The idea behind the eight-week reality adventure series is to simulate the homesteading experience of Alaska frontiersmen 100 years ago.
Dennis Wise and daughters Carolyn and Jennifer spent three months in a cabin on the edge of Icy Bay, a frozen fjord in southeast Alaska not far, as the crow or private plane flies, from Juneau.
Fed by the melt-off of North America’s largest glacier, Icy Bay is fast becoming a popular tourist spot for outdoorsy types. At least during the summer months.
The Wises were dropped off in September. By the time they were picked up near Christmastime, the days were five hours long and hypothermia was a constant threat whenever the family ventured out for wood or chow.
After it was all over, there was very little in terms of reward awaiting Dennis, Carolyn and Jennifer other than the girls’ mom and Dennis’ wife, Christine, who wasn’t chosen. So why would one even sign up for such a thing?
Basically, says Dennis Wise, because they asked.
“I was working at the Bass Pro store in Olathe,” said Dennis, who spent three decades on and off the GM assembly lines. “I put on canoeing and kayak demonstrations during the summer out in a little pond outside the building. It was July 1, and I was dressed a little funny. It had been cold toward the end of June so I had put a wet suit on. I walked in the front door to change clothes and time out, and there were these guys in the lobby from Ricochet Productions.”
Ricochet, a UK firm best known for bringing “Supernanny” to American shores, specializes in “factual programmes,” which are kind of like reality TV in America, though not quite. The British have more of a taste for documentary-style fare than we do, though that ranges from the lurid (their “Big Brother” puts ours to shame) to the high-middlebrow (the BBC supplies much of the content for Science Channel, which Discovery also owns).
The producers liked what they saw, wet suit and all, and the next thing you know Dennis and family were going out to Los Angeles for interviews. It became clear that the father-daughters angle appealed since all three were at crossroads in life: Carolyn had just graduated college, Jenny was about to get married and Dennis was in a new career.
And because, let’s be honest, no one was sure how the young ones would react to being away from fast food, the Internet and their social networks.
“They knew Dad was going to make it,” said Carolyn Wise. “He has all the experience. I think they were just waiting to see if my sister and I survived.”
“We were very fortunate in that I’ve been taught all my life to prepare ahead,” Carolyn said. When we went on a camping trip and the forecast called for sunny skies, Dad always told us to pack rain gear.”
In their second interview, the producers made clear that this was not going to be “Survivor” but an experiment, like the British show “Castaway” where people agreed to spend one year on a remote Scottish island (no, there was not a haggis challenge).
The house in Alaska would be bare, but it would be dry and safe, with a good roof and a raised floor that kept out the heavy rains and the waters that flooded their yard at high tide.
You would think that having a cozy shelter would give these modern-day settlers a huge advantage over the Plains pioneers. But Dennis Wise says that is to overlook the challenge of roughing it after a century of hunting, fishing and extracting resources from the land.
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