- So things already aren't going well.
Three to suck and then that's it.
- [Lea] You guys!
- [Asia] You would have died.
- And everybody kept making jokes what could happen to us.
And that was pissing me off.
(soft music)
(zipper)
(sighs loudly)
- The great outdoors!
A welcoming place for some
and a very scary place for other people.
Hi, I am Lea Zora and I grew up hiking, camping,
even being a Girl Scout.
But a lot of my black friends didn't.
But why?
Well, for starters, African Americans were actually legally
banned from being in National and State Parks
until the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Rude!
So, even if we wanted to go camping,
we weren't even allowed to go.
So today I'm on a mission
to break down stereotypes of what black folks don't do
and take my friends camping for their very first time.
All right, so let's meet our campers!
- I've never really officially been camping before.
I've done a version of where we slept by the car at a lake.
- So, I've decided to go on this camping trip
because, you know, camping is actually on my bucket list
of things I wanna do.
- So, my role on this camping trip
was to be the sound and film guy.
I love being outside, I love camping.
- I have zero experience with camping
because I do not do the outdoors.
I was excited to bond with people.
I felt like if we sat around the campfire, you know.
But I was really afraid of everything else.
- I'm accustomed to a certain lifestyle.
Like a roof over my head and running hot water
and food that I can prepare at a stove.
I was being stripped of all of that, in the woods.
At night, like, I could die.
- My fears going into this trip
definitely were rattlesnakes.
But I think just the thought and the idea of just seeing
or potentially seeing a snake in the wilderness,
while sleeping will probably give me a heart attack.
(high pitched screaming)
- I signed up for this,
but now I'm like second guessing this decision.
- [Lea] Well, there're a couple rules.
Rule number 1, you must build your own shelter.
(Gasps)
- It's already a dumb idea.
(laughter)
- Like we have to build our own tent?
- I have AT&T so YouTube is available.
- [Lea] Rule number 2, you must forage for your own food.
That is either a plant or an animal.
- I can't kill an animal, I will poison myself.
- No, that's a damn lie.
I don't know if I can eat these vegetables
and I'm vegan.
- I have Google.
- [Lea] Rule number 3, you must build your own fire,
without the use of a match or flames.
- I'm gonna freeze to death.
- Yup.
- Wear layers, how about that?
- [Lea] Rule number 4, you cannot use your cell phone.
- Ah.
- [Lea] You'll be completely disconnected
from electronic devices.
- Are you serious right now?
(laughs)
- And what happens in a case of an emergency?
- Rule number 5, you will be provided with everything
that you guys need to survive in the forest
and you must use everything in the survival pack.
I know you're nervous and I don't want you to be nervous.
And you will be prepared for the woods.
In order to prepare my friends for the woods, guys,
I have brought in an expert to teach you.
- Yes. - Okay.
- Chris, come on out!
- [Crowd] Whoa!
(laughter)
- Good to see you, man!
- Hi.
- See, I was, I was ready.
- We got like a crash course in camping
from Chris, the survivalist.
- My name is Christopher Nyerges
I started the School of Self Reliance
about 40 years ago to teach people about all the skills
that you guys are gonna need on your very enjoyable trip
that's about to come.
- It was good, it was definitely helpful.
I think some of the stuff
the gentleman had told us about, I kind of reminded myself
or remembered it throughout the entire trip.
- It was a crash course 'cause I can't tell you
one thing I was supposed to do (laughs).
- He scared the shit out of me and I did not feel prepared
and it's not that he did a bad job.
It's just that I was so scared that I'm like,
nope, not going on this trip.
- [Destinee] The car ride up there was cool.
It was fun 'cause I think we were all like really excited
that this thing was finally gonna happen.
- Wow! It was wildly cramped.
Not enough space for anyone to breathe and we immediately
started sharing each others carbon dioxide,
which is very poisonous.
- I had so much anxiety on the car ride over
because I just didn't know what to expect
and the unknown scares me a lot of the time.
- What about if it's not even a dog
and see you just something creeping up on you.
- Yeah, it could be a human being,
and I'm like absolutely not. - And your mind says,
"Don't be alarmed, just stay safe".
