S11.E05: Something in the Air

[Quilt Fairy]

Quote

One participant takes on a massive and risky project; another begins work on a fortified shelter.

Air date:  July 18, 2024

[humbleopinion]

TIMBERR!!

Impressive the one shot kill, the moose went down quickly. 

Now the problem of keeping his meat safe from marauders day and night begins.

Jake lost his fishing line by not zipping his backpack pocket properly, burned his hand boiling his underwear and trying to handle his pot without a glove and snapped his tail bone by sitting on a rock.

His luck finally turns a corner by catching a pike with a cod in its mouth.

Hope the rest of the season stays this entertaining.

Edited July 19 by humbleopinion

[azprimadonna]

I don't know why they cast people who have had previous mental issues.  I guess if they chose only the psychologically strong, no one would ever win.  Skills are only a minute piece of what these people need to survive.  

[Quilt Fairy]

1 hour ago, azprimadonna said:

I don't know why they cast people who have had previous mental issues.  I guess if they chose only the psychologically strong, no one would ever win.  Skills are only a minute piece of what these people need to survive.  

And they had 10s of thousands of applicants to choose from......

[mlp]

Every season, this show hypes something that comes to very little.  This episode it was wolves - which basically amounted to howling in the distance.  There was a much closer encounter a couple years ago.

I wasn't sorry to see Michaela go.  All that self-pitying introspection and crying............  She shouldn't have been there in the first place.

This show frequently mentions how a bear can smell blood over great distances so I don't understand why no bears were attracted to the moose kill.  Timber was working with blood and meat over a couple days and that attracted a pine marten but no bears.  ???

 

[rmontro]

23 hours ago, azprimadonna said:

I don't know why they cast people who have had previous mental issues.  

I'm guessing they couldn't pass up the indigenous woman angle.  But yeah.

Obviously dealing with the isolation is a major part of the contest, but for whatever reason I just don't find that part of it that interesting.  I'm more interested in the pure survival aspect.

I mean I'm interested in the solitude insofar as you only have yourself to rely on, like with Timber having to process and store the moose without any help. It looks like next week he's in potential weight loss trouble.  How can that be with all that meat?

 

6 hours ago, mlp said:

This show frequently mentions how a bear can smell blood over great distances so I don't understand why no bears were attracted to the moose kill.

Good point.  They should be all over that moose.  Only thing I can figure is bears are really wary of humans, and the human scent is deterring them.

[Yeah No]

6 hours ago, mlp said:

I wasn't sorry to see Michaela go.  All that self-pitying introspection and crying............  She shouldn't have been there in the first place.

Even she was confused about it because she says she has spent much of her life alone in nature. She said somehow this was different. I think that's partly because it's outside her comfort zone. I'm also beginning to wonder if some people experience depression caused by extreme calorie restriction, which can prompt them to tap out. And anyone with issues is going to experience that more acutely, I'm sure.

28 minutes ago, rmontro said:

I mean I'm interested in the solitude insofar as you only have yourself to rely on, like with Timber having to process and store the moose without any help. It looks like next week he's in potential weight loss trouble.  How can that be with all that meat?

As soon as I saw how much energy he was expending to process and transport that moose, then get it into its hideaway, I wondered if he could eat enough meat in a short amount of time to offset the calories burned. He would have to eat an awful lot of it to replace what he might have lost doing all that work.

[Quilt Fairy]

To be fair, the show is doing a good job of misleading us with the teaser for next week.  It could be referring to several different contestants, not just Timber. 

[Red Bridey]

Timber works my last nerve. I predict he'll get about a week's worth of food before all the critters in the bush, not just bears, steal it away. Or it starts to go bad. He may regret killing that moose so early. 

I agree that Michela was surprised by her reaction to the isolation. It was weird, and when she released the pike she caught, I'm like, Bye Felicia. You caught cabin fever and must go. Maybe one of the other contestants will recatch it and put it to good use.

Isaiah is lasting longer that I predicted at first, but man, he's building a Taj Mahal. Is that gonna be finished before he taps out? Contrast that with the burrow Dub threw together. And Dub? I got nothin on him. I think he'd be fine living in a ditch with a flattened box for a blanket.

