The Things You Learn

I was watching Discovery Channel recently. It’s one of the few channels I consistently watch. I came up a show called Man VS. Wild. It’s an interesting show in that it takes a wilderness survivor type guy - Bear Grylls and has you follow him in various environments.

I watched a couple of episodes in disparate environments recently. The show is somewhat contrived in parts due to the creation of situations for him to show off various techniques. This does not take away from it in the least though. It’s informative and entertaining in that you can see how he does things. Now I may not be likely to be stuck in the middle of nowhere with just a knife and my wits, but hey you never know.

The episode I really like was him in the Copper Canyon in Mexico. In it, he shows how to use an Agave spike as a thread and needle. He also goes over things like how to get direction without a compass. Talks about fishing and fish - how freshwater fish are always safe to eat. There are a few lessons I’ve taken from all his shows though

Be aware of your surroundings.
Use what you have
Science rocks!
So does Nature.
Proper shelter is always required.
Don’t push too hard.

Copper Canyon

I also ran into this as well. This bit scares and amuses me more than anything - http://www.degreeinpjs.com. The commercial on Discovery consisted of a bunch of scantily clad women talking about earning a college degree online while wearing their pajamas. Pajamas which happened to be the skimpy, VS kind, and not the granny kind.

So my lessons for that day? First is that you can survive in the wild if you know a few things. The second is that it is possible to get a college degree if you are a twenty-something pretty girl wearing sexy PJs.

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