle
the winds that I know I'm gonna get here.
But I figure I got a couple more weeks.
♪ ♪
We're getting there.
Out here, I know that it's gonna be
a step after step after step process.
And I'm good at that.
I'm like the tortoise. Slow and steady wins the race.
Because I hate to quit on anything,
I think I got everything that it's gonna take
to win this.
Boy, I hope this works.
[urine trickling]
- I don't believe I just did that.
[laughs]
Trail camera rules 101.
Oh, my God.
I always pee outside my tent first thing in the morning.
It's like a ritual.
Oh. Oh, my God.
[bleep] embarrassing.
All right.
Well, it won't happen tomorrow.
[laughs]
♪ ♪
So I'm cutting my struts.
Definite strategy of mine is to focus
on building my permanent shelter
as soon as possible,
and I aim to create a strong one here.
OK, gonna put the roof on.
♪ ♪
Being just shy of six foot
means that I cannot live in a tiny shelter
for a long period of time.
It's absolutely vital that I build a shelter
that I can at least stand up in.
I got to give myself space,
but I've got to give myself an insulated space.
It's getting there.
It's like, oh, yes.
This is almost home.
Good morning from Thunderhawk Mountain.
I live in the Adirondack Mountains
with my fiancé, Brian, with the dogs,
with the chickens, with the ducks,
just keeping it simple.
[laughs]
When I was young, I was a model,
and it was an incredible time, 1980s in London.
And I traveled the world. It was incredible.
But it was a limited lifespan.
So I started working behind the camera,
becoming a child and baby wrangler
on film, photographic, and advertising shoots.
♪ ♪
Got it.
As my children became older,
I had more time to myself.
Yeah!
And that's what really started me off
on becoming more interested in wilderness survival.
Oh, yes.
I started honing my skills in fishing,
harvesting animals, foraging wild edibles,
building shelters, and traditional
fire-starting skills as fast as I could.
There we go.
I'm also co-owner of Thunderhawk
Living History and Nature School.
We teach 18th-century history,
the French and Indian War, the Revolutionary War,
in a fully immersive state of period-correct personas
and accouterments.
With life, there are things that you have to do first.
You put yourself second.
Other people come first, and especially as a woman,
too, you know. I've been a mom.
I've been a wife. I'm a partner.
I'm an owner of a business.
I sign up to "Alone," all that goes out the window.
It's all about me, and that is incredible.
I've been trying to find my inner peace my whole life.
I now have that time to become whatever it is
I wanted to become.
I know it's gonna kick me in the ass,
but I'm [bleep] doing it and I'm gonna embrace
every single second of it.
All right.
Gonna start the walls.
Onwards and upwards.
♪ ♪
My strategy is to live as close
as possible to someone who was coming
into this area in the 1700s.
My skills as a living historian
of knowing how people survived gives me
so much more access to what it is that surrounds us,
whether it be on the ground, under the ground,
in the water, in the trees.
Looks pretty awesome.
The one thing that I am really worried about
is that it's gonna be a really tough winter.
There we go.
Being so close to the Arctic, the wind from the north
can get to 120 kilometers an hour.
And if my shelter is not built impenetrable
from the wind, I'm kind of screwed.
Things are looking good.
♪ ♪
- Yesterday, I made the move over here.
So today, I want to focus on trying to find some food.
[mosquito buzzing]
And there's a mosquito.
I got the little son of a [bleep] too.
See that?
♪ ♪
Top priority right now is food.
Since I've been here, I've only ate
six handfuls of berries.
I'm gonna go out here and try to do some hunting.
My biggest challenge out here is just gonna be
the learning curve.
I've never hunt any of these animals.
I've never seen any of this flora.
I've never dealt with any of this kind of extreme weather.
I mean, I have never heard of Saskatchewan,
coming from Georgia, never.
This is my bushcraft toilet. Now just hold on.
And I'm gonna need a little privacy for this one.
I'm a carpenter.
I can build anything from anything.
Pretty much a jack of all trades.
Got our pump drill set.
I've been preparing for this basically my whole life.
My tracking, hunting, fishing skills
came deep from childhood.
Got us a bass. Looky there.
