When Mark and I were in Texas for Thanksgiving, a Survivorman marathon came on the Science Channel.  Honestly, I never intended to watch it, but it was on and I kept finding myself drawn in.  The first few episodes went by and I didn’t pay it much attention.  There was this guy out in nature.  Ok, it was like The Jeff Corwin experience or something.  But this guy wasn’t as goofy and wacky as Jeff, so why would I want to watch him?

By half paying attention to the show, I learned that this guy’s name is Les Stroud.  He’s dropped in a remote location and has to survive by his own means for seven days.  The episode where Les survives in the Arctic brought the realization that Les is completely alone.  There is no camera crew.  Not only that, but Les has no way to communicate with the producers or anyone else, so if something bad happens, he’s going to have to deal with it.  He will need to survive.

I have no idea what Les’s qualifications are.  I don’t know what background he has to be so well equipped to deal with any situation.  Maybe he’s just really, really smart.  I was also amazed watching him make several miles-long trips to drag camera equipment back and forth.  He spends a lot of time setting up cameras and shots.  Some of them are actually artistic!  So not only is Les the Survivorman, but he’s a dang good camera man as well!

We’ve since set a series recording for this show, although we’re only catching old episodes at the moment.  Looking over the episode list on their site, there are several I haven’t seen yet, so I don’t know why The Science Channel isn’t playing them.  If you like educational and nature shows even just a tiny bit, I’d definitely suggest checking out Survivorman. 

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