Born to be wild - Ray Mears interview

Published on Thursday 23 October 2008 12:11

Whether he's munching on grubs, building a shelter from driftwood ... or drinking hot chocolate in a city centre hotel, Ray Mears is at one with nature

ON THE TOP FLOOR OF A CENTRAL London hotel, against a skyline of concrete and steel that stretches as far as the eye can see, it strikes me that I'm in the most unlikely of places to meet Ray Mears. There's no foliage, nothing to forage for and no chance of building a quick fire.

Our best-known bushcraft expert (also known as a survival expert, a media tag he doesn't like), Mears is usually seen in lush jungle or barren desert rather than in an urban sprawl. Is cramped, congested London too much for the man who has survived Arctic adventures and travels across the arid, desolate outback?

"I had to stay in the city last night and there was no hot water in the hotel," he says with a wry smile. "I was thinking, if I'd been in the woods I would've had no problem at all."

From food to shelter, making fire with sticks or carving out a canoe from a tree trunk, for millions Mears is a living link to the wildernesses of the world, a man who revels in long-lost survival skills and – Bear Grylls take heed – makes the whole thing seem as mild-mannered and civilised as afternoon tea in a hotel just like the one in which we're sitting. There's something steady and unflappable about him, whether here in a bar on the 15th floor or in the searing desert heat. And we love him for it. When I mention his ultra-devoted fans he laughs and says: "It's a subculture, isn't it?" He's right, it is.

Wearing a blue shirt and jeans, brown belt and brown suede moccasins, 44-year-old Mears looks like a Canadian tourist and is affable in a shy, undemonstrative way. His hair is short and neat, his fingernails bitten to the quick. He has a handshake as strong as a bear's but his voice is quiet, as if he's trying not to startle any wildlife.

The fact that he orders a hot chocolate is the first surprise and he continues to confound my expectations when he tells me he like cities. "There have been people in the past in my line of work who have been at odds with the urban world," he says – he's far too polite to name names so I don't probe – "who have felt that it's bad or negative in comparison to the natural world, but I don't see that. The two exist alongside each other. I have a foot in both worlds and I like that. How can you have night without day? You have to have some point of contrast.

"Also, the libraries here in London were incredibly useful to me in the early days. The Anthropological Institute's library was a fantastic resource." The early days he refers to are when he was learning the basics of bushcraft and preparing to open Woodlore, his "bushcraft school" which celebrates its 25th anniversary this year. He was 19 and the art of living in nature and utilising traditional skills was his passion. It wasn't long before he was discovered by a television producer and since then he's become a star of the small screen, in his own inimitable style.

Mears's TV series are low-key affairs and the photographs he has collected – just some of the thousands he's taken over the years – for his new book Vanishing World are the same. It's not that there hasn't been plenty of drama: there have been face-to-face encounters with brown bears, terrifying helicopter crashes and the odd incident with a crocodile.

But that's not what Mears is interested in. He's fascinated by our link to the natural world and what we can learn from nature and the people who still have a connection to it. It's a philosophy, not an endurance test.

"Obviously, we as a species have evolved but we have vestigial talents and abilities left over," he says. "Our diet – we're designed to eat a Stone Age diet, not a modern one. Our eyesight, our hearing, our sensory perception are all evolved to cope with a world which contains threat, and also where we are the threat. When you're close to nature all of these abilities are of use and benefit and exercising them is incredibly good for your soul, your spirit. You feel complete."

There's something simultaneously poetic and didactic about the way Mears speaks. Self-taught and passionate about traditional bushcraft skills, at times he sounds almost evangelical – in a measured, polite way, of course. He speaks with tremendous conviction. Listening to him I find it intriguing that he's never aligned himself with any environmental campaign; after all, those issues must be close to his heart.

"They are," he says, but there's a caveat. "I have a slight problem with campaigning. I'm not anti it but in some cases it does more harm than good. Very often with 'first nations', I've seen situations where people have campaigned for a particular tribe only to make the government of the country more recalcitrant, more entrenched in their opposition to having first nation peoples on their soil. Some nations don't see it as a testimony to their management of the countryside that they can still support hunter-gatherers, some of them see it as an embarrassment that makes them look Stone Age. That's very sad but it's the truth of it."

In keeping with the ethos of self-sufficiency he shows when he's building a shelter or munching on a grub, Mears also feels it is for first nation peoples to campaign for themselves. That way, he says, we can be sure the campaign is focused on the right issues. "Some people would like all hunter-gatherers to remain hunter-gatherers, but they don't all want to. And why should they? Why shouldn't they have an iPod as well? There are people I've met who do have an iPod but they're also very traditional and retain their traditional knowledge. That's the secret – it's finding a way forward for these people where they can have a modern way and a traditional way."

And that's exactly how it works for Mears. He's not anti-technology and he reckons it will play an increasingly significant role in our lives as we adapt to our changing climate, but he wants to be sure that should technology fail, he'll know what to do. "I'm completely conversant in the traditional skills from the Stone Age onwards, but the skills that interest me most are the ones that we can use today," he says. "It's what I call applied bushcraft – the skills of yesterday that still have value now."