Jake, oh my dog, Jake. I thought he'd be my imaginary boyfriend because he seems so competent as an outdoorsman, but geez, he has a lot of bad luck. What will he hurt next?

[Quilt Fairy]

5 hours ago, Red Bridey said:

He may regret killing that moose so early. 

The show focused a lot on that and I appreciate the logistics of trying to process and store that much meat when it's still warm.  But here's the thing: Do you go for the food despite that, or do pass on that opportunity and hope it will come by again later?  I think you have to go for it. 

[madmax]

On 7/18/2024 at 11:22 PM, azprimadonna said:

I don't know why they cast people who have had previous mental issues.  I guess if they chose only the psychologically strong, no one would ever win.  Skills are only a minute piece of what these people need to survive.  

 

On 7/19/2024 at 1:09 AM, Quilt Fairy said:

And they had 10s of thousands of applicants to choose from......

 

On 7/19/2024 at 4:46 PM, mlp said:

I wasn't sorry to see Michaela go.  All that self-pitying introspection and crying............  She shouldn't have been there in the first place.

21 hours ago, rmontro said:

I'm guessing they couldn't pass up the indigenous woman angle.  But yeah.

This is what irritates me.  Thousands upon thousands of people wanting to be on the show and they keep picking people who can't handle the isolation.  I'm 100% sure Michaela was picked because of the indigenous woman angle, but I swear,  if I took a shot every time she said she was indigenous, I'd have passed out.  I'm glad she's gone because I just couldn't take it anymore, especially when she misidentified the plant.

Timber is getting on my nerves, too.  I hope he is the one pulled, but I highly doubt it.  I'm sure he's eating that moose every chance he gets.  He's no Dave.

 

 

[rmontro]

1 hour ago, madmax said:

This is what irritates me.  Thousands upon thousands of people wanting to be on the show and they keep picking people who can't handle the isolation.  I'm 100% sure Michaela was picked because of the indigenous woman angle, but I swear,  if I took a shot every time she said she was indigenous, I'd have passed out.  I'm glad she's gone because I just couldn't take it anymore

Maybe the producers told her to talk about being indigenous, and/or maybe they've edited her video to emphasize it.  It's been said many times, but it is annoying to see people tap out because they don't like being Alone, when that's the title of the show.  Might be irresponsible to send someone out there with mental health issues too.

[SassyCat]

3 hours ago, madmax said:

I'm 100% sure Michaela was picked because of the indigenous woman angle, but I swear,  if I took a shot every time she said she was indigenous, I'd have passed out.  I'm glad she's gone because I just couldn't take it anymore, especially when she misidentified the plant.

Yeah, Michaela was irritating to me in the way she talked like a regular normal person when she wasn’t in one of her “indigenous modes” where her style of speaking changed to someone who was a wise old Indian woman speaking in few words with a cadence that was entirely different from her natural way of just “talking”. It was so unnatual and phony to me. More like she just wanted to sound native american, rather than just naturally being a person who is  native american… without the forced cadence of the wisdom of a wise woman. 

Like her body was suddenly taken over by an old Indian spirit who was speaking through her. It was too practiced. 

Edited July 21 by SassyCat

[Yeah No]

2 hours ago, rmontro said:

Maybe the producers told her to talk about being indigenous, and/or maybe they've edited her video to emphasize it.  It's been said many times, but it is annoying to see people tap out because they don't like being Alone, when that's the title of the show.  Might be irresponsible to send someone out there with mental health issues too.

This is not the first reality show I've seen recently with an indigenous person that didn't miss an opportunity to mention his indigenousness, and he was pretty insufferable too. In his case he also was pretty touchy about it and full of himself. Like Michaela it was all about his indigenousness all the time.

I think he (and possibly Michaela) had strong internal pressure to "represent" their culture to the rest of the world and going on a show like this feels like the perfect way to do it. And BTW, it was also suspected that this guy misrepresented himself just to get on the show because he was a disaster and left the show early too. This was on the most recent season of "Married at First Sight", BTW.

I suspect that Michaela exaggerated her love for being alone for long periods of time to get on the show just as the guy from MAFS exaggerated his desire to get married.

[Quilt Fairy]

38 minutes ago, SassyCat said:

More like she just wanted to sound native american, rather than just naturally being a person who is  native american

Michaela is Canadian.