- And everyone kept making jokes
about what could happen to us.
And that was pissing me off.
- I just felt really bad for Asia.
'Cause sis was not feeling it the whole ride up there.
The whole 3 hours.
And I was like, girl.
- [Tayo] Closer we started to get to the camping ground.
The more that reality starts to set in.
Like I'm really about to do this camping thing.
- And we were told once we get to like
a certain street corner, of the avenue place
that we were supposed to call this person
prior to getting past it because we would lose our service.
And he wasn't answering
and I was like, y'all we need to turn around now.
So things already aren't going well.
- [Lea] They're going fine!
Hi, Mehmet, this is Lea from Buzzfeed.
Our group is about 15 to 20 minutes away.
We haven't lost reception yet, I have 5 bars,
but I wanted to give you a call.
So, we'll see you soon, give us a call back.
Thanks, bye.
- [Automated Message] At the tone,
please record your message.
- What's his name, Mehmet?
- Mehmet.
- That's not stressful at all.
Oop!
Girl.
- Okay, so...
- Sir, answer your phone.
- Please call us back.
- Please.
- Call him a million times, I ain't playing no games.
I'm 'bout to hop out the car.
- And go where?
- You're in the middle of nowhere!
(laughter)
- I'm going to one of these (beep) gas stations.
- And go where?
So we're calling, no answer, calling, no answer.
And Lea goes, "Here Destinee, look, maybe you call."
And she was like, "Listen to this voicemail."
And I go to listen to the voicemail
and the guy goes, "Hello?"
- Hi!
(laughter)
- [Lea] Hi, how are you?
- Look at that, he answered.
- He answered.
We're safe.
- I was very relieved in the fact
that I was not literally being thrown
into the middle of the woods.
Like it was a very open place.
You could see the sky.
- It really reminds you of "The Hills Have Eyes".
(grunting)
- Gimme that baby (thud against face).
- To you guys that have ever watched that movie,
just imagine that scene of just like
in the middle of nowhere.
You're just expecting the worst like some bears,
some wild animal just to jump out of nowhere
and to just like attack you.
- We were greeted by the sweetest dogs.
One of them was Tuli.
- [Passengers] Oh!
- [Lea] As they roll up to the car!
Hello, hi, hello.
- [Tayo] What's up buddy?
- We were greeted by a guy named Mehmet.
He is the owner of this property.
- Come here girl.
- [Destinee] So the property owner
gave us a tour of the land.
And, again, everything was really spread out.
- I am scared to go anywhere.
There was so many flies.
So many flies, so many flies.
I wanted to stay in the car.
- There was the like rattlesnake zone.
I was totally down for it.
Tayo was definitely afraid to see a rattlesnake
and I was really hoping we would see one
just cause I wanted to know what his reaction would be like.
Hey, I wanna see this man squeal.
I see a snake holes.
- [Tayo] Woah, timeout.
(laughs)
As soon as I saw that my guards, my eyes, my whole mindset
just literally shifted 'cause every step that I took
was more so like, is there a snake there?
Is there a snake there, is there a snake there?
Yeah so, that's the queue when I don't walk
past these lines here.
- I love how everyone keeps joking about rattlesnakes
I'm not...
It's literally not funny.
- Come on, Asia.
Snake skin just laying around somewhere.
I freaked the (beep) out.
No, that (beep) disgusting.
- [Destinee] It's just the skin.
- [Tayo] It doesn't matter.
(laughs)
- Took us down to the river
which was, you know, it's colder so it wasn't that high.
- We go towards the edge of like sort of a cliff
and it just like dives down.
- [Destinee] It's so pretty!
- That's the river we're gonna take a shower in.
Taking a shower in the river.
- It looked absolutely refreshing.
You wanted to dive in and drink it and you can drink it.
- I am not bathing in this river.
Yeah, I had to go away and have a moment to myself,
because I have high anxiety and like I'm doing it.
Honestly, just being here is brave of me.
I feel like everybody out there is gonna be like,
"Why is she even there if she's not gonna actually do it?"
This is hard for me.
It is, I feel like I'm afraid of everything and this.
- Asia, ah, bless her heart.
I was really worried about homegirl.