Growing up, we had no power, no water,
for years and years and years.
And there you have it, fire.
We went out and collected rainwater
and had to hunt and forge and stuff for food.
There's the rat trap.
He's gonna come in here, and he's gonna
get right in-- there it is.
Got him.
Look. - Wait for me.
- I've got a beautiful wife,
five kids that are just amazing.
But the most profound reason that I'm doing this
is for my son, Nikolai.
There you go.
He's actually on the autism spectrum.
With $500,000, I would be able to give him
all the therapy he needs to help him lead a better life.
This is seriously a once-in-a-lifetime
opportunity to change my life,
change my family's life,
and I will give it 110%, everything I have.
I love you, Hazel.
Damn, man, I forgot my orange paracord
to mark my trails.
[sighs]
But I'm here.
I guess I got to keep going.
It's hard to follow your own trail through here
because, shortly after you make a trail,
this moss...
And all this Labrador tea covers it right back up.
♪ ♪
I've been hunting. Nothing.
I saw a handful of grouse.
That's it.
My hunting skill is above and beyond
most people where I come from.
This is just--it's a whole new territory here for me.
I'm trying to-- I'm trying to learn it,
but I've only got so much weight to lose,
and I've only got so much energy to burn.
Yeah, I've got to figure out
how to get this food in, and fast.
All right, so I went the wrong way.
Once I find the shoreline, I can find home.
♪ ♪
I don't know how I got so turned around.
♪ ♪
Hop into another bog here.
Just a--it's knee deep,
and it's hard pushing through.
♪ ♪
I'm so thirsty. I'm so tired.
Looking for anything that looks any kind of familiar.
Eventually, I have to hit shoreline.
Ugh.
♪ ♪
How in the hell did I let this happen?
- I'm lost.
♪ ♪
That's the thing.
This trail looks so familiar.
♪ ♪
But it's not.
I've never been here before.
The shoreline could be anywhere around here,
or it could be a hundred miles that way.
I'm trying to look through the trees
to see where an opening is at,
but it's so damn thick, you can't tell.
♪ ♪
I'm hoping to come across any kind of track
or sign that I've been here before.
♪ ♪
Seriously exhausted to the point
my body's giving out on me.
♪ ♪
I'm so exhausted, I can barely stand.
My whole body's shaking.
♪ ♪
I was worried about this from the beginning.
I didn't want to get lost,
but I forgot a paracord to mark my [bleep] trails.
I'm not thinking straight.
♪ ♪
I'm exhausted...
♪ ♪
Thirsty.
♪ ♪
I just want to get back to my shelter.
♪ ♪
Oh, [bleep].
I think I found the shoreline.
♪ ♪
See that big opening?
Oh, it's a beautiful thing.
Oh, it's such a beautiful thing.
This is a trail of mine.
This here's my beach.
Are you [bleep] kidding me?
My shelter's right there.
Oh, my God.
♪ ♪
My entire body is exhausted.
♪ ♪
Oh, I'm back at camp.
That's all that matters now.
I'm back at camp.
♪ ♪
[toothbrush squeaking]
- [gargles]
[spits]
How do they look?
Yeah, they're still all there, anyway,
except for the top of those two.
Yeah.
They were the result of a hockey puck to the mouth.
Oh, well. That's the way it is.
Little pain never hurt anybody.
♪ ♪
Got to check our gillnet.
Hopefully, we got something in it.
Moved the gillnet.
I think this is the better spot.
♪ ♪
I'm getting hungry.
Come on.
♪ ♪
Nope.
♪ ♪
Damn.
Looks like we're still hungry.
♪ ♪
Pretty disappointing, to say the least.
But anyway, let's try a couple casts
out here and see if we can't catch a fish.
♪ ♪
It's windy, but we can handle it.
Let's see what we can make happen.
My stomach's roaring at me like a darn old grizzly bear.
♪ ♪
And there it hits. Feed me.
Feed me. Feed me.
Still working on blueberries.
No protein yet.
♪ ♪
The wind just keeps picking up and up and up.
♪ ♪
In the boreal forest, you have to expect
to be in incredible wind.
♪ ♪
You prick.
It's absolutely brutal.
Yeah.
