Erstellt am: 28. 4. 2012 - 11:50 Uhr
The Adventures of Scott Livingstone
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Not too long ago, I wrote about my experiences visiting the lesser-known third island of New Zealand, Stewart Island - just south of New Zealand's South Island, and just north of the Subantarctics.
It must be said, however; as interesting as the time I spent on Stewart Island was, if you compare it to the time spent there by another young Canadian from the Vancouver area, it was very, very tame.
The other young Canadian in question is this amazing guy from Kelowna, BC: he is 23 years old, and his name is Scott Livingstone.
Scott Livingstone
I met Scott after he undertook his amazing journey, when he was in the kitchen of Stewart Island's main hostel with us. We were in the process of cooking some spaghetti noodles, when I heard a snatch of conversation from the recreation room; some crazy person was talking about snatching a live freshwater eel from a shallow river, and then proceeding to eat it.
"That was actually one of my more enjoyable dinners," he was saying.
Johnny Bliss, 2012
My attention? Caught, like a freshwater eel in a shallow river.
Hello there. Please ignore this microphone I've just turned on. Go on.
"New Zealand has these fascinating freshwater eels, and they're really ridiculously easy to catch, you can pretty much catch them on anything, I've heard people throw a hot dog on the hook, and the eel bite it. The nice thing about an eel is: fish usually nibble at it first and play with it, [but] the eel just bites the whole thing at once, and once it bites it, that eel's yours. But then you gotta pull it out of the water right away, because they will use their body to wrap on to anything, and once it's wrapped on to something, you can't pull it out of the water, and then you have this situation where you have a hook in this animal's mouth, so… you don't wanna just cut the line and leave with the hook in, so it's a matter of getting in the freezing cold river, and prying this eel off this whatever it's latched on to.
"But yeah, I caught two large eels in the river, one for dinner and one for breakfast the next day, and that was probably my best feast."
Uhm...
"For the past few years, I've had quite a big interest in camping and going to the outdoors, and I've always thought it'd be nice to test yourself against the wilderness, and see if you can keep yourself alive, because at least in the first world, a warm place to sleep, and food, and seeing the next day, are things that are pretty much a guarantee. So to go out and work for those things in an uninhabited environment, presented a very real idea to myself, everything I did was very real."
Johnny Bliss, 2012
"The reason I chose this location? Well, in a sense, it's my first real venture out into the woods alone, spending a lot of time there and trying to gather food, and it's a pretty safe place to do it. There are no bears out there, and there's not really a lot out there that can hurt you, other than the weather or yourself. There is food out there to be had.
"The overall trek is about a ten days hike, and you can do it in eight if you really want to. I planned to walk out for a few days, and set up a base camp. My ultimate goal really was to get a deer. There are deer on the island, and I have a hunting bow which I've been practicing with for the past few months. I really wanted to get myself a deer, and just feed on venison breakfast, lunch, and dinner for a while. I was unsuccessful in that attempt. I did see quite a few deer out there but it would be while I was doing something like fishing or getting firewood or something of the sort.
Scott Livingstone
"I also laid my hands on a possum, and eventually ate it.
"I was actually really excited about the possum. I've thought of eating them before, because people have told me that they taste good but someone else told me that it's just a joke that the Maori tell a lot of tourists, that possum tastes nice. I think perhaps if I had the means to cook it properly with the right sauces and spices, it could be all right, but it's a very, very tough chewy meat.
"I actually made a stew with most of it, and yeah just boiled the crap out of it, just to soften it up enough to get it in me, but I've never really skinned anything before, so there was little tiny bits of hair on the meat, and I think that… yeah, it kinda ruined any potential flavor I got from it.
Johnny Bliss, 2012
"I was looking forward to eating it. I wasn't looking forward to finishing it once I started, but I was looking forward to it initially..."
So you just found it and you hit it with a rock?
"Well, I was walking back from fishing, and I was going down the path. It was very unusual to see a possum in the day, so I was quite shocked to see it, and... I didn't even really do much thinking, I just saw it hop off the path, and it was walking on the top of some really tall grass, so it couldn't get good fitting to move very quickly.
"I made a dive for it and grabbed it, actually pulled out my knife, and stabbed it through the neck, and cut its head off.
"It was a really strange moment in my life, because up until then I've never killed anything other than a fish, and it does haunt me just a little bit, to be honest. But it's nice to know that in the situation, if I have to, I can kill an animal and eat it, to feed myself.
Scott Livingstone
"I was fairly fortunate with weather. During the days when I'd be travelling, I'd have my big pack on. It started out weighing about 23 kilos, and so walking with that, through the terrain, up hills and all that, I would just be wearing a t-shirt and my pants, and I would sweat right through it.
"And it's interesting though, sometimes you'll wake up and think it's just going to be the worst day because it was windy and howling rain all night, but you gotta pull yourself out because you need to go get breakfast. And then lo and behold, an hour into the day, it turns into the most beautiful day ever, so it was a nice balance.
Scott Livingstone
"I think the parts where I found it the hardest to keep going were on the travel days, carrying the big pack, and walking for eight hours, and you just don't think your legs can carry you any farther.
"There were times where I'd actually get incredibly frustrated trying to get back to my camp, because I'd know the direction I was going was the right direction, but the terrain was SO insurmountable.
"In my hand was the bow, and it's a large bow, about five feet long, so there's no real way to strap it to my back. At times I was crawling on the ground to get through some thick bush, and usually the ground is mud.
Johnny Bliss, 2012
"My biggest actual epiphany (if you will) is the same one shared by the main character in the movie Into the Wild, and that's at the end, he writes in his diary that happiness is only real when shared…"
On that note...
Special thanks to my travel partners in New Zealand, Nina and Martina; and to Scott Livingstone himself, for taking it to the limit.
Tune in today between 12 and 1pm to FM4 Reality Check, for an hour-long Saturday special following Scott's survivalism experiment in New Zealand's largest national park, the rainforest of Stewart Island.
Johnny Bliss, 2012