THE CA LL OF THE WILD
SURVIVAL: A desert scene from Ray Mears
Goes Walkabaout
IN THE OLD days, we used to have to put one word in our passport to describe our occupation. So how would Ray Mears describe himself? Naturalist? Adventurer? Bushcraft expert? He’s immediately thrown into confusion. “Honestly, I don’t know although I’d never claim to be an expert in anything. If I had to choose it would be that I’m a student of nature.” And yet Ray, 57, is the go-to man via his teaching, broadcasting and writing when it comes to the art of surviving in the wild.
Although the word bushcraft is more often heard in Canada and Australia, he started using it because he did not like how survival training, valuable in its own way, he says, was being presented to the world.
Might this be a coded way of registering his disapproval of the likes of Bear Grylls, the buccaneering exponent of derring-do? (Mild-mannered Ray, you can’t help but feel, is very much of the school of derring-don’t).
“Some of the things Bear does are crazy,” Mears is on record as saying.
“Jumping off cliffs into water when you don’t know what’s in it, for instance. If a 15-year-old boy was to copy him by leaping into a canal and then impaled himself on an abandoned pram, I’d think that was Bear’s fault.”
Ray has previously dismissed Grylls as a “showman”, adding: “I think the viewer understands that, if you want to know how to take care of yourself in the wild, I’m the person to talk to.”
He traces the macho qualities of battling against the elements to Rambo. “When we first met that character, he was shown to be someone who’d been poorly treated by society,” he says.
“But, outside of America, the message of Rambo was misunderstood.
“The myth that evolved was macho man versus nature, one person squaring up to natural hostility.
“But, for me, nature is beautiful and that’s always been my message.”
How does he regard Ben Fogle? “I don’t. I never watch what any of them do. I don’t even watch myself. I’ve made the programme. I know what it involved. I don’t have to live through again,” he insists.
It is no accident Ray has titled new book We Are Nature. “Everyth in nature is connected,” he says, “a we’re inextricably a part of that.
“We need to rewild ourselves. Th wilder a place, the more I like it. I never feel more alive than when I’m in the wilderness. I can think of fewer more enjoyable experiences than being in a white-out in the Arctic forest in February.”
And all this from a man brought up in Purley, south London. “We lived near the South Downs. Surrey’s amazing, one of the most wooded counties. I was an only child and my parents gave me my freedom.”
In his teens he read The Forest People by Colin Turnbul study of the Mbuti pygmies of the the Belgian Congo in the 1950s. Ray’s f was sealed: “I knew exploring in widest sense was what I wanted to d
But how do you make that happe “I followed my interests. I was int ested in tracking foxes and I wanted
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l, a enfate its o.” en? terd to stay out overnight, but I had no equipment.the judo teacher at school who’d fought in Burma said I didn’t need camping equipment. He explained how I could sleep roughly but safely.”
Ray paid for a two-day Royal Geographical Society seminar on how to plan an expedition to a tropical rainforest. He was 15 at the time.
By his early 20s he had set up Woodlore, a business teaching survival skills and, in time, a shop supplying all the relevant equipment.
He has huge respect for wild creatures. “Leave them alone and they’ll leave you alone.” It’s a philosophy that stood him in good stead on a trip to Australia in 2008. “I’d speared a stingray. I’d wanted to cook it in the shade but the TV director persuaded me to do it on the beach because it made better pictures.what I didn’t know was crocodiles have the most amazing sense of smell and a particular penchant for cooked ray meat.”
A large crocodile had been cruising the water’s edge all day. “It was nighttime and I was asleep in my tent – a dome made of mosquito netting.
“I was awoken by a noise and, looking over to my right, there was the crocodile 4ft from my head. I put my hand on my machete and reasoned I could hit it on its nose if it attacked.
“Luckily, though, it was just passing through on its way to devour what remained of the ray on the campfire.”
CLEARLY, he takes his work seriously, openly contemptuous of reality TV in general and I’m A Celebrity... in particular. No prizes for guessing his reaction to the contestant asked to swallow a live spider. “I thought it was incredibly disrespectful to the creature, cheap television, both cruel and puerile. I was once asked to go on the show. Let’s just say they never asked again.”
Ray has been married twice. His first wife Rachel died of breast cancer in 2006, aged 50.
He says: “Every human being has a different capacity to cope with stress.”
Was he able to call on the survival techniques he’d learned in his work? “I think so. My intense love and understanding of the natural world in some ways gave me coping mechanisms.”
Three years later Ray fell head over heels for a woman who attended one of his lectures. He recalls: “This whirlwind approached the stage and asked me to sign a copy of a book I’d written.
“I can’t quite explain how but she was such a force of nature, a human dynamo, she knocked me off my feet.”
The attraction was mutual and Ray and Ruth married after a whirlwind courtship.they now live in Sussex with her 26-year-old son.
Ray’s travels mean he is often away from home for weeks at a time.
“Ruth does travel with me if I’m not making a TV programme. But yes, the lockdown was a bit of a boon since I’ve been at home for over a year now.
“We didn’t get on each other’s nerves and it meant I was able to concentrate on writing my book. Perfect.”
‘We need to
rewild ourselves. I never feel more alive than when I’m in the wilderness’
RAY MEARS
Picture: JONATHAN BUCKLEY