CRESTVIEW — James Lewis was due for a midlife crisis.
The former Crestview resident – who now lives in the Tallahassee area – was approaching 50 and starting to think about things to check off his bucket list.
“I started warning my family that one of the things I had always wanted to do was run into the woods with virtually nothing, maybe just a knife, and be like Rambo,” Lewis said. “It was going to be my planned mid-life crisis. I’m too busy to have a mid-life crisis, so I’d have to plan it out.”
It was around that time Lewis became aware of a new show on The Discovery Channel called Naked and Afraid. The show takes two people, one male and one female, drops them into a harsh environment without clothing and challenges them to survive for 21 days. It was the perfect opportunity.
“As soon as I saw it, I was like, ‘Gosh, they have been watching my dreams.’ That is the challenge I’ve been wanting to do for 30-plus years.”
Lewis began training for the show shortly after that. He hiked a total of more than 500 miles barefoot through gravel, dirt and hot asphalt to prepare his feet for what they would endure. He practiced starting friction fires, more than 600 by his count, using hand drills and bow drills.
“I was just bound and determined I was going to go.”
In 2017, when Hurricane Hermine was barreling toward Tallahassee and his office shut down, he jumped at the opportunity to put his survival skills into practice.
“I immediately stripped down to my shorts, ran into the woods, and I acted as if I was on the show. I spent the next four days building a shelter and looking for food. I own 20 acres in a rural area, so a lot of the time I literally did strip down and reenact the show.
“I can tell you what, when you’re laying in a shelter and the wind is blowing at 80 miles an hour and trees are crashing down around you, and you’re cold and laying in the mud, wow that was challenging.”
Local roots
Lewis came to Crestview in 1978 when his father was stationed at Eglin Air Force Base. He spent his middle and high school years here and received a scholarship from the Crestview News Bulletin in 1985.
“Coming up from a farming community and a farming family, money to go to college was not readily available. So when the scholarship was awarded to me, it was just that little help, that little spark to get me started on a college career.”
Lewis used the scholarship to spend a year at Okaloosa-Walton Community College, now Northwest Florida State College, before moving to Alabama to study architecture at Auburn University. It was not an easy move to make.
“I didn’t have money when I went up there, did not have a place to live. I just drove the truck over to a spot in the woods and set up camp. For the first couple weeks of school, I was actually living out of the woods.”
It was during those couple of weeks that Lewis learned some of the survivalist skills that he would put to use years later when training for Naked and Afraid.
“In the evenings, I was running down to the creek, no fishing pole, just cut a spear and chased fish down and speared them. Growing up on a farm and learning to make things work turned out to be valuable my first few weeks at Auburn.”
Eventually, he was taken in by a fraternity that found out about his unusual living arrangements. He eventually found work and his own place and graduated in 1991 with degrees in architecture and building sciences. He took a job with an architectural firm in Tallahassee where he was worked ever since.
Confronting nature au naturale
Lewis made the cut for Naked and Afraid, and will appear in a 2-hour episode airing at 9 p.m. Sunday on The Discovery Channel.
For his episode, Lewis was dropped into the rainforests of Nicaragua, a Central American country dotted with lakes and volcanoes. It’s also home to a variety of potentially dangerous wildlife.
“There was more than one occasion where predators were so close you could reach out and touch them. That’s when reality hits home.”
Participants on the show have the option to “tap” if they can no longer handle the stresses of the environment and wish to end the challenge prematurely.
“When things are so close that you can reach out and touch them, it really gets to your psyche. Emotionally, that alone can make you tap. There’s nothing you can do.”
But fear is only half of the show’s premise. Being naked presents its own set of challenges.
“Being stripped of clothes, it’s amazing how much it exposes you. And I don’t mean just your skin. It exposes who you are as a person. It removes the clothes. It removes the status. It removes the money. You’re going into nature and nature doesn’t care what your background is. It’s going to treat you exactly the same, and if you’re not prepared, it’s going to beat you up.”
Then there’s the initial awkwardness of being naked in front of a complete stranger, not to mention the camera crew and viewers all over the world.
“You gotta get over it and move on,” Lewis said. “Not to say that I’m comfortable and used to being naked. I’m not. I’ve never been naked outside the house.”
A new perspective
For people accustomed to modern amenities, it may be hard to imagine spending three weeks in a hostile environment without them, let alone basic needs like shelter and a reliable source of food. It’s easy to see how that kind of experience can change a person’s perspective.
“Going through a challenge like that changes your view on certain things, and one of them may be just how you look at your environment, your surroundings. It also affects how you may look at people.”
He said it particularly affects the way he now views people here at home who don’t have those basic needs.
“There’s true empathy there. You can feel their suffering because you’ve experienced it, at least the discomfort of being where you’re at.”
Overall, the experience was a positive one for Lewis, an opportunity to look inside himself without the distractions of modern day life.
“For me, it was everything I wanted it to be. I like things that really push your limits, test you, and it gave me all of that and more. Even though there were times where it was absolutely brutal, painful, miserable, we also had those times where it was enjoyable, it was pleasant.
“It was an adventure of a lifetime.”
This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: 'It was an adventure of a lifetime'