Scoutmaster Podcast 279

I am Daniel Desjardins and I am a Scoutmaster with through 426 in London Dairy, New Hampshire. This edition of the Scoutmaster Podcast is sponsored by backers like me And now the old Scoutmaster. Hey everybody, this is Clarke Green.

It's summertime and so our next few podcasts feature on-court presentations from our archives, And I want to replay an interview that I thought I would never get, that I did a while back with Survivorman Les Stroud. There are reality shows and reality shows, and I always thought that Survivorman was the best of its genre. My interview with Les Stroud came right after he published the book called The Will to Live, just with some really vivid survival stories and a lot of very practical real-world survival logic. As always, this podcast is only possible because of the generosity of the folks who become ScoutmasterCGcom backers. Go to ScoutmasterCGcom, click the support link at the top of the page. You'll find out how you can become a ScoutmasterCGcom backer.

We'll be back with our regular schedule of podcasts in a few weeks. Until then, let's get started, shall we? Today I'm speaking with Survivorman Les Stroud about his book Will to Live. Welcome to the Scoutmaster Podcast, Les.

How are you? I'm doing real well.

How are things up there in Huntsville? Very well, very well. Good, You grew up in Toronto, if I have it right, That's correct. Yeah, just on the wet end of Toronto.

Mimico, Did you do any scouting when you were growing up? Just a very little bit when I was younger. Yes, I did. There was an active Scout troop in the area.

I think at some point it might have dissolved at some point, but yes, when I was young I was out for sure. My sister also did Girlguides. Then you ended up somewhere along the line in Tomagami in a canoe.

Yeah, well, for many years I grew up as a big fan of the wilderness and nature and all of that stuff, Whatever the TV would offer me. But I would go to my cottage and definitely I would make little shelters and I would get out in the back 40 and sort of just play around and do everything I had to out in the back. I just loved it, adored it. But I also got away from it as I got a little bit older and got into music. Then I got back into it again when I discovered canoe tripping up in Tomagami. It's a fantastic area.

It's like the jewel of the north. I love Algonquin Park, but Tomagami is kind of like Algonquin Park with no people.

So it's beautiful. We bring a crew of boys up and do a week in Algonquin every summer. It's beautiful.

So your trip to Tomagami, that was kind of a turning point and you ended up becoming a canoe guide. Yeah, it was after many years of being a musician and working in film and all of that sort of stuff that I finally got invited at some point on a canoe trip with some friends. I just absolutely loved it.

It was so fantastic and so beautiful in Tomagami to do it. Once I got that taste of that sort of outdoor adventure life for real- and I bear in mind I was older now. I never looked back. Yeah, and that led to you setting up a production company that put together a couple of survivor specials for the Canadian Discovery Channel.

Yeah, what it was was I always wanted to do a home DVD series, which actually back then would have been a home VHS and video series on survival, but at one point I realized that the time was right for me to pitch it to the television networks and so I did that instead of just producing it on my own. And, lo and behold, they loved the idea.

So the very first survivor man sort of thing that I did was- I call it well since the two pilot versions, I call them Stranded, and it was for Discovery Channel Canada at the time and I just love doing it and it went over so so well that I then took it upon myself to pitch it as a full-on series called Survivor Man. That's where most of the people who are listening are going to know you from, from that series.

It's just a great series, one of my favorites, Thank you, yes, Well, I don't think people realize that I did it for nearly nine years and then moved on to do Beyond Survival, which is the next series and it's playing right now constantly, which was like Survivor Man, all grown up because it was out surviving with the indigenous peoples around the world. So it's been over ten years that I've been doing it. Yeah, the one thing I really love about this show is how honest it is and how nothing is really romanticized.

The thing I think about are the scenes where you're up at night in a shelter somewhere with that kind of night vision, green lighting, and you're talking about, you know, being afraid or being kind of uncertain about what's going to happen next. I've actually been in a situation like that, and I don't know how you can do a better job of explaining what the whole thing feels like.

