Alone But For the Harsh Gaze of Doctor Nature
This column is a reprint from Unwinnable Monthly #179. If you like what you see, grab the magazine for less than ten dollars, or subscribe and get all future magazines for half price.
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Wide but shallow.
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There are a few levels of engagement when watching Alone, a “reality” show about getting dumped in some faraway place with ~ten items in an attempt to outlast nine other participants that will not see each other after training. There’s the usual couch coaching, taking issue with the TV itself and how these morons could be so bad at something I actively disdain (going outside [this is a joke {outside is fine I just don’t want to linger}]). Everyone with a remote in their hand is an expert, we all feel this way from the comfort of home.
Once that level is cleared, there’s the sense of awe, as these survival enthusiasts, whether this is their day job or they’re under a bootheel like the rest of us, hunt and fish and build shelters and push through survival to a kind of living in an environment actively hostile to their presence. Bears are a regular occurrence, usually shooed away or ran from but sometimes hunted. Wolves pop up now and again, along with unwelcome visits by martens, weasels, wolverines, field mice, bugs. There are a few cute things like otters cruising by with a tray of oysters on their lap, ducks chilling nearby, flocks of geese fleeing south. The crushing beauty of nature winds in and out between sleetfall and windstorms. And these ten otherwise everyday people fling themselves into the chaos, and to varying degrees, surmount the wilderness.
Which leaves the last level of watching Alone, where we witness everyone slowly confront their solitude. It’s not confinement, but the lack of meaningful human contact over 30, 50, 80+ days is the real challenge (as well as lack of meaningful caloric intake for everyone who gets far enough to put up a real fight). Sure, there are fleeting med checks, but each survivalist is meant to bring in footage, soliloquize to the cameras and catch their triumphs and despair. Even after ten seasons it’s still a surprise how many players can’t possibly prepare themselves for this mental and emotional tribulation. Many of them have gone their whole lives preparing their physical skills, camping alone for a few weeks at a time maybe, but that’s not really the final stage of this game. Many give a vibe of rugged individualism, going off the grid for whatever reason, as if society is the source of all their problems. But individualism in this sense has failed them, because it’s an unsustainable way of life for human beings.
People who obsess about escaping the fidgeting hand of civilization, an increasingly impossible feat on our shrinking planet, can’t really fathom just how deeply our connection with and dependence on others and the systems of humanity for creating the everyday items of our lives is rooted. Even just the knowledge of foraging, sewing, crafting, forging tools, using those tools, physics and engineering, the language that winds through it all, all of this has bloomed between the minds of humanity at large since the start.
That’s a nitpick though, none of us could escape the grasp of community, and the point of Alone is set one outside of these systems to see who can push the boulder up the mountain the longest, knowing none could ever make it to the top. But it’s the mental and emotional isolation that so many individualists imagine they can do without that brings the contestants to their knees.
Characters like Larry, who participated in two seasons of the show with many freakouts to god and nature, crying out that his wife would be very disappointed in him if he quit though she would never say it which sounds like a big cop out. There are often dads with newborns, or recent tragedies, or pregnant wives, families they’re trying to support but also miss more and more as the days grind on. Some build intricate shelters, toys, furniture, anything to keep their minds from roiling around, but this is inevitable. Eventually nature starts counseling, even if some attempt to keep their feelings secret on a hidden SD card. If you’re in Alone for the long haul, you need to be prepared to confront an uncaring universe without the support of family or friends, and nature always gets the tap out.
One of the show’s most impressive contestants, 100-day contest winner Roland, embodies the complete shift of the mental game. Roland is peak survivalist from the start, rugged in his confidence of his abilities as he hauls rock to build his shelter, insistent that a life of avoiding his family has prepared him for the emotional challenges of disconnection that Alone presents. And he’s not wrong to some degree, as he did win, and shanking a musk ox for sustenance played a large role in that. But on the back half of more than three fall and winter months alone in the tundra, Roland can’t help but consider his relationship with his mother and his sister, breaking down regularly with regrets for his own actions. He wants to change his behavior, rebuild his relationship with his sister, reconnect with humanity on some level at least.
Roland is still one of Alone’s most impressive contestants, and this emotional growth by the end of his grueling challenge is a major part of that. He came in with well-earned bravado about his abilities to survive on his own, as that is how he has prepared his entire life to some degree, but by the end he questions this. He’s led an incredible life by his own terms, but by the end he realizes that this didn’t really require cutting out all meaningful human connection, and that doing so was a major disservice to himself and his family. Many other contestants come to this realization, but Roland carried the weight to the end, reshaped by nature and emerging as a champion of growth.
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Levi Rubeck is a critic and poet currently living in the Boston area. Check his links at levirubeck.com.