She didn't want to do this before we left
and I was really surprised that she followed through.
I think she was definitely gonna have
the biggest challenge on this trip.
But she was like very adamant about like,
"I want to do this, I want to conquer my fears."
- Unbeknownst to me, 'cause I'm just the film and sound guy,
everyone received a survivalist guide lesson
'fore the trip, I did not.
So, I had to figure out everything on my own.
- Oh, are you doing audio?
- No, I am just holding this so I look cool in the videos.
- How to purify water.
Now I won't go to a place if there's
not a good source of water.
Because you cannot tell by looking at the water
if it's safe to drink.
If it looks pure and it's flowing and it's cold
that doesn't mean it's safe.
And if it's stagnant with a lot of bugs,
that doesn't mean it's bad.
So, you have to have some mechanism for purifying the water.
The commercial filter and all of the biological
and other contaminants are sucked up in here.
- We really only had a little bit of time
before we lost the sun so we had to like complete
a lot of tasks in a little bit of time.
- [Tayo] What are we about to go do?
- We have these here water pumps.
We're gonna filter some water for us to drink.
It says suck water directly or connect to the bottle.
- [Lea] Oh my god, no!
You're supposed to do it the other way!
- Ah!
(laughter)
- No, it doesn't say that.
It says, "Put the straw in the water".
- [Lea] Put the straw in the water?
- Yeah.
- [Asia] Put the straw in water.
- [Lea] How's it taste?
- It tastes refreshing.
- They're really troopers, I appreciate this.
- Tayo and Lea, I'm pretty sure we probably poisoned them.
Because they tried to drink through the filter.
- I sipped out of the straw
and I'm pretty sure I probably would've gotten chikunguy.
That's not a real thing.
(screaming)
- I would've died, yo.
(laughter)
- [Lea] Oh no.
- [Asia] I think it's just, you know...
These instructions are stupid.
The instructions say literally to suck and then that's it.
- [Destinee] You would have died.
- I was definitely jeopardizing my life drinking out of
the purifying straw.
- We also had water bottles.
Again, legal told me I had to give them water.
We only had a couple of hours
to actually complete the tasks.
We had to build a shelter, we had to start a fire,
we had to forage for food
and hopefully never get attacked by an animal.
- So, we about to build a tent like right there.
Who's y'all?
You building a tent with us.
- I will supervise.
You put the tarp down already?
Look at you, you're on it (laughs).
- You're going to help, Destinee.
(laughter)
- You don't get a tent without instructions.
Follow those instructions.
- Okay.
- It's pretty self-explanatory.
What I tell people when you buy a tent and you're at home,
take it apart, put it together.
So, you're not in the dark in a funny place.
- [Asia] There's a ton of pieces,
that I have no idea what to do with.
- Ask this one, he said there's instructions.
This is me supervising.
- [Asia] I'm trying to read it too.
- Because I really don't know how to build
or want to build a tent.
(upbeat music)
- Why are we children?
All right now stop.
So, we put together these lovely tents.
- That was a lot.
- It was a lot and it's hot out here.
- You know what we about to do right now.
- We're about to forage for some food.
- There's two sources of food.
One big source is plants.
The other big source is animals.
Native people all ate the acorns.
That was a good source of protein and carbohydrates.
You can survive on acorns alone
if you don't want to eat snakes
and fish and things like that.
- I ain't fighting no squirrel.
- In a survival situation, anything that
flies, crawls, swims, whatever, you can eat.
The rattlesnake have a big triangular head
so you can avoid that one.
- I'll pass on that one.
- Did you say rattlesnake?
- Snakes are edible, you just chop off the head,
you pull the skin off. - They are not.
When you're gonna kill an animal, you don't do it for fun.
If you kill it, you're gonna eat it.
- We saw some cactus, so.
- [Tayo] Raccoon, we're gonna get some raccoon,
some squirrels.
- I'm gonna do down by the stream and find some fish.
- No, I'm not eating any fish, no raccoon meat.
- So this is a young cactus pad.
This particular paddle-shaped one,
they're all edible if you get them young.
Even if it's old and stiff, you can still peel it,
and pull the fiber out and eat it.