Well, I think you know the whole deal was just to really truly go through stuff. I mean, I obviously did hundreds of survival experiences before I started filming them, and so this was a matter of just going through the way. I always let the real things happen, let the chips fall as they may, pull no punches, fumble and bumble like anybody else would have some successes, like anybody else would.

And then, as I film it, you know, try to capture it in a way that is captivating, but at the same time, just tell the story as it is and don't try to trump up the drama. Just show it as it is, because I think being lost in the wilderness is drama enough And it's not fun. I mean, it's not No, it's never fun.

I think that's the big thing too, is people. You know it's become a recreational activity. Survival has It's become that, and partially through shows like my own. But survival in its true essence is nothing recreational about it. It's miserable, It's uncomfortable, It's cold And in reality, you don't want to build a shelter, You don't want to build traps, You don't want to make this or that.

You don't want to be, you know, MacGyvering items into other items. What you want is to go home. The key to survival is getting out and going home. That is the whole point of survival is going home.

Once it becomes a sort of recreational side of things, well, that's fun because the skills are really enjoyable and that's how you hone your survival abilities. But in truth you really just want to go home And that kind of puts us right into the book Will to Live.

I've read a number of books about survival and things like that, but I think this is really unique because it's kind of like three books in one: You have the narrative and then you have the analysis of what goes on and then you have a lot of practical advice kind of woven in. Yeah, well, I mean I wanted to keep the book very alive and flowing And I also know that there have been a number of books out there that discuss different survival stories, but they always come from the angle of the psychology.

It's like, oh, the psychology, the psychology, the will to live, the mental, And I'm like saying, well, yeah, okay, I get it. But what about if survival is 90% in the mind?

What about that last 10%, Because that last 10% is the stuff that you know is how do you get from A to B and what are the right decisions to make, and what do you eat and don't eat, And those things can be ridiculously fascinating. And it was my chance to take a look at some of these stories And then, after my years of experience of doing it, also inject my opinion and say, well, you know, that was a dumb move, You know, this person should never have done that, No matter what way you slice it. I get it And I wasn't there, but generally speaking, that was a dumb move.

Or you know what? I wasn't there, None of us were there.

This would not seem like a good move, but it's pretty hard to judge because we were not there. And then, conversely, finally would be: that was a brilliant move.

You know, I have no idea how he had the gumption to get up and do that, but you know, thinking to do that certain thing saved his life, And the stories run the gamut of that in many other ways. That's what I think is really the strength of the book. You get a really good picture of what you call the survivor's mindset. What is that mindset.

Well, the bottom line is remembering that survival is, for all intent and purposes it's a verb, you know it's proactive. There is nothing passive about survival, and that's something that I always try to get across. You cannot be passive, You cannot be mild and meek and gentle and flow with the energy that flow. No, you're starving and you have to go home and you have to scale a wall to do it. Survival is a practical, sometimes aggressive activity And you want to be active in your own survival, Because if you're going to be passive and let things come what may, then guess what you're going to get. You're going to get things come what may And they could be bad things.

So that mindset is the mindset of being strong in your mind to know it's the same mindset as the person who gets up off the couch. You know those who sit on the couch and don't get up and those of us who get up off the couch, And that's what life is about.

Life is about getting up off the couch and doing, And survival is perhaps an extreme example of that, where, if you don't get up and do something, you very well may die. So the mindset is one for survival that is very proactive and self-preservative. You talk about additive factors in survival And you kind of analyze those Factors like the will to live, like luck and things like that.

Well, I think I was really glad in Will to Live to take the end of each chapter And it's a bit of a device, It's a bit of a literary device for me to say, okay, I'm going to actually grade these guys And it's a bit of a guess. But looking at their stories, you can look at something like the Robertsons in their life raft floating in the ocean.

Well, for goodness sakes, they had turtles bump into their raft nearly every single day, providing them with ample food, and rainstorms every time they needed it, providing them with ample water. And that's that additive force that we call luck. I was like, wow, that's pretty lucky.

