GRIN AND BEAR IT

I’VE BEEN asked more times than is imaginable, do I really drink my own urine? I don’t know what it is with folk. Disbelief, mostly, and an insatiable appetite to know what urine tastes like.

Well, the answer is yes I have, and yes it is terrible. But no, definitely no, I do not drink urine for fun. Or for health. Although there are some people out there who seem to swear by it. I’m not one of them, but I have drunk it a bunch of times in the name of survival.

And the answer to the question “What’s it like?” is: “It stinks.”

Warm, salty urine is not designed to taste good. Especially if it’s been stored in the skin of a rattlesnake while crossing a desert. Mixed with blood and snake innards, that urine took on a taste of its own that I’m not keen to repeat in a hurry.

Then again, survival rarely tastes good and almost always hurts, stinks and leaves you a little beaten up.

That’s the reality of the wild for you, and most certainly the reality of survival. It can make you suffer. But there’s part of me that loves that.

Good survival means thinking left field, digging deep, doing the unimaginable, and yes it might hurt and will probably stink. But in terms of staying alive, the rewards always go to the person who can dig the deepest and find that something inside that allows them to do the unimaginable. That ethos became Man vs Wild.

The few survival shows that had been on television before had always generally