I want you to tell me what it tastes like.
If you find this, you can eat it raw.
I'll try some too so you don't think
I'm trying to poison you.
This is really a super food with all of the amino acids
and everything it has.
You might be lucky enough to find this when you go up there.
So, no, there are no poisonous cacti.
- Oh, Lord, it looks like Tayo's found something.
What do you have?
- [Tayo] Some acorn.
- [Asia] We come up on some cactus.
The littler ones, the more recent ones
are the ones that we can use.
I'm scared.
Oh, you just slice through like butter (laughs).
Yes.
We're gonna put these cacti over the fire tonight.
- Tayo and Asia were fine though,
'cause there were plenty of cactus to pull from.
I said, great, y'all pull from that, I'll just starve.
- Our guide said that there's a bunch of gopher here.
There's really not a lot and Asia is freaking out.
And I do not want to her
to have to help catch an animal of any sort.
I was secretly going to get them food
because I really didn't want them to starve.
And I had no idea how hard it would be to find vegan food.
The last part of the day was to actually build this fire.
- [Tayo] Woods, to light up and stay warm tonight
'cause the temperature is going to drop to 31 degrees.
So we gotta stay warm.
- [Lea] Aw, Asia, I'm so proud.
- It's really important to be able to make a fire.
You're not going to have matches.
They're not going to let you have a Bic.
This is a magnesium fire starting tool.
And it has a little insert artificial flint,
called ferrocerium.
You guys are going to have one.
When you spark it like that.
And then when you direct that into some fine fluff,
you get a fire.
- Starting the fire was the most fun challenge.
Because we were all so competitive and determined
to be the one that light the fire.
- [Tayo] Imma get this light going.
- [Destinee] You must make fire.
- [Tayo] Trying to get some fire
so we could make our s'mores
- [Destinee] Oh, we got something.
We've got something.
- [Tayo] Hopefully, I don't catch fire.
(suspenseful music)
- Ah, I'm gonna break a nail.
Nevermind, I don't wanna do this!
- [Tayo] Trying to figure out this.
- [Destinee] Nope, I'm gonna to break a nail.
- [Tayo] I feel like there's something we should--
- [Lea] Yeah, like we need paper or something.
- [Tayo] Yeah or something.
(suspenseful music)
- We don't know how to light a fire with a stick.
- We tried it multiple times.
- We really did.
So, I brought this as a backup.
I know it's breaking the rules, but we're hungry.
The bonfire was the best part of this trip.
(rhythemic singing)
- I see Lea with three hotdogs.
I watch her stick all three hotdogs
directly into this flaming fire and then leave.
And I said, those are gonna be burnt.
"No, no, look they're fine!"
And they are crisp.
Not even crisp, they are ashed.
'Cause she wanted us to eat those hotdogs
and I said, I'm not eating that hotdog, I'm not doing it.
I think she tried it and she said it tasted like ash.
Like literally crumbled in her mouth.
- [Tayo] Let's see what those dogs look like.
- [Lea] Look at it, they're good.
- [Tayo] You can't even see that.
- [Lea] Just a little burnt, okay.
- Extra crispy.
Let's pipe down.
- Hey, I'm enjoying this fire and the heat.
- [Tayo] That's good.
- Thank God Lea brought food so we had sandwiches (laughs)
and not cactus.
- [Tayo] Asia, how are you doing over there?
- I'm chilling.
- [Lea] Get it Asia.
(calm rhythmic music)
(calm flute music)
- The whole night, I was like, I'm never doing this again,
never doing this again, never doing this again.
- [Lea] I know, I had those thoughts too, I'm so sorry!
- Your boy is freezing!
You awake, bro?
- Help me.
(laughs)
Someone help.
- Sleeping on the floor is one of the worst things ever.
Not even like a nice pavement.
It was like, you have like,
a piece of rock sticking in your neck.
You had another piece of rock here
in the back of your lower back.
- [Lea] Good morning, y'all.
- [Destinee] Good morning.
You knew we were gonna freeze to death.
- [Lea] I knew it, I knew.
- You said (beep) your health.
- (beep) I already bought everything.
- You said I don't care.
We gonna make sure everybody freezes to death.