All I'm gonna do is [bleep] up my line.
♪ ♪
And I think we're gonna call it that.
♪ ♪
Yeah, that's a good, strong wind, that.
♪ ♪
Not much to do on a night like tonight...
♪ ♪
Other than just hunker down.
♪ ♪
Phew.
Yes, sirree.
We're in for a long night.
♪ ♪
It's absolutely crazy.
There's trees blowing down everywhere.
[wind whooshing]
I didn't think it was gonna get any worse,
but it is certainly getting worse.
Like, this is beyond wind.
♪ ♪
[wind howling]
♪ ♪
It's been impossible to sleep.
It's like a freight train.
My shelter is attached to two trees,
and I can literally-- when I'm laying there,
I can feel the roots underneath me
moving as the wind's blowing.
If one of these trees goes, I'm done.
There's no chance of people coming to get me tonight.
There is just absolutely no chance.
♪ ♪
We're not done with this yet.
♪ ♪
- Good morning.
Not much of a good morning.
Actually pretty [bleep].
[sniffles]
It's been gusty all night.
You'll hear my tarp going. There you go.
[tarp rustling]
Just kind of like that...
All night.
[yawns]
At some point, we'll check the gillnet again.
And sooner or later, I'm gonna be so tired that--
So anyway... [grunts]
Get this day on the go.
♪ ♪
The wind has gone down.
It was absolutely crazy last night.
We need to fix that.
Think I might fall a couple trees,
lean them up on the shelter--
bit of a wind block.
OK, first things first.
Let's go check that gillnet.
Here we go. I need a fish.
♪ ♪
Oh, I see a fish.
Oh, that's a nice, big pike. I can tell.
Oh, baby!
Happy dance. Happy dance.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah! Ho, pike!
[laughs] Finally got a fish.
Oh, boy.
[exhales]
Ah, we are having fish for breakfast.
Oh, yeah.
I haven't eaten,
other than a handful of berries,
so this fish means the world to me.
Now, how is that?
I am stoked.
It's a sign that the gillnet works.
♪ Protein coming my way ♪
What a game changer.
Make all the efforts worthwhile.
♪ ♪
I'm gonna say I can get eight
to ten meals out of that guy.
♪ ♪
I know now that I can do this,
and I know now there will be many more fish coming,
and I just can't wait to catch another one.
♪ ♪
That is a piece of heaven, right there.
Oh, my God.
Oh. [laughs]
That is absolutely incredible.
I could easily eat that for the next couple months.
[laughs]
♪ ♪
- Here they come.
[geese calling]
The geese are flying south.
There's hundreds of them.
So amazing, all making their Vs.
♪ ♪
- That is unbelievable.
This has been going on all night.
It's unreal how many geese there are--
literally thousands.
♪ ♪
I wish one would land close by.
Those are way too high to be flinging arrows at.
[laughs]
That's a sign of what's coming.
♪ ♪
- There goes another flock.
♪ ♪
Oh, it's so beautiful.
That's amazing.
♪ ♪
- Have you ever seen so many geese?
Holy buckets, thousands. Wow.
It's kind of freaky how many geese are flying by.
I think winter is coming.
I need to get really busy.
♪ ♪
Oh, boy.
♪ ♪
I'm gonna work on my shelter because of those geese.
OK.
They kind of convinced me that's what I should do.
I'm gonna start excavating.
It's gonna turn cold and nasty.
The winds will take a lot of people out.
It's gonna be key to build a shelter in a protected area.
Oh, my. That one's a biggie.
OK.
♪ ♪
Let's just roll it over here.
♪ ♪
I'm building this in the ground
because I figure it'll be easier to heat.
OK.
I'm digging down, pulling out all these rocks,
and burning a lot of calories.
It's taking a lot out of me.
It's starting to rain a little bit.
Gonna change into the rain clothes.
I'm not really a fan of being out in the rain--
do it enough at the farm.
For my shelter, I am gonna take one of these trees
and clean it up a little bit
and stretch it between some trees,
and then I'm just gonna fill it in
with logs up against that center ridge pole.
I've always been driven, type A personality,
first-born, perfectionist.
This will work.
