From climbing trees naked in the forests of South Africa to being eaten alive by insects in the Amazon, Dan Link has tested his survival skills — and his skin — in some of the harshest environments on Earth for his Discovery Channel show. Naked and scary.
Now, viewers can watch the adventurous queer biologists conquer wild terrains in season two of the franchise’s extreme competition series. Naked and Scared: The last of them.Link is one of the show’s 14 elite survivalists who will battle it out for 45 days in Africa’s vast and unforgiving Muntswa Valley for a cash prize and the title of ultimate champion.
Fifth attempt Naked and scaryThe rink exuded an aura of experience and success, finishing second in its first season. Last Man StandingAlways organized and extremely competent, the former fan of the series is famously healthy and able to handle even the toughest survival tasks with ease.
But as he shares Metro Weekly Via video call from the Fire Island wilderness, Last Man Standing It takes intense training and preparation. Surviving in those conditions is no easy feat. And it certainly isn’t easy for Link’s husband of almost eight years, David, who has been anxiously waiting at home after not hearing from him for weeks.
Before the first challenge, [David] “He said, ‘You haven’t thought this through. This is a rash decision. It will work out, but you’ve never done this before. This will follow you for the rest of your life. Do you really know what you’re doing?’ And everything he said was accurate and completely right.”
While she acknowledges her husband’s concerns are valid, Link says, “Even though each attempt has gotten more and more extreme, he’s become more and more supportive. He puts up with me eating like crazy before the attempts, cutting my legs and all that stuff, and of course he worries about me when I’m away.”
Then, over the course of several weeks, Naked and scary For example, difficult conditions deep in the Colombian jungle or South Africa’s Oribi Valley can make the journey home disorienting. Link, who is back home in Honolulu, is a conservation biologist who manages Papahānaumokuakea Marine National Monument in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.
“Sometimes you come back and have a tough readjustment period,” Link said, noting that returning from Amazon’s season was particularly tough. “You just overeat, you get so anxious.”
Of course, spending 60 days hunting and gathering in the Amazon isn’t easy mentally. “You get away from modern society, you get away from your phone,” Link says. “You get away from the worries of work and your personal life. And it makes it a lot easier to calculate what you need to get done, even if you might go through hell.”
After about two weeks of extreme fatigue and deprivation, “the brain begins to enter a state of clarity that is hard to put into words,” the scientists explain.
But actually, he puts it well: “All your calculations, not just of what you should do in this moment, but of what you should do in the future, for the rest of your life, and what is most important to you, all become so crystal clear. It’s like a fog that’s been in your head all this time, a fog that you didn’t even know was there because it’s so constant, just disappears. Most of us experience that. And it’s so profound.”
“I wouldn’t say it’s terrible to come back – you get to eat, you get to lie in a comfortable bed and you can do whatever you want – but at the same time, the mental adjustment to rejoining society can be tough.”
But Link continues to try again. Last Man Standing Season 1 villain Jeff Zausch also appears in season 2, having also appeared in previous seasons. Naked and scary.
“After each challenge, they ask, ‘Do you want to do it again?’ and I always say, ‘Not yet. Ask me again later. Give me time to forget about the trauma,'” Link says.
Joking aside, Link knows what keeps him motivated. “I think it’s the adventure,” he says. “You learn so much about your capabilities, and not just bushcraft skills, but mental skills that will serve you for life. You learn them before you face the challenges and you carry them with you after. Some of the mental skills you learn are really incredible.”
Would-be survivors don’t have to head into the Amazon naked and scared to learn these skills: Next month, Link will be hosting a (clothed) wilderness survival skills workshop at the annual LGBT Outdoor Fest in Bellevue, Colorado.
“I’m really excited about this,” he says, “I’ve taught a few classes in the past, but I wanted to reach out more to the queer community — not necessarily the queer outdoor community, but the queer community in general — and promote accessibility and breaking down the social norms and barriers that keep a lot of queer people from participating in outdoor activities.”
Link says ultimately he just wants to share his love of the outdoors with the LGBTQ community, which has historically been drawn to big cities for a lot of good reasons.
“I want to encourage queer people to get outside, to be in nature,” he says, “and reclaim aspects of ourselves that have been forgotten. We have the freedom to be whoever we want without being constrained by stereotypes or traditional societal boundaries.”
Naked and Scared: The last of them. Airs Sundays on Discovery Channel and is available to stream on Discovery GO. Learn more.
LGBT Outdoor Fest It will be held at Colorado State University Mountain Campus from Sept. 12-15. Registration is $549. About this site.
Source: Metro Weekly – www.metroweekly.com
