Alone

-This is it. -It has begun.

-God. -

Piece of . I hate this place.

-This is bad. -I've got to get out of here.

This is feeling like the toughest thing

I've ever done in my life.

I guess I'm officially tapping.

Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.

I'm finding all kinds of water in my tent.

I believe I hear a neighborhood resident.

There's a bear outside.

Get out of here!

Who are you when everything's been stripped away?

.

It's scary out here in these woods.

I have not had a serious meal in a week.

If I can't get a fire, then I can't stay here.

It's always in the back of your mind,

"Well, I could tap out."

Putting up with this filming ?

Running into a predator, it's not an if.

It's a when.

Get the hell out of here.

I see you. Get out of here!

I'm living a hand-to-mouth existence.

Yes! Aah!

$500,000 is a lot of money.

It's just gonna keep getting harder.

It's not the world that needs to change.

It's me that needs to change.

Good morning.

It rained like a son of a bitch all night.

I woke up this morning to, "Mom, Mom!

Mommy!"

And I woke up, and I'm looking around.

It was the geese flying in.

So there you go.

I thought my girls were waking me up.

Today, the rain's slowed down a little bit,

but I know it's gonna get worse.

I need to set up a fire shelter,

like a place that I can count on having a fire every day.

Something that's dry.

So, I'm gonna...

take this here ridge pole.

I'm gonna carve in a couple notches

into this tree and this tree,

kind of like a divot notch,

and so I can wedge it into the tree a little bit

and then tie it down with some fish string.

What I'm most scared of is after the adventure,

after this is all done

and we all go home,

I'm scared of what's next.

It's like, what's the next thing

that's gonna capture you the way this has captured me?

You know,

when I was home,

my mom brought up the fact that there is gypsy blood our line.

Maybe that's where I get all this from.

Just the need to run, the need to go all the time.

A change of scenery,

a change of pace, a new adventure.

I want to tell my kids

that you can do anything that you want to do.

I want to raise strong women

in this world.

Then I'm gonna pull my tarp over, 5-foot up,

and then maybe out.

Check it out.

If you think you can do it, try it.

If you want it, go get it.

I think that that's a huge lesson,

especially for my daughters.

Our journey this morning begins.

Yay.

I do things a little differently.

Whereas most people are probably

sitting around surviving,

I want to keep active just to try to stay sane.

I'm gonna explore the area a little bit and go from there.

It's kind of ingrained in you in the military

to just constantly go 100 miles an hour.

You are prepared for what's gonna happen.

-Yeah. -You know a lot

about what's gonna happen.

I was in the Army for about 15 years.

I recently got out.

For the majority of that time,

I was either a sniper

or working down at the sniper school.

There's a huge suicide epidemic in the veteran community.

I started noticing some of my friends

that had gotten out of the military,

and they were having a real hard time

transitioning into civilian life.

I came up with the idea of taking guys

out on hiking trips.

I think there's a connection with nature there

that can be really helpful.

And, to me, that's what keeps me going.

All the years in the military,

if you have one thing, it's gonna be this.

-So, I have two blades. -I have one, just regular.

And then the other one is serrated.

Being in the military, you still have people around,

you know, that kind of keep you going.

You have a mission or a purpose to do together.

So you still have that human interaction.

Very few people have ever gone out by themselves,

completely shut off from everybody.

For me, going out in the middle

of nowhere completely reliant upon myself,

it is that challenge

that I've always wanted to put myself through.

I'm gonna head into the woods.

I'm gonna be looking for signs of some sustainable food.

You never know.

I feel like if you sit in one place,

you might miss a whole lot of stuff.

I have a duck.

I have little duck that's hanging out.

I don't know, I might leave him.

Depends on how hungry I get. He might be dinner.

What?

The bird up there, he's either trying to tell me something,

or trying to tell everybody else that I'm here.

Life alone on Vancouver Island.

My goal is to be out here for the entire year.

So, it's... survival...

of the fittest.

I spent eight years

teaching pilots and air crew members

how to survive behind enemy lines.

You know, if they got shot down,

what would they do to survive?

Once you get the shelter and the water figured out,

firewood and food.

So, I plan to eat some seaweed this morning.

I want to show you the different kinds of foods

there are on the beach.

There's this type of seaweed,

seagrass.

You eat down at the base where it's white.

And it is quite sweet.

Very good.

I believe, also, you can...

eat the rhizome.

And that's very sweet as well.

It's kind of like candy, I mean, it's so sweet.

Bull kelp

has this long tail

that goes

down and around

and way off out there.

And you can eat...

the vine as well.

Normally, you slice it into little rings

and then you cook it.

Ha-ha!

Mmm.

Got a lot of salt water that time.

So, that is breakfast.

And it looks like we've got low tide,

so I'm gonna go ahead and try and put up my gillnet.

So I've got this freshwater creek flowing into the cove.

I'm gonna put my gillnet right out in front of it.

Perhaps that's the best place to put it.

I'll find out.

Every day, that low tide/high tide transition,

I'm gonna look forward to going out

and checking my traps.

I really hope I get a fish in there tomorrow.

Looks like we should get out the tennis rackets

and start playing tennis, right?

I'm gonna go walk, see if I can find

some more edibles this morning.

There's my seaweed spot.

Oh, my goodness.

Check this out.

There's a very large pile of bear poo.

One...

two...

three...

four--that's still steaming--

five...

six.

I've got friends already.

And I thought I was gonna be alone out here.

-I've been looking around... -through the woods.

I have to look for the most sustainable food source.

And I'm not seeing too much,