I excelled in school. I wanted to go to West Point.
I got my senator's approval. I was accepted.
More sticks. More sticks.
And then, like a month later,
I ended up going to the mountains
of North Carolina,
and then I found working on the land as my calling.
Gonna gather some moss.
I just loved it there, just the plants
and the different species,
and it was all new, and I just thrived there.
That's my religion. That's when I feel the best.
We don't make a lot of money, but we eat great,
and I feel good about what I'm doing.
I've got to get more moss.
I just want to get this shelter done.
I want to finish this thing and get some food.
I've had no luck getting any fish,
and I'm feeling it.
Oh, my gosh.
Moose poop.
It's really fresh.
♪ ♪
There's a moose here somewhere.
♪ ♪
Boy, that's a pick-me-up.
I want to be out here as long as I can,
and if I can go get a moose, then I'd be set.
♪ ♪
It's my saving grace, right there.
Finish my shelter, and I'm gonna go moose hunting.
[breathes deeply]
♪ ♪
- I'm working on a gillnet right now.
Wait a sec.
Let's try to get this squirrel.
♪ ♪
Oh, man, missed that.
Let's try again.
Right here.
Whoa.
That was good.
I have to find my arrows though.
OK.
That's food for today, man.
I grew up in a fishing village,
and you have to hunt, fish, work the land
to be able to provide for yourself.
If I have enough food to keep myself healthy,
I don't know how far I can go.
My name is Tarcisio Ramos Dos Santos.
My friends call me Taz.
I'm a homesteader,
and I work on a small farm to sustain myself.
Here's my house. It's a tree house.
But I grew up in Brazil in a small fishing village.
My whole childhood was hunting and fishing
because there was no running water
or electricity.
Despite all the work, it was an adventure.
Cheers.
Where I grew up, danger was around the corner
all the time.
Animal gets inside but cannot leave.
Anacondas, snakes, cougar, killer bees--
there's thousands of ways for you
to get injured, killed, poisoned.
So my sense of the woods and what's around me...
Fresh tracks.
Is pretty high.
[laughs]
I'm also a father of twins.
They live in Brazil.
Although we are so far away,
I'm pretty present in their lives.
I want to do this because, in order for my kids
to come and live with me, I need the financial budget
to give them the support they need
to have a place to live.
I have what it takes to not just survive,
but to thrive.
I'm willing to go as far as I can to win this.
Let's get started.
To survive here long-term, fishing is so crucial.
I want to increase my odds to get fish.
So I decide I really want to make a canoe
to fish in deeper water.
To make a frame, I'm using spruce saplings,
bigger ones on the top and the bottom
so we have that weight to balance it out
not to be tipsy, and thinner ones
as the stringers in the ribs.
Mmm, let's experiment a little bit with
making a ring of this spruce.
It's very flexible.
Besides my shelter,
every single process I have to do
has to take no more than two days.
That's part of my strategy
because I don't want it to drag.
If it works, great.
Don't, OK, move on to the next.
Because if I spend a lot of time and energy
creating something, and then that thing
don't work, it could be a huge setback.
Long ways to go.
♪ ♪
There's a saying in Portuguese in Brazil that says...
[speaking Portuguese]
Meaning that, you know, we need more
than just food to survive.
Good enough for today.
♪ ♪
Your body and your mind needs to express itself
through creating and creativity.
Almost there.
When I discovered theater and poetry,
that creative process really started
opening different avenues for me to discover the world
and think different ways.
So I left.
I moved from Brazil to Western Mass.
But being out here in a survival situation,
putting all my skills together,
the creativity, you know, allows you to be flexible.
Big challenge is because I'm using spruce,
and spruce has a lot of sharp points.
So I have to kind of scrape and make sure it's smooth
and then use moss to protect the tarp.
Listening to nature and learning how this place works
and what it has to offer and adapting my ideas
have shown me that I have what it takes to survive,
even in the face of hardships.
Looks pretty good.
I have a canoe. Wow.
And we will see if it will float well.
Get closer at every step.
Tipsy? Kind of.
♪ ♪
Sturdy canoe.
♪ ♪
Holy cow, it works.
Whoo-hoo! It works.
My canoe works.
