Musings on Conservation, Hunting and a Season of Filming
There is often a joyful sadness that accompanies a finale.
Some of the best moments of filming Season 1 of Finding Nowhere were off-camera and had little to do with the actual hunting of animals. It was the moments after and in between all the “action” that I recall feeling a happy kind of contentedness in my heart. Moments where I’m just sitting there in this absurdly beautiful place on Earth. My hands and clothes are dirty from the pursuit, but who cares. I’m enjoying the rare privilege of time in nature, fully present with a few friends, and probably half-drunk under a hot sun or a bright moon. Then and there it dawns on me just how lucky I am to be out there making a wilderness and travel T.V Show in the charming and spectacularly beautiful Province of British Columbia.
When I’ve shared the premise of this show with others, their reactions were almost always a soft kind of envy—a yearning for an experience that brings them that kind of joy, adventure and knowledge.
It reminds me of how Ryan astutely put it at the end of Episode 1: “This,” he said, “is not normal!”
Ryan and Joel in the Fraser Valley, British Columbia
To find, be safe in, and know how to traverse and hunt the wildest parts of British Columbia is no easy thing. It involves the time to discover and hunt the best and often hard-to-get-to locations. Among other costs, it is certainly not cheap to acquire the appropriate gear for protection against the often-harsh elements. And it requires connections to other hunting enthusiasts to successfully get started.
This was all part of a realisation that began to dawn on me throughout the filming of Finding Nowhere: To rewild is, oddly, a luxury.
If you recall, the premise of this show is about my dear “diehard” outdoorsman cousin Ryan teaching me, a city boy, how to hunt, fish, forage and (generally speaking) rewild in British Columbia. No doubt, I was spectacularly foolish about all that this “outdoorsy” way of life entailed.
Moreover, not so long ago, I couldn’t imagine eating wild game or spending weeks at a time deep in the wilderness. Now, I cannot imagine my life without it.
Ryan and Show Co-Founder and Direct of Photography Seth Steward
Joel Primus and show collaborator and Adam Besse
Nature has a way of grabbing hold of your imagination and penetrating your soul. To hunt, to eat wild, to be in nature, awakens something deeply ancestral. Like an inner knowing at core of our existence on Earth. And while we may have all the technology in the world to make food in laboratories, deliver it on conveyor belts and package in plastic…we’re not supposed to lose this more natural way of feeding ourselves.
That being said, there is a sacred balance that comes with rewilding. While I wish everyone the experience, skills, satisfaction, and nourishment that comes from procuring their own sustenance from nature, all this comes at a cost to the environment. The more people who do it, the harder it becomes to conserve both the natural habitats and animals that live in them. Moreover, the experience of solitude in nature is diminished by the growing numbers that flock to the woods.
None of this is easy subject matter! These are all things we started to learn about in Season 1, and plan to discuss and investigate at greater length in Season 2 of Finding Nowhere.
Until then, we wish you good health and great adventures!