The weekend before last I finished reading Bear Grylls’ book on his record-breaking climb to the top of Everest, Facing Up. I’ve been a fan of the Born Survivor series for a while so it was great to find out what he was like as a writer and I wasn’t disappointed, this is a great read. Neil has also written a great post about Bear and his achievements recently.

What I love about Bear Grylls is his youthful exuberance and constant positivity. He’s received a bit of a slagging here and there because when filming the Born Survivor series he doesn’t always sleep in the wild on every night of the experience particularly on the night before a particularly strenuous climb etc. I’d say he’ll always have a few critics of the programme – that it’s not a true wilderness experience etc – but then at the end of the day that’s not what the programme is about, it’s a demonstration of survival skills for the armchair viewer and to become proficient you really need to get out there and do a course or something. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen Survivorman on the Discovery Channel, the guy in it, Les Stroud, really goes the whole hog – whereas Bear Grylls has a camera crew, this guy is the camera man and carries his camera equipment (or uses parts of it to make a fire) with him so that he can document his trip himself as he is left in the wild to just get on with it himself. It’s a good show but to be honest he comes across as one of the dourest people in the world and by the middle of the show you just feel like there is no joy in anything and you wonder why you would bother trying to survive anyway. Bear’s enthusiasm and love for life is in stark contrast and for me he ranks up there with the likes of Bruce Parry and Ray Mears, he’s got a different approach and different strengths to them but he makes a great contribution to TV.

The thing that has always come through in the TV shows is Bear’s faith and he’s openly said it’s not his crutch but that it’s his backbone. In one episode where he’s in the Ecuadorean rainforest he wakes up in the morning and spots a beautiful flower on it’s own in the tree canopy above him. He describes it as an example of the extravagance of God’s grace that He would place something so beautiful in a place no-one is likely to see.

Bear’s faith comes through even more strongly in this book – his appreciation of godly wisdom, he’s not afraid to ask others for help and for prayer, and he recognises the central place of prayer in his spiritual walk. He shares a letter from his grandfather who writes, “Keep on in there, your struggles are a triumph for guts and Godliness.” Bear responds, “The words guts and godliness struck me hard. It was all that I aspired to.” I find those words resonating within me too. The guy’s definitely got a lot of depth.

Incidentally Bear Grylls is just back from a fundