The other night, my husband and I were watching Man vs. Wild, on The Discovery Channel. Bear Grylls (pronounced Grills), a former serviceman of the British Special Forces is the host of this adventure series. It’s one of those shows where they drop him off in the middle of nowhere, someplace like Iceland, and he shows you how to survive until the last few seconds of the show, when he finds civilization again. I just don’t know what I’d do without these Icelandic survival skills, so I MUST tune in. You never know when you’re going to need the ability to catch a chicken with your shoe string. Or, know how long to boil a sheep’s leg in hot springs before it’s okay to eat.

On the show we were watching, he had parachuted into the French Alps. After climbing UP the mountain to get a better view of his surroundings (this would be my first survival mistake, because I’m pretty sure I’d go down), and finding nothing but snow EVERYWHERE, he started to suffer from altitude sickness. He mentioned that his breathing was labored and he had a pounding headache, then he said something like, “I’d murder for a cup of tea.” Really? Because, I’m thinking there are about 1,000 other things I’d want at that point. Like, oh…say a map. Or, an oxygen tank and a mountain guide. Or, maybe for that helicopter from which I had parachuted to come back and get me. I couldn’t help thinking that Britain would be so proud.

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