It’s 1823.
You’re out hiking around Missouri as part of a mission to get hides.
As you do.
You heard some guy called General Ashley wanted volunteers to take part in a fur-trading venture,
and you thought, why not?
I’m Hugh Glass after all – explorer, fur trapper, trader, hunter, and all-round legend.
So, there you are, heading along the Yellowstone River with all the fur you could dream of
in tow, feeling like a bad-ass.
But things start to go south, and I don’t mean in a geographic sense.
First, a local Native American tribe called the Arikara attack your group.
Not sure what their problem is – here you are, just minding your own business in your
home territory, when they launch themselves at you for no reason.
You make it out with only a bullet wound, but some of the other guys in the group die.
So things aren’t off to a great start.
Still, on you go.
One day you go off on your own, and there you are, checking out an area, seeing if you
can get any of dem hides.
Your mind drifts into an idle daydream…
You picture yourself returning to your home town, carrying a bag with one million fur
hides.
Everyone there is chanting your name and cheering.
You’re Hugh Glass, the man, and the legend, your name will go down in history forever.
Your mother is crying.
That girl who turned you down when you were sixteen is begging you for forgiveness.
You can almost smell her scent when suddenly you feel something warm and furry rub against
your foot.
It could almost be a nice feeling, if you knew if it was just a cat.
But you know it’s not a cat.
You look down nervously.
A grizzly bear.
A grizzly-bleeding-bear.
And not only that, but a cub.
It would be cute, if you didn’t know the mother was going to be somewhere around the
corner, ready to go crazy at you for threatening her children’s lives.
And before you can even formulate an action plan, you see her in the corner of your eye,
charging at you.
It’s almost like in your daydream, except the pretty girl has been replaced by a huge
grizzly bear…
Next thing you know, you’re being picked up and scratched and torn apart.
You scream in agony.
For a moment, you accept your fate, and you’re ready to surrender to your life to the lord
above.
You feel like you lived a good, honest life…
But then you remember.
You’re Hugh Glass, the explorer, the fur trapper, the trader, the hunter, the all-round
legend.
And you’re not ready to die – not here, not now!
Somehow, you manage to fight back, punching at the bear with all your strength.
Maybe some of the other guys help a bit too, but it was mostly you.
Miraculously, the bear dies and you manage to get away.
At first you feel relieved and grateful and perhaps even a little smug, but soon the adrenaline
starts to wear off and the pain begins to kick in.
Your leg hurts…like, it really hurts.
Maybe it’s broken.
And your body is covered in bruises, cuts, and wounds.
How on earth are you going to carry on with the trip like this?
You’re hundreds of miles from the nearest camp.
These other guys wouldn’t leave you…right?
Of course not.
You’re a living legend.
Since you can no longer walk, the men take turns carrying you so the journey can continue.
They treat your wounds, and they give you food.
It seems like all is good in the hood.
But one evening, while you’re pretending to sleep, you overhear a secret meeting…
“So, erm, what are we going to do about Hugh?”
“I don’t know.
I kept thinking those wounds were going to kill him any minute, but he just keeps going.”
“He’s slowing the group down.
If we have to carry him the whole way, we put everyone in danger.”
“I could strangle him now…”
“Absolutely not.
We have morals.”
Silence “Two of you can stay behind with him while
the rest of us go on ahead.
He’ll die in a few days, so at least you can stay and bury him when he dies.”
“Well, I’m not doing it.”
“Me neither.”
So there you are, laid down with your eyes shut, becoming overly conscious of your breathing
patterns, as your fellow fur traders have this distasteful argument.
Eventually, a good old-fashioned monetary bribe persuades two men to volunteer.
Some people might scream or cry in such a dire situation, but not you: that night, you
make a pact to yourself that you’ll outright refuse to die, just to spite them.
As the days go on, you pretend you didn’t hear a word of that secret conversation, and
three of you hike through the forest, joking and making merry.
But eventually, the camaraderie starts to break down.
You can’t help but notice the passive-aggressive undertone during conversations and the awkward
silences.
Worried they’ll betray their promise and abandon you in the forest, you start to sleep
with one eye open.
Then one day the three of you are ambushed by a tribe.
Again.
Jeez, what is it with those guys, what did anyone ever do to them…
Your two kindly volunteers tweedle dee and tweedle dum don’t hesitate to throw you
roughly to the floor and they pull out their weapons, as if they’re hoping one last knock
will do you in.
And next thing you know, you wake up unconscious in the middle of the forest, with a banging
headache and some burning wounds.
What just happened?
An ambush.
For a second you’re worried the tribe kidnapped you, but you seem to be alone.
Where on earth are your companions?
It doesn’t take long for you to put two and two together.
They must have used the attack as a convenient excuse to take off and leave you here for
dead...charming.
If only they could see you now, still alive and thriving, like the absolute beast you
are.
But the smugness wears off when you realize the true gravity of your situation.
You can’t walk and now there’s nobody to carry you.
And where is all your stuff?
They must have taken them.
Now, you have no weapons, no food, and – shoot – no medical supplies.
But, hey, at least they covered you up with this cozy bear hide.
So, you wrap yourself up in the fur and get thinking about how to make the best of a bad
situation.
You set your broken leg and weigh up your likelihood of making it.