[Red Bridey]

In Canada, indigenous peoples are generally referred to as First Nations, and Michela is a member of the Cree tribe. She probably never realized how much she relied on her family for emotional support until she was completely alone. I guess none of us do, really, even when we describe ourselves as loners. But then, people like *Timber* are so annoying, maybe their families are happy when he leaves on adventures like this. I know I would be!!

[Yeah No]

8 hours ago, Quilt Fairy said:

Michaela is Canadian.

Yeah, I interpreted her accent as Canadian. But her accent wasn't always the same although I can't define how it differed at times.

2 hours ago, Red Bridey said:

In Canada, indigenous peoples are generally referred to as First Nations, and Michela is a member of the Cree tribe. She probably never realized how much she relied on her family for emotional support until she was completely alone. I guess none of us do, really, even when we describe ourselves as loners. But then, people like *Timber* are so annoying, maybe their families are happy when he leaves on adventures like this. I know I would be!!

I think a lot of people who don't mind being alone for long periods are those who have issues with relationships and some of them can be a little hard to take for that reason. It's not true of everyone, though. Some people are just true loners and many on this show have been in that category. People like Timber and Dubs seem like they're in the former category. 

Speaking of Dub, I wonder if he's the one that's going to be pulled for medical reasons. He was the person the captions said had lost 20 lbs. already, and it didn't look like he had that much to spare to begin with.

[Yeah No]

Speaking of not knowing how much we need other people, I find it hard to understand how some people can't get past their feelings to feel that the "big picture" is more important than how they feel "right now". It's similar to how I feel about people that commit suicide because their feelings at the time are just so overwhelming and they can't see beyond them to accept that they are most likely transitory and not permanent.

I was once very depressed so I understand how people can be in that much pain, although I have never once thought about ending my life because of it, because in the back of my mind I always had the steadfast hope that there would be a light at the end of the tunnel at some point, so I just "rode it out" despite thoughts and feelings to the contrary. It took effort to push those thoughts and feelings out but I did so. Similarly I don't understand how people in this situation can't just "ride it out". They let intrusive thoughts and feelings dictate their lives and make decisions in the moment which they might actually regret later. Also, after all the years this show has been on the air it floors me that more of the contestants don't think about these things enough beforehand and misjudge themselves to such a degree.

[rmontro]

3 hours ago, Yeah No said:

\Similarly I don't understand how people in this situation can't just "ride it out". They let intrusive thoughts and feelings dictate their lives and make decisions in the moment which they might actually regret later.

No matter what they say their reasons are, I think a lot of us have suspected that being hungry, exhausted, and uncomfortable has a bigger effect on their decision to tap out than they're letting on.  It appears to me that sometimes they just get sick of being out there.  So even though yeah I'm sure they miss their family, as an added bonus they get to sleep in a bed and have a Snickers bar.

[SassyCat]

6 hours ago, Yeah No said:

Yeah, I interpreted her accent as Canadian. But her accent wasn't always the same although I can't define how it differed at times.

Yes. There was a definite change in the way she spoke from one moment to the next depending on what she was talking about. She had a Normal speech pattern when talking about regular everyday life she lived, which changed to a typical speech pattern people playing Indians in movies sound like. Like… “Me redfoot, you whitefoot. Smokem peace pipe. Wind fly smoke spirit to sun, stars.”

Lol, thats the best way I can describe the total change of her speech pattern from one moment to the next. 

It is very hard to do a Native American type of speech pattern when you are used to just speaking like a regular American.. or Canadian, who sound much like americans in many of their province areas. Like she did when just normal talking. 

I have tried and it is not an easy way to talk like that. It has to be practiced. Alot. Its very clipped and minimal with words. 

[wintrygal]

I don't know, could never do anything like this myself, so I am fascinated by people who do attempt it.  Hell, a lot of the time I can't summon the will to open the fridge and find something to cook, much less kill, skin and cook it.  I think the bloom goes off that fantasy really fast..

[Quilt Fairy]

1 hour ago, wintrygal said:

Hell, a lot of the time I can't summon the will to open the fridge and find something to cook

I would like this a 1000 times if I could. 

[Red Bridey]

5 hours ago, rmontro said:

 as an added bonus they get to sleep in a bed and have a Snickers bar.