It's pretty stable.
I'm happy with this.
A little forward.
[exhales] Guess that's fine.
Wow, well balanced too.
♪ ♪
Very good.
Just a nice quick test drive.
Like it. That's gonna change a lot.
Now I need to finish my gillnet.
- I don't know how the rest of the world
might feel about this.
Some might be pretty upset about it.
Taking my damn shoes and socks off.
See the steam coming off of my sock?
That's not smoke.
That's steam coming off my feet.
They stink so bad, so bad.
Oh, my God. It's terrible.
All right, so I'm going hunting.
In an effort to not get lost again,
I am gonna mark trees as I go in.
♪ ♪
I need food, whatever it may be.
I need some kind of protein in my stomach right now.
♪ ♪
I heard some heavy flapping in the woods,
probably a grouse.
I don't want to go another day without eating anything.
♪ ♪
I see it.
I see the grouse.
I'm just gonna ease back, just hang out
right here and wait for it.
I'm gonna be patient with this one.
♪ ♪
I hit it. I hit it.
I got a grouse.
Now we got to go find it.
There it is.
Oh, what a beautiful, beautiful thing.
Oh, my first grouse.
Let me dispatch this little guy.
[thuds]
[laughs]
And we're back. And we're back.
Holy [bleep].
Yes.
♪ ♪
My first grouse.
Oh, that's amazing.
[laughs]
This is a big moment.
You know, it's huge.
[laughs] It's gonna be delicious.
The more I learn this land,
the more I can take from this land.
[exhales] Ah, I can't wait.
One small victory at a time.
I just left everything I know behind to do this,
but it's not about me anymore.
It's about my family. It's about my son.
That's the only thing that really matters
to me in my life anymore.
Oh, yes.
Yes, that looks wonderful.
♪ ♪
It's my first real meal.
♪ ♪
Oh, man.
♪ ♪
Just falling off the bone.
Having the opportunity to win
such a lump sum of money is amazing.
I have a very demanding, very laboring job.
Tell everybody I work 28 hours a day,
14 days a week, you know?
That is so good.
It's hard. It really is hard.
So if I could win this,
that's 15 years' salary for me.
For my son, it means better therapies,
more chances for him to grow.
With his autism, he doesn't speak.
Everything that people take for granted,
he has a hard time with.
And where I'm from,
there's not enough offered to him.
And this is it.
This is my opportunity
so that he can have a better life.
I can't fail.
When the dining room is quiet, you know the food's good.
♪ ♪
- We got a fish. [laughs]
My gillnet got a gigantic trout.
[laughs]
I will clean up this fish and smoke it up.
♪ ♪
I'm thinking about a teepee.
I'm gonna have a lot of big embers,
and I'll use the elder branches
and control that.
I'm gonna do that.
♪ ♪
This is beautiful here.
I just want to eat a bite, but I won't.
This fish could be food for, like, the next ten days,
but before the temperatures get to freezing,
you have to smoke the meat.
OK.
So we'll hang it here.
Get another piece quick.
For now, it's good.
Now, we will make a moss wall.
I'm excited to smoke the food
and preserve so it can last long.
For now, it feels really good. We are flowing here.
We are moving.
But this is a long-term game.
OK, that's my improvised smoke teepee.
Now I want to sleep.
And good night.
♪ ♪
Good morning.
We're gonna check the smoker.
And I'm hungry now, so I need to eat.
Well, now, there's some ember right there.
And I'll get the fire going a little better,
get it smoking, heat up my food, eat.
There it goes.
That's a nice fire, isn't it?
[bleep].
♪ ♪
Ah!
♪ ♪
- There it goes.
That's a nice fire, isn't it?
Just a couple more.
I need some food.
♪ ♪
[bleep].
♪ ♪
[bleep]. Water.
There we go.
♪ ♪
[bleep]. Ah!
♪ ♪
There we go.
[bleep].
My fish.
Unbelievable.
♪ ♪
And it happened so fast, huh?
And drop this hut down.
Got things under control now.
♪ ♪
Sorry, big fish.
♪ ♪
- Dirty hands.
[laughs] Working hands.
♪ ♪
These are for all the blisters I've gotten
from the ax and the saw.
