Woniya Thibeault
Photo by Alessio Soggetti
“Let me absorb all of the joy and wonder that I can hold.”
Woniya Thibeault
“Never Alone: A Solo Arctic Survival Journey”
Woniya Thibeault is one of the toughest and bravest people we will ever see in our lifetimes. She is an ancestral skills and wilderness survival instructor. But what I admire most about her is her mindset and how she approaches these challenges. The opening quote to this story tells you a lot about her character.
History Channel has more than one outdoor survival show. One of them, Alone, is an American survival competition. History Channel describes the show, Alone, as when “Brave participants are forced to use their wits when left in the wilderness with nothing but a backpack and struggle with harsh weather, hostile locations and aggressive wildlife.” Participants compete for a winner take all $500,000 cash prize.
One amazing contestant is Woniya Thibeault. On Season Six, Woniya was forced to abandon her quest for victory on her 43rd birthday. She finished in second place that year. Forced to survive on some berries and grubs for over a week and a half, she had pushed her body to a place that Dr.’s on the show feared for her life. She tells us that it took two years for her to regain full health. After six more months she chose to compete in “Alone Frozen”. A competition even more difficult than previously imagined.
She spent weeks solo in the wilderness off Labrador, Canada and became the first woman to win History Channel’s “Alone” challenge. Woniya spent a record 123 days (two combined seasons) in the wilderness. She is a shining example of what women can do when they are allowed.
In an arena that is mostly male in gender, Thibeault was unique in the she is a woman. Unfortunately, misogyny is definitely still there. To this she says:
“I’d say the sexism has steadily lessened but is definitely still there. I got a lot of it in my first season. Its part of our culture. I’m trying to change that narrative and I think being on the show helped to do that.” One of the things that she wanted to accomplish on the show “was make sure that girls saw themselves on the screen.”
“The reason we don’t see more girls in the outdoors is because we aren’t pushed to go in the outdoors.”
Woniya added this in an MSNBC interview.
“I made a real point of showing up as a woman, not as someone who is denying my femininity. Femininity isn’t a handicap, it’s a strength. We have an idea in our culture that survival requires going out there and duking it out with nature, which is ridiculous. I’m not going to wrestle the Arctic into submission. I arrived and greeted the lake, letting it know who I was and my intentions. I believed the land would respond better to that than it would to someone who is clearly out to dominate it and take from it without asking.”
And that is what I think is the reason she was able to put herself through so much for so long. “I’m not going to wrestle the arctic into submission” and “feeling the land would respond better to that than it would someone who is clearly out to dominate it…” Are such telling statements about who she is as a person. Bend not break, work with instead of forcing something to your will. This woman is a model for us all. Perfect metaphors to guide us in our lives.
Courage? Listen to this and tell if you could do this. Woniya was sheltering enduring a horrendous three-day storm in Frozen Arctic. The winds were so fierce that it was blowing smoke back into her shelter. She was suffering from smoke inhalation when she experienced “this incredible searing pain in my eyes…it was from having some seaweed burning in my fire. And the seaweed was saturated with salt, of course, which is sodium and chloride together. And when they burn, they separate. So, it was actually chlorine gas.” Woniya would go on to suffer blindness from the chlorine. But the situation gets even worse as she goes on to tell us. “And it also happened that that little device that has our GPS and has the emergency tap out button, that was dead. And I was unable to call for rescue…it was a dark moment”.
How many of us would have the presence to survive that moment She is indeed a very special person.
Woniya wrote a book about her experiences, it is called “Never Alone: A solo Arctic Survival Journey Life and time on the show”. I am going to get it because I simply have to know more about this amazing woman.