Which is why I will NEVER even camp. I will couch surf if necessary but will never sleep on the cold hard ground, even for $500,000!

[madmax]

19 hours ago, SassyCat said:

Yeah, Michaela was irritating to me in the way she talked like a regular normal person when she wasn’t in one of her “indigenous modes” where her style of speaking changed to someone who was a wise old Indian woman speaking in few words with a cadence that was entirely different from her natural way of just “talking”. It was so unnatual and phony to me. More like she just wanted to sound native american, rather than just naturally being a person who is  native american… without the forced cadence of the wisdom of a wise woman. 

Like her body was suddenly taken over by an old Indian spirit who was speaking through her. It was too practiced. 

EXACTLY!!!  That is one of the things that bugged me about her.  I can hear it now.  Glad I won't have to listen to that voice again.

[azprimadonna]

Michaela had actually gone to the "big city" and college and been institutionalized and brought home  That tells me she is mentally fragile to begin with and had no business being chosen for an isolated, mentally challenging environment like this.  I know people can work to improve their mental stability over time, but this was risky.

[cowgirlwen]

On 7/20/2024 at 8:51 PM, madmax said:

Thousands upon thousands of people wanting to be on the show and they keep picking people who can't handle the isolation. 

I wonder if they don't consider just how "alone" they are going to be, until it's too late.  I know a lot of people like to be alone at home, but the comfort of family/friends is, at most, a phone call away.  They can be connected to the entire world with the click of a mouse, and help is always readily available in an emergency.  But when they're dropped in the middle of nowhere, with no communication whatsoever, it's a different kind of "ALONE".  I know even when I forget my phone, I feel a level of disconnect that gives me anxiety.  I think when they drop out early, it surprises even themselves, at how their minds are dealing with the isolation.  But I'm guessing it's a level of "ALONE" that they've never experienced before, or even considered possible.  

[Yeah No]

15 minutes ago, cowgirlwen said:

I wonder if they don't consider just how "alone" they are going to be, until it's too late.  I know a lot of people like to be alone at home, but the comfort of family/friends is, at most, a phone call away.  They can be connected to the entire world with the click of a mouse, and help is always readily available in an emergency.  But when they're dropped in the middle of nowhere, with no communication whatsoever, it's a different kind of "ALONE".  I know even when I forget my phone, I feel a level of disconnect that gives me anxiety.  I think when they drop out early, it surprises even themselves, at how their minds are dealing with the isolation.  But I'm guessing it's a level of "ALONE" that they've never experienced before, or even considered possible.  

My husband and I were actually talking about this subject the other day. A few weeks ago we went on a 7 day cruise which involved going to Canada. We decided not to pay the hefty additional fees for phone and internet access. Even though we don't have much family and only a few friends we talk to on any regular basis we initially really felt the disconnection from the world, and it actually made me think of "Alone". Interestingly, though, we were soon able to revert to an earlier way of being from before cell phones and the internet existed, and I realized that under circumstances like that we have it easier than many younger people today because we can summon up that earlier way of being.

We couldn't even communicate with each other when doing things without the other on the ship because this cruise line does not offer an internal app. that allows text messaging between passengers. So we had to revert to the strategies we used to use 30+ years ago in order to keep ourselves from losing each other. We had a designated place on the ship that we would go to if we lost each other for more than a certain amount of time, and we would have to think ahead to plan activities apart from each other so that we knew when and where to meet after they were over. 

When we came back we realized that this is one reason our minds are boggled when younger people tap out on this show because they can't hack being out of touch with their families, friends and the world. Not only are my husband and I introverts but we were used to being alone and out of touch for long periods when we were younger. I traveled a lot with my family as a kid and teenager and back then when you were far away and out of touch with your network, you were really out of touch. It was kind of comforting to know that our earlier lives made it easier for us to survive the cruise. That said, on our next cruise I will pay for the internet and phone access, LOL. 

[madmax]

I can see the younger people maybe tapping because they couldn't handle the absolute lack of connection.  But older folks who didn't have a cell phone at a very early age should be able to cope better.