Mears discovered the joys of bushcraft when he was eight years old. An only child, neither his father, a printer, nor his mother were particularly interested in the Great Outdoors. They were supportive, though – his father was "patient" and his mother "liked birds and the garden". Growing up in Surrey, there was plenty of exploring to be done in local woodland and plenty of foxes to track. A judo instructor at his school, who had learned basic survival skills behind enemy lines in Burma during the Second World War, was the first to share survival tips with Mears, giving him the skills he needed to stay out without the need for expensive equipment he didn't have the money to buy.

"It was a different age then," he says. "There weren't fears, or if there were, they weren't foisted on us as children. I think that's a really important thing."

As it was, the eight-year-old Mears would disappear off into the woods to follow foxes and experience the outdoors. I can't imagine many eight-year-olds being allowed to wander around the woods these days.

"Oh, we used to do it all the time, it was great," he says. "You'd find a new trail that'd lead somewhere else and you'd think, right, next time I'll go there. You'd leave a bit earlier, take food and water and walk a bit faster. Gradually those trails have led me all around the world."

Mears has lost count of how many people have come through the doors of Woodlore since he started it in 1983 but he tells me the desire to pass on skills to children is one of the main reasons people come along. "It's wonderful. I can't think of anything better because the time spent doing that kind of thing together is great. There was one man who came on the course, maybe 12 or 13 years ago, who said he wanted to teach his children. I asked him how many children he had and he said, 'None, I'm trying'. Then two weeks later we got a card saying his wife had conceived. I bumped into this character a few years ago and I thought, I've met you before. It was him. He was back with his eight-year-old daughter. Magic."

Mears has no children of his own. Two years ago his wife, Rachel, whom he'd met when she did a course at Woodlore, died of cancer. She was 50 and had two children of her own, "but they're grown up and they do their own thing", he says. So is he disappointed that he doesn't have his own children to whom he could pass on his skills?

"I've passed them on to thousands of children," he says, frowning slightly, "so, no, not at all. There's still so much to learn, too. One lifetime isn't enough. Ten years ago that bugged me but now I've come to terms with it. You just have to do as much as you can. It's up to the ones coming after you to take it further."

Mears has had unparalleled access to the natural world in his 30 years as a bushman. He's just back from the Canadian wilderness where he's been filming, but it's hard to find a spot around the globe that he hasn't yet visited. "There's a map in my office that has so many pins in it (marking places he's been], it's scary," he says. Is there one memory, one experience that stands out for him, I wonder. What about the best meal he's ever eaten?

"I have a very fond memory of going clam diving in Polynesia with the Samoans," he says. "They have an incredible knowledge of the waves. We stood on the shore waiting for one to jump into and they'd say, 'not this one', 'not that one . . . this one'. They knew exactly which one we needed. You hold your T-shirt and trap air in it and float out about a quarter of a mile off-shore. Then we dived down to pick a clam using a knife. When we came back up to the surface, gasping for air, and then bobbing around in the current, we broke them open and ate them, raw, in the sea. That was very special. Right in the middle of the Pacific."

For Mears, the joy of bushcraft is in keeping us connected to nature, showing us that we are reliant on natural resources. "In learning to use them, understanding their relevance and usefulness, you see them differently, as friends, as things of importance. That perspective is a very healthy one. It does several things: it gives respect to common things but it also teaches us that we must strive harder to understand the benefits and values of things that we don't yet know and that teaches you to look after the world." He might not be a campaigner, but Mears certainly speaks eloquently about the natural world. He's not romantic about it. He supports hunting and believes people have to be able to get their hands dirty in the countryside – "get soil under their fingernails" is how he puts it. He's not anti-progress and, perhaps most interestingly, he's not in the least bit pessimistic about the state of our natural world.

"I'm always optimistic, there's no point in being pessimistic," he says. "We are a very adaptable species. I think sometimes we lose our focus but the most important lesson we can take from nature is the importance of adaptability.

"People talk about saving the planet – the planet's not a threat, we are."

So has he noticed changes – seen the impact of global warming first hand? "Two weeks ago I was in the off-shores of the Arctic Ocean with Inuits and we were looking at the scrub birch. They told me it used to be 30cm high and now it's a metre and a half, two metres in some places. And that's in the last 15 years.

"Global warming is definitely happening, things are changing. Massive bits of ice have broken off this year in the Arctic, Russian ships are looking for ways through the North West Passage. There are massive changes, it's undeniable."

Mears has a profound respect for nature and it's that which makes him dismiss the more macho, boy's own exploits of survivalists such as Bear Grylls, whom he recently called a "boy scout".

"Oh, that's all rubbish. Nonsense," he says of the derring-do approach. "You can't compete with nature, she'll always win. You don't beat nature – you have to learn to work with her. She's on my side and that's the way to go.

"You mustn't allow the pursuit of bushcraft to become in any way competitive – it's not meant to be. The competition is internal, it's to be more knowledgeable and more attuned to nature. A Canadian Indian once said to me that his aim in life was to be more attuned so that nature would seem to act towards him and his family in a sympathetic manner. That's a good way of expressing it."

For a man who values solitude, who likes to lose himself in his travels, does he regret that he's become so famous?

"No," he says, but there's a qualification: "I mean, it's ridiculous. I'll go to an Indian reservation and get recognised. It's bizarre – you'd be astonished at how far flung that notoriety is. But, no, I don't regret it – it's been for a good cause. What's nice is that in the communities where people know what it is to live out, they respect what I've done. They know I'm showing people how it really is."

• Vanishing World by Ray Mears is published by Hodder & Stoughton, priced 20.