Have I mentioned that Les Stroud, host of the Discovery Channel’s Survivorman, is my hero? If you’ve never seen the show, the premise is that Les spends seven days in the wilderness with only the clothes on his back, his cameras, a pocket knife, and a few very basic supplies. He has no film crew with him; he films and narrates the whole thing himself.

It’s a pretty amazing thing to survive for seven days in the extreme places he goes, but it’s even more extraordinary to do a wonderful job of filming the whole thing. He always manages to capture the beauty of his surroundings, as well as the difficulty presented by trying to survive them.

His program is about as real of a survival show as you can get. Sure, he has a safety team not too far behind him and a radio to contact them if things go wrong, but he (and the network) would have to be nuts not to. He gives the viewer real survival advice, not the typical eating gross things and secretly spending nights in a hotel like those other survival shows.

In fact, his show is so good that it has recently helped save some people’s lives. Here are a couple examples:

• Tips from TV show helped Manitoba snowmobiler survive for five days in wilderness
• Found: Couple Stranded In Snow For 12 Days

To a tip of the hat to you, Mr. Stroud, for a job well done! Here’s looking forward to Season 3 of Survivorman.