Just got done watching the eight episodes of Out of the Wild: The Alaska Experiment. Watched five last night and three tonight. It was a good show and definitely went along with the book I just finished Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why.
Anyway, a group of nine people have to trek through the Alaskan wilderness, hunt game, and attempt to survive. It's an interesting show and does a good job of capturing just how harsh the natural world can be. I'm a sucker for this type of reality t.v. even though it felt like the entire show revolved around the phrase: "their bodies are burning through 4,000 calories a day, and the meagre meal of (squirrel, duck, pteregin, trout, porcupine, etc) only provides a fraction of their food needs. They are starving." In every episode, I swear, a variation of that phrase was uttered.
An interesting tidbit in the show was the character of John. He seemed to be one of the most determined, most prepared, and most entertaining characters in my opinion. On the seventh show John mentions his boyfriend and how he draws strength from a letter from him. Ok. Cool. My "gaydar" was obviously not working since I did not foresee him being gay. I fully realize one's sexuality has little to nothing to do with how one goes about surviving in Alaska, but I still think it is interesting that he is gay. After the "reveal" in the show, it seemed that the show played up his sexuality a bit more and I said to myself, "well, sure...it's obvious." The producers of this show did a nice job of "setting me up" to question any lingering prejudices I had. I don't know if I didn't know because it has nothing to do with anything, or if it's because my mind was a bit constricted.
It's a timely connection since the boy scouts are hopefully now allowing openly gay scouts...adult scout leaders...that is something the scouts, unfortunately, don't seem ready for yet. We can hope. Anyway, enough for tonight. I'm sleepy and am thankful for all the food I can eat.
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