Funny you talk about being isolated.  I think quite a few of us had that during the pandemic, but we could always reach out via phone/text/email if necessary.  I had always said that I would be perfectly fine alone, but for the first few months, when it was just me and the cat, (Mr. Max being an "essential worker" and my son in the military) I was starved for face-to-face conversation when Mr.  Max got home.  Of course, I acclimated and was damn sad to leave my five day WFH gig when we were called back to the office a few days a week.

[mlp]

On 7/22/2024 at 6:46 AM, cowgirlwen said:

I know a lot of people like to be alone at home, but the comfort of family/friends is, at most, a phone call away.  They can be connected to the entire world with the click of a mouse, and help is always readily available in an emergency.  But when they're dropped in the middle of nowhere, with no communication whatsoever, it's a different kind of "ALONE". 

I think that's exactly right.  I live alone and, unless I have a reason to go out, I often go for several days without seeing another person or even speaking out loud.  I'm a solitary sort and it doesn't bother me.  However, I could if I wanted to, I use the internet and I could call for help if I needed it.  It's definitely a different kind of alone than what the contestants are dealing with - not to mention that my apartment has heat and a/c and no predators.  

[Yeah No]

7 hours ago, madmax said:

Funny you talk about being isolated.  I think quite a few of us had that during the pandemic, but we could always reach out via phone/text/email if necessary.  I had always said that I would be perfectly fine alone, but for the first few months, when it was just me and the cat, (Mr. Max being an "essential worker" and my son in the military) I was starved for face-to-face conversation when Mr.  Max got home.  Of course, I acclimated and was damn sad to leave my five day WFH gig when we were called back to the office a few days a week.

It's funny you mention the pandemic. My father died of Covid at 92 very early in the pandemic in early April of 2020. He was my only close family member left. I am an only child and have no first cousins, and all of my older generation relatives had already passed away. On top of that he lived over 100 miles away from me in NYC. I have only a few close face-to-face friends too, if you factor out acquaintances. On top of that we were not advised to go anywhere near NYC for months and so I couldn't be near him or even talk to him before he died as the hospital was in a state of crisis. 

After all the grief and the isolation and I'm kind of amazed that I made it through as well as I did. Other than Mr. Yeah No I didn't see anyone for months. He had been operating his own limousine before the pandemic and suddenly he had no work at all for over a year. It was a time of grief and uncertainty and if not for him I wouldn't have seen another living person for months. I did stay in touch with friends on the phone and online, and I did lean on this chat board heavily then too. But it was never the life I had before the pandemic and in some ways that life is gone forever, because I lost friendships and even my father's closest friend died only months after he did. She was someone I knew and loved for a long time. Also, one of my closest friends somehow dropped out of my life in 2021. I still don't know why. I don't know anyone in her family to ask. I know she is still alive because every now and then she posts on Facebook. I have reason to suspect she is suffering from early onset dementia, or something like that. And even she lives in NY at a distance from me so there was and still is no way to find out what is going on.

So talk about isolation....When I was a kid I was an only child and had very few friends. I was ethnically different from most people in my neighborhood and was ostracized and picked on. So I learned how to deal with isolation as a child. 

Anyway, the point here is that I am by nature and by circumstance a contemplative type and have always turned to nature to feel a sense of belonging in a spiritual sense. One of my coping mechanisms during the pandemic was to drive to a local park. I would sit on a bench in a shaded, open area and that would help me cope with my life, my feelings, and the situation. Being there without any distraction would help me center myself and refocus my goals. Plus it was a routine and gave me a purpose. Of course it was finite and I knew I would go home afterward but home back then felt isolating too. Even though I don't go there on any regular basis anymore I still consider it my special little place to go to when I need to recenter myself and get closer to God and nature.

So I wonder how being out there alone like on this show couldn't be seen as a similar positive experience even if it is in some ways painful and difficult. Plus even in their case they are not truly alone. They speak to and see people during their weekly medical checks, and filming themselves involves talking to their loved ones and the audience at times as well even if they're not there on the other end. They also know that there are other people in their vicinity having the same experience and there is someone only a phone call away if they really are in need. And the biggest thing is that they know it's finite and won't last more than a certain number of days at worst. For me that would make the most difference because it would give me a goal and a timeframe and that's worth its weight in gold. Even during the pandemic the uncertainty factor made having to live with isolation that much worse. We didn't know when or if it would ever end. They do.

Anyway, just some of my thoughts.