And then Yossi Ginsburg: in terms of will to live, everything happened to this guy in the jungle Just when you couldn't think it could get worse it would, And yet he kept on surviving And his will was. His luck was terrible, But his will to keep going was supreme.

So you know, there are so many variables in the added forces of what it takes to survive, Like what kind of kit do you have with you, And what kind of knowledge base do you have? The guys up on the top of the mountain in the Andes? The Uruguayan rugby team that had the resort to cannibalism had no survival skills. Some of these kids had never even been out of the city.

So zero survival skills. And that's where Douglas Lawson, in his trek across the Antarctic, was the most supreme Arctic survivor ever.

So his skills were supreme, Yet both of them found themselves in near-death experiences. So it's really interesting to see how different individuals play out, given their circumstances and depending on what additive force they're strong in.

Do they have a lot of luck? Do they have a great survival kit?

Do they have an incredible amount of knowledge, Or do they have a supreme will to live? Those are the four top ones.

After that there's another 20, you know variables, And I guess the way of guaranteeing or preparing yourself is to try and make sure that all those additive factors are on your side As much as you can, and that's preparation. Right Preparation is the key. There You can get the knowledge ahead of time, You can have a well-stocked survival kit, You can bolster your will to live even by having this knowledge, having the knowledge of where you're going where this escapes.

So where's the escape route? You're going out with a group and you've got a guide.

Well, ask the guide if you can see the map, Get him to show you where's the closest roads, where's the escape route. So if you get halfway down the river and the guide himself has an appendicitis attack, you might be the only one who knows that there's a highway two miles to the east.

And when you prepare yourself and bolster your will to live by getting that knowledge from the guides themselves, you become an asset, not a liability, And then you don't have to worry about the bad luck so much, because these other three angles you can build up, And that again is being proactive, about the situation, not just letting things happen to you, but making things happen. Yeah, absolutely.

What do you think is the most important way for people who are going to take a group of young people into the wilderness to prepare themselves for those eventualities? I think the most important thing is the sharing of the knowledge.

We should all know what we all know. You know you don't want just the leader to know what the escape routes are. Where the first aid kit is, what's in the first aid kit, how to use it where the survival kit is. You don't want just. That's the way it happens, especially with younger people too, because younger people get out and they don't want to ask.

You know what I'm afraid to ask. Well, they should ask: You're going out into the wilderness, You're going out with 12 people, You're going to go down a neat river, And even if it's Algonquin Park, anything can happen. In the middle of the Petawawa River. In Algonquin Park, You could find that you're with a group of six and you're the only one that survives a terrible fall down a waterfall, And it happens to be an off-time year or for whatever reason. Nobody's coming down that river for another 12 days. You don't know that, but maybe that's the case.

What do you do next? Right, And so I think, to answer your question more succinctly, what's the best thing? It's to share the knowledge with everybody. If you're going on an adventure, you should know as much as your guide does.

Is there a particular piece of gear or anything like that that you think is really key to carry into a situation when you're out in the wilderness? Well, if you're asking for one item, it's tricky.

On a level of rescue, I think the new GPS satellite messaging units are pretty great. If it's a matter of personal survival, I think the ability to get a fire going anywhere anytime is a big deal.

So for me, I would like to have three different methods of fire. Starting, I'm not talking about the cool funky flint and striker things. I'm talking about a butane lighter. Everybody wants to be cool about it and talk about strikers and firebows and fire pistons and this and that. I love those things. They're the cool part of the skill set.

But what do I carry with me? A butane lighter, a pack of matches and a flint striker. I have all three.

The last thing I want to be out there is: how do you combat that big fire? That's how you do it. One thing, and especially since I know in terms of scouting and that it's very, I know it all depends, But when you get the proper training, when you really learn how to handle and manage a fire in the wilderness, then you are better off at that point with a good, solid, robust fire to keep you warm, to dry your clothes, to keep going, than a tiny little fire, Because a tiny little fire you have to hover over and maintain and pouring rain will put it out. But remember what my first words were: Once you properly get the skill set on how to maintain and manage a fire in the wilderness- which is a skill set all in itself- It's something really to be learned. Whoever said wherever there's smoke, there's fire was never a Scoutmaster. That's right.