- Listen, I bought you guys thermals and sleeping bags.
I really tried.
- This thermal ain't do (beep).
- She wanted us to freeze like popsicles.
- I'm so sorry, this was a terrible idea.
It's so (beep) cold.
(laughs)
- [Destinee] This whole thing is just hilarious.
- All right.
- [Destinee] Oh, you sound sick.
- [Lea] Oh no.
- I feel sick.
- Some people might complain.
I am a cuddler.
I was so cold at one point in the night.
- Her body was all the way over here
and I was forced to be like this.
- I literally wrapped my legs over Asia's body to get warm.
I was trying to spoon!
- You kept hitting into my booty.
- I'm so sorry.
- I was like, I'm just gonna lay here.
- And then my knees were digging into Destinee's back.
No, it was not fun.
It was not a great experience.
- Then we still like a bunch of things to do like
pack our lives up and make sure
we cleaned up the campgrounds, and shower.
- Outdoor shower in the wilderness.
I thought that was dope.
And you're just hearing like the birds chirping.
- Tayo showered first, he told us there was hot water
and I was like, yes!
- I was told beforehand by the women
that the shower was warm enough.
I was in the shower, honestly if I had to say it like
30 minutes maybe 40 minutes.
It was just good, it felt good.
- [Destinee] I turned everything on, turned the hot water on
let the water run for a little bit.
- I think I used up all the hot water
and maybe that's the reason why everybody
else ain't have hot water.
- [Destinee] It never got hot.
- Honestly, one of the most relaxing moments
that I could potentially think of during this camping trip.
- I took a cold ass shower.
Not a cold, I took a freezing shower 'cause mind you,
it was like thirty-something degrees earlier that day
and my body had never warmed up.
- It was freezing, it was frigid.
It felt like spikes on my skin.
The soap smelt good which helped me feel warm.
- [Tayo] People did not know how to run the hot water,
I figured it out, and I told them,
but nobody wanted to listen.
Everybody was like, oh no you used, no, no, nope.
- [Lea] Overall, the best part of this camping trip
was bonding with my coworkers.
I honestly didn't really know everyone
on this trip very well
because like I'm pretty new to Buzzfeed.
But it was so nice to like get to know everybody.
- I think what I really overcame
was like my idea that camping is just terrible
and nobody should ever do it.
- Asia was definitely the character
that I was most intrigued by,
simply because she shuddered at the mere word of outside.
- And the whole time we were there, she was miserable.
I felt so bad and I didn't know what to do.
And I was like, girl, help me help you.
- I surprised myself that I just like did it (laughs).
- I mean I was pretty confident in that I would be able
to like survive going through this.
- Well, Tayo is afraid of snakes, so am I.
So I didn't think he would handle it that well.
- [Dumisa] I thought I would do the best because I'm dope.
You know what I mean?
I just know what to do.
I watched a lot of Captain Planet growing up.
- Actually putting it into play and seeing how miserable
people were at certain parts, I felt awful.
Parts where we did have fun,
it made the whole trip like worth it.
- [Destinee] I really did enjoy the fact that like
I got to just be free and be me and not worry about
oh my hair need to be done a certain kind of way
or I need to look like this.
Like I could just be like, y'all we've been camping
you know what this look like.
- So really being in I'm gonna live this moment
and enjoy this moment was the best part of being
around the bonfire.
And also seeing the stars.
- We saw all the stars and it was beautiful.
Like it lit up the sky and it was amazing.
- I think the biggest challenge for me was being able
to coordinate all of these different moving parts
and keep people fed and alive.
Like that was a lot,
I was literally responsible for like 5 human lives.
But we had a good time.
- [Destinee] Would I do it again?
Probably not, but I think I would take my children camping,
so they can experience and decide for themselves.
- [Asia] Could I go camping again?
Yeah, but I have no desire to.
- Hell yeah! Let's go, let's do it.
Today, tomorrow, I'm down next week.
- I would be the first person to quit, just so y'all know.
I also quit before we even started.
But I made a promise to Lea.
- [Destinee] I didn't know she was gonna freeze us
to death, though.
And also cuddle, she cuddled everybody (laughs).
(upbeat music)