Thinking back to a conversation your loyal companions were having about the journey that
lay ahead, you remember you’re about two hundred miles away from the next base.
It’s far, but doable.
And the river’s just over there – as long as you should follow it, you should be able
to get back.
You puff your chest up and…. you crawl.
Because your leg is broken and there’s no other way of moving available.
That’s got to be painful on the knees.
After a few hours, it becomes apparent that being covered in open wounds could soon cause
a biig problem.
If those sores get infected, it’s game over.
You could end up with gangrene and who knows what else.
At first, you try to wash your wounds in the river, but you can tell it’s not quite cutting
it, forgive the pun.
Then you feel a wiggling sensation in one of your leg wounds.
Ewwww.
Is that a….yep…it’s a maggot.
Your instinct is to yank it off and exact your vengeance, but then you have a eureka
moment.
Maggots eat dead tissue, so if you leave them on your wounds, they’ll eat all the infected
stuff and help to fight off infection.
Oh, what the heck.
You’re going all in.
You grab a handful of maggots that just so happen to be resting nearby and put them on
all your wounds.
What else is a man to do...
A few days pass like this, with you crawling along the riverside with a few dozen maggots
eating your rotting flesh.
You drink the water as you go and scavenge all the berries and roots you can find along
the way.
So far, you’re still alive.
But you’re not getting anywhere fast – and your knees really hurt at this point.
You need a plan, a big move, to up the pace and get going.
And that’s when you have your second eureka moment.
You notice a few good-sized logs nearby.
Are you thinking what I’m thinking?
Ah-ha-ha.
In classic big boss fashion, you make a makeshift raft using the logs and a few pieces from
plants.
Noah would be proud.
And on you go, paddling along.
It’s not the most comfortable boat in the world, but anything is better than crawling
at this point…
After six long weeks, somehow, against all odds, you make it!
There were cheers and hugs all round, and emotions were high.
They all lived happily ever after…
Oh, wait.
I’m getting this mixed up with something else.
Actually, you arrive at a deserted camp.
Typical…
Instead of your companions, you find a hastily written note saying that the whole group relocated
to a new camp.
Most people would give up.
But not you.
Not Hugh Glass.
You can just keep paddling and scavenging along for a few hundred miles more like it’s
nothing.
Finally, in 1824, having covered around a thousand miles in total, you reach the base
where your ex-companions are staying.
I’d love to hear that conversation…
“Why did you leave for me dead and steal from me bro?”
“Innocent mistake..”
You decide not to cast blame on the younger companion -- he’s inexperienced and was
probably easy to influence in such an extreme, high-pressure situation.
The older guy on the other hand?
He knew exactly what he was doing.
So, one day you walk into the fort where you know the man is based and demand a confrontation,
your mind dizzy at the thought of finally extracting your revenge.
Unfortunately, he had become a solider, meaning he had government protection, so your request
was denied.
But you vow you’ll wait as long as it takes until you can finally give him what he deserves...
It’s quite the tale, right?
If you’ve ever watched The Revenant, you might have picked up on a few discrepancies
between the story that’s just unfolded and what happened to Leonardo DiCaprio.
That’s because a) Hollywood, and b) we basically have no idea what really happened.
Some say that Glass’s wounds healed halfway through the expedition and he was able to
walk again.
Others claim he was picked up by French trappers on his way back.
One story alleges he once woke up to find a grizzly bear licking his infected wounds.
Because that sounds believable.
To be honest, I figured if everyone else was rewriting history then I may as well join
them, and I added a few of my own spicy details into the story.
Hugh Glass was a real person, that’s for sure.
He was certainly an explorer, a fur trapper, a trader, and a hunter.
He was in his early forties, and chances are he really did join the fur expedition, then
ended up getting abandoned by his companions in one way or another.
But the legend of him crawling through the forest in such a dramatic fashion might be
questionable.
The thing is, Glass himself didn’t write anything about his experiences.
The majority of the information we have is written by his contemporaries, which they
claimed to have acquired from conversations with Glass.
So not only are we trusting in Glass and his honesty, we’re also trusting in the honesty
of the writers.
One of the best accounts of the tale is a story published in a journal by an anonymous
author, but he later turned out to be the brother of the publication’s editor.
So, yeah, make of that what you will.
And if the story about the grizzly bear and the crawling seems unbelievable to you, then
get a load of this.
According to some accounts, whilst working as a sailor, Glass was seized by pirates and
forced to either join their gang and die.
He then spent the next year living as a buccaneer, before escaping by swimming through an infested
sea to safety.
Another tale is that Glass was captured by a tribe who were about to kill him, but at
the last minute, he convinced them to, erm, adopt him as their son.
He then lived amongst the tribe for years in peace and prosperity.
I mean, I guess that explains how he learned all the survival skills needed to survive
in the woods by himself…
So, how did a man seemingly so invincible eventually die?
Glass was eventually killed by an attack near the same Yellowstone river by the Ankara tribe.
Or, that’s how the story goes, anyway – it’s probably all just a nice legend to tell by
the campfire.
It’s like being told Santa Claus isn’t real all over again.
However, it goes without saying that the world has seen some incredible, genuine survival
stories.
Why not check out this video about surviving a plane crash at -45 degrees, or this video
about being trapped underwater for three whole days?