One doesn't always follow the other. You can't dry your clothes with smoke And you know you do a dump in a set of rapids and you come out soaking wet. You want to dry your clothes And I don't care if I'm in the desert or the jungle or the Arctic.

I want to be able to get a fire going, And the Arctic is probably the trickiest place because there's not that much wood up there. But even if it's just a moss fire, I want to be able to get warm and dry.

So that's my personal item. But again, as I said before, the GPS satellite messages are pretty good, Yeah, And the SAT phones and things like that. They have kind of changed the game in a lot of ways.

Do you have a favorite camping story? Do you like to share with us?

Well, I mean, I have been. I think you can Google it too.

If you Google the best story ever, which was, you know, for me. At the peak of my game, when I was instructing a lot and I was feeling very overconfident as a survival instructor and doing lots of scout groups because I taught the scouts, lots of different groups and tourism groups and people, I went off to find a spot to teach some survival and I came back and I ended up messing around too much with a beautiful cow moose I saw on the swamp and I called out to her and she did and I called out again and I am getting chased through the forest in the rutting season and I got treed by that bull moose while he broke branches and trees down beneath me and I ended up getting out of the tree and running again and he chased me again and I ended up in the lake swimming to get away from a 15-pound bull moose in the rutting season. That was the lesson, the moral of that story. Just like Aaron, I'd love to meet Aaron Ralston, the man who had to cut his own arm off because his arrogance had him in that position where nobody knew where he was. My arrogance had me in that position with the bull moose and nobody knew I was there. I had not told anybody where I was going.

Stupid, stupid, stupid. You just always let people know.

For me it's funny because I was at the peak of my game and it was when I made the most stupidest blunder, which just goes: you know, you go figure. You say that people who study survival don't really get a chance to practice and that's getting caught in a real survival situation like something that's unexpected.

Are you telling me you haven't been close enough to that? Is that something that you really want to do? I suppose actually that moose story is pretty close to that, because when I was running in the bush I almost got completely turned around and lost.

I've been turned around once or twice, but I guess my point in that is that it's kind of funny that both of us- included and any of us who have love of the wilderness and love of adventure, if we also develop a love for survival skills and techniques, there comes a point where you just kind of think you know it'd be kind of cool if I really got lost, because then I really put the skills to the test. It's like this little guilty secret hidden pleasure.

But the reality is that as you get better, the chances that you're really going to get lost just keep getting less and less, and unless you're in a situation like me- as I said, my own arrogance had me treat by a moose- unless you get overly cocky, and that happens- the reality is you're probably not going to get lost, because now you just know too much. And that's a good thing, because nobody wants to.

We might want to test ourselves until it actually happens, and then we'd be going: oh, I'm so stupid, I don't want to test, but I just want to go home, and that's again the moral of the story in survival. The reality is well, you know, I really appreciate you taking the time with me today and I was very excited to get the book and to read it. I recommend it highly.

I think it's one of the best ones out there. Well, thank you very much.

And you may or may not be aware that I've got my survivor man scout badges out now in Canada and yeah, so that's yeah, that's just a thrill. We've got the survivor man scout badge out now, which incorporates the sort of advanced survival techniques that the boys can do, and when they do certain ones, they get the survivor man scout badge, which was an absolute thrill for me. We're still working on the official launch of it, but it's out, in operation and I'm going to keep doing stuff. I've got more things on the go.

The will to live is out now and my original book survived- essential skills and tactics, the manual- and I'm not going to stop. I'm going to keep out and keep adventuring, and the scouts certainly do that as well. I can't tell you how many Eagle Scout letters I've signed for a lot of the boys in the States these days. I've signed hundreds of them, which I'm thrilled to do.

Thank you so much, Les. Thanks for taking the time again, not a problem.