Random Access Memories

Well, I played hooky from work for 2 hours to go listen to Les Stroud speak today at REI.

He was gracious enough to sign his book for me as well.



He also gave a long rambling talk that was pretty good.

He made sure to mention that he did not “quit” survivorman like it has been reported. (I’m not sure why the show is canceled, probably just wanted to go on to other things).

He mentioned how in the episode “Temagami Hunting (Deep Woods)” he and Bob Wilson were actually running from the rescuers to try and get more filming in. Unfortunately for them the rescue teams were police officers. Once the rescuers realized the rescuees were actively attempting to ditch them they dumped their heavier gear and turned it into a manhunt. At the end where Les and Bob are standing by the lake and eventually “found” he said they were covered in sweat from running.

When asked what the scariest moment he had was he related a story about a solo survival trip in Canada before Survivorman. It was September and he was out without any survival gear (yeah, what was he thinking) on a canoe that he had stashed in the woods and then wandered off. He saw a female moose and tried to call it to get it’s attention. Instead he got a very angry bull moose that chased him around and up a tree. He eventually jumped out of the tree and managed to outrun it back to the area where his canoe was, but he was on the wrong side on an inlet so he had to sneak in the water to the mouth of the inlet. After loosing the moose he got lucky and flagged down a couple in a caloe and spent half an hour convincing them he wasn’t crazy. They gave him a lift back to his canoe and was very exhausted, cold and wet. But alive at least.

One interesting question that had been nagging at me was “What happened to the dogs that were released in the episode “Labrador”. He said they made it back to their owner without any trouble.

He also spent a bunch of time talking about the Spot GPS locator. “The manufacturers came to me and said they had 2 choices for spokesman really, one was the real deal and one wasn’t”. (Yeah, easy to tell who he meant there)