Simon vs. Wild

"Nature has no mercy at all. Nature says, "I'm going to snow. If you have on a bikini and no snowshoes, that's tough. I am going to snow anyway."

-Maya Angelou

For a while there, I'd been only watching TV in moderation, The Sopranos being my only television obsession. Lately, though, things have changed, and I haven't turned off the tube for a week straight. Today, I discovered yet another show that could quickly become yet another obsession: Man Vs. Wild.

Today, I learned what I would have to know if I ever got stranded on a Pacific island. I was shown Polynesian techniques in building sails, using coconuts as sunblock, and using fire to take town bamboo stalks. It was so cool how the man tied together the stalks with hibiscus fibers to make raft that it almost made me want to become a castaway.

Not that I'd ever make it. I'd certainly starve. Kim and I got my mother's CR-V stranded beside the road in southern Colorado, and we began to panic immediately. We decided to eat a leftover slice of cheesecake after about 15 minutes, and grew even more panicked when we realized that we did not have any silverware. Shivering and frightened, we ate the dessert with a Gatorade lid. We tried again to leave, but the tires only spun uselessly in the snow and mud, as we'd feared. Soon, we began discussing through shaky sobs which one of us would have to be sacrificed in order to feed the other, as if we'd crashed in the Andes. Luckily, a kind man found us and pulled us from the ravine with his truck.

I like to think that I could make it on an island all alone, just me and my wits. But we've got Hi-Def now, along with a heater and a swamp cooler. If I really want to rough it, I'll make a cheesecake and buy some Gatorade, and hope that one day, if my plane crashes on an island, I'll remember that one episode of Man Vs. Wild where the guy showed me how to climb a coconut tree.