I've got to get something on this.
I keep hitting it.
So I'm gonna find some fresh pitch.
♪ ♪
The healing properties of that will help it scab over--
puts a coating on it, so it will keep any bacteria out.
OK.
So I'll put the tape over top of it,
just to get me through while I'm working.
OK. Back to work.
♪ ♪
I have to go source some logs.
Every time I think I have enough, I need more.
♪ ♪
I might need, like, ten more trees.
♪ ♪
It's lot of work for one person
to build a cabin here.
[exhales]
The expenditure of calories that it's taken
to put up this log cabin is extreme.
I will need protein at some point.
♪ ♪
But to me, I think that it's worth every calorie spent
to be able to have a warm place to stay
when it's cold because being cold will put me out
way faster than being hungry.
Once I get my shelter built, I'm gonna focus
on hunting and fishing.
What do you think of that?
One of the things that is definitely
a little bit different about being alone--
usually, I have a team of people I'm working with--
my husband, my kids, my dad, my mom.
If my family was here, we probably could have
this cabin built, like, in two days.
[laughs] It's tough.
But this isn't the hardest thing
I've ever done.
Well, that closed it up really nice and tight.
♪ ♪
After my accident, my family took care of me.
My husband carried me to the bathroom
and carried me to the shower.
My kids helped bring food and cook for me.
I lost so much of myself,
and I was broken.
At one point, I thought that it would be better
for my family if I just had died.
♪ ♪
Their love was so strong that they just did
what they had to do to take care of me.
It took me three years--
three years--
to be able to walk without crutches.
I want them to see how far their mom came.
I want them to see that, no matter how low
you can get in life and how dark and dim
life seems to be, you can always pull out of it
and come out on top.
You just have to keep fighting.
♪ ♪
While I'm out here, I'm gonna keep running
to the finish line, and whether that finish line's
at 50, 80, or 100 days, I'm going to do it.
♪ ♪
I think that's pretty good.
♪ ♪
- [sighs]
Stuff starts getting at you.
It really does.
No fish. No fish. No fish.
Man.
Well, back to the task at hand.
I need three more long poles.
♪ ♪
Plans for today,
I'm gonna work on my shelter some more.
Every day I work on it is a day that it's getting
closer to being finished.
Would have loved to use spruce roots
to wire all this stuff up,
and sure would have if I'd had food every day.
I would have took the time to do some crazy [bleep].
♪ ♪
I'm tired.
Think I started off pretty strong with my gillnet,
just hoping, you know, by day three,
I'd have a fish in it. Didn't see any fish in it.
I built a fishing pole. It casts.
It reels, everything. Have not caught one fish.
I have a baited line in the water right now.
Nothing's taking it.
I've been hunting-- one grouse.
So the lack of food really--
really, there's just no energy.
Need a lot more pine boughs.
♪ ♪
But I have a unique ability to turn my emotions off.
♪ ♪
While I'm out here, it's gonna be
really easy for me to turn off the fact that I'm hungry.
It's gonna be easy for me to turn off
the fact that I'm alone.
OK.
I'm gonna start rolling up some moss now.
I miss my family. Don't get me wrong.
But I can turn that off.
Mentally, I'm a very strong person,
and so I'll be able to control myself enough
to make it through.
My stomach's growling again.
Oh, it hurts so bad.
Just bending over hurts.
♪ ♪
[sighs]
♪ ♪
[exhales deeply]
♪ ♪
My stomach won't let up. It's hurting pretty bad.
♪ ♪
Oh.
♪ ♪
It's killing me.
♪ ♪
[pained breathing]
♪ ♪
I have to sit down.
Wow.
I mean, it...
hurts just to reach for that [bleep] camera.
♪ ♪
Now there's just a wave of nausea that rushed over me.
♪ ♪
Why is this happening to me?
♪ ♪
[gags] Ugh.
No. No.
Please stay down.
♪ ♪
How can this be happening?
♪ ♪
Oh.
Oh, I just want this to stop.
Oh, I just want it to stop.
Oh, what the [bleep]?
Ugh.
Oh, God.
[pained breathing]
[retches]
Oh, I can't do this.