Did anyone watch Alone in the Wild? Ed Wardle dropped off in the Yukon’s “unforgiving wilderness” with the aim of surviving alone, with basic provisions, until winter. He lasted 50 days.
The show did seem to be less a discuss on bushcraft and living alone with the wild land and more a self-portrait of one man’s emotional and physical collapse, Big Brother-like. Ed never really seemed to become a part of the landscape, content with whittling notches on a stick to mark the passing of the days. His unprepared-ness took me a little by surprise. At one point he chose to watch a storm move through the mountains and across the lake towards him, marvelling at it rather than battening down the hatches to remain warm and dry. He got wet, very wet. And cold.
Viewing yourself as a visitor rather than a part of nature creates a gulf that is filled with all kinds of fears: I don’t know what it is, is it poisonous, will it hurt me, am I safe, it smells funny, what’s in the dark.
With seeing ourselves as a part of nature comes the realisation that everything is connected, that we are all points on the strands of a giant web, floating in a pool of consciousness. Everything we do has an effect on everything else.
If we walk through the woods, as Ed did, shouting “HELLO BEARS” because we are afraid a bear may attack, chances are all small game (which we are desperately searching for) will disappear too. However, if we increase our awareness of ourselves and realise we are a part of instead of apart from our natural environment, chances are we will be better able to read the landscape around us to satisfy our most basic physical needs.
Ed didn’t seem to be bushcrafting but I admire his candour in showing the psychological and emotional processes he was releasing as a result of his experience. Maybe that’s something many of us would face as we shook the Western lifestyle from our own systems and donned our most ancient garments again.
If you want to experience a bit of the wild and learn some of the basic skills our ancestors used to thrive in the wilderness our next bushcraft weekend is on 9-11 October.
Don’t be left out in the cold, the fire’s glowing – come and warm your toes – Discovery Basic Survival Course
[PHOTO CREDIT: 3lsb3th]
NaturalPathways 
September 29, 2009 at 6:15 pm
it was a weird series. I lvoed the 1st program, was a little disappointed by the 2nd and by the 3rd felt a little too much like a voyuer. I’d love to think i’d have been resourceful but i suspect i might have done a reasonable impression of Ed. I guess you never know until you do it, and I liked the programme’s and his honesty.
September 30, 2009 at 9:38 am
Its an interesting take on what we have all come to view (bushcraft) as second nature.
I am trying to learn to be open minded when I see new programs on the broad topic of bushcraft to see what the program can teach me rightly or wrongly.
Do we all remember when Bear Ghrylls came out & everyone slated him for his glamourising of our sacred subject? I know I did.
Then I said to myself I should really watch him to see what he had to say on the subject & you know, I enjoyed it. It may not have been as factual or as down to Earth as Ray Mears, or Les Stroud. But he re-invigorated a topic & talked about some bushcraft techniques that even I consider taboo.
So whats my real take on “Alone In The Wild”?
He has touched on a subject I know we should all consider more seriously, the psychology of being out in the wild & being at one with the outside world.
He showed raw emotion of how HE dealt with his situation, what HE did to overcome the obstacles & showed us & Joe Public what NOT to do when a beautiful storm approaches.
He may not have prepared adequately as we all may complain about(I did) but that is likely to be the situation for most people in a survival situation.
This program should have been aired as it has done. To show us the harsh brutality of being out in the wild with no knowledge of it.
October 5, 2009 at 1:31 am
Overall I liked it. I found it to be a new take on the wilderness-adventure kind of show. We’ve already seen shows that show a kind of man versus scenario—that is, man in a place he doesn’t belong, man trying to escape from the wild. It was really nice to see a show come about in which the protagonist tries to simply exist in the wild, without much pretense.
Was Ed an expert woodsman? No, and it showed. I think he was looking for a real connection with the land in addition to just proving to himself that he could do it, but of course he didn’t quite make that connection, which is evidenced in his “Hello bears!” yells. But I don’t entirely fault him for this; the psychological ramifications of being alone seemed to hit him rather hard and rapidly, and since not many of us know what total solitude is like it’s hard for any of us to judge him for that. Watching the storm coming in instead of taking care of stuff wasn’t evidence of his lack of preparedness, I don’t think, but his increasingly fragile mental state.
All of this said, I do commend him on what he managed to do. He did better than almost all members of modern society would have been capable of, I know that for sure. Bushcrafters, mountain men, and aboriginal people all across the world, of course, might have done better, but he did better than almost everyone else.
It’d be great if we were all capable of it, though. If people in tribal societies are capable of going on walkabout for weeks and months at a time, there is no reason we shouldn’t all be able to.
March 16, 2010 at 11:46 pm
I really liked the series. It kept me attatched to the television for a few hours certainly. I too liked the idea it presented to us as merely ‘points on a giant’, more advanced ‘web’ of nature and how we should probably respect it more.
The man’s physical and mental decline was somewhat touching a it showed a fellow human in a trully weak state. Scary infact.
I liked how he was literally on his own, unlike a Bear Grylls or Ray Mears would have been. It was an interesting camera tachnique which I would enjoy watching again.
Good Read