Growing up on a 60-acre game farm, I spent many hours outside wondering if I would ever experience deep adventures found in tales such as Kon-Tiki, Endurance, Annapurna, Book of the Eskimos, and Out of This World. I often asked myself, what allows some to survive the harshest of conditions in a variety of remote environments—whether as an explorer or just engaged in every day survival? Why do some live and others perish?

We’ll screen several contrasting documentaries—from Shackleton’s Antarctic epic Endurance to Tori McClure—the first woman to row solo across the Atlantic Ocean; from Joe Simpson’s crawl out of a crevasse in Patagonia to Kalahari bushman Karoha running down his prey; from escaped POW Heinrich Harrar’s Seven Years in Tibet to Arctic Dance—the story of Olas and Mardy Murie’s extensive field research; from a year in a village in the Siberian Taiga with hunter/trappers to 13-year-old Mongolian girl Aisholpan becoming an eagle huntress. The content of each provide the basis for us to examine both the environmental and human challenges in which odds are overcome by extraordinary fitness of mind and body, and to discuss what commonalities and differences we find in these very different people.

Participants will be asked to identify some of THEIR favorite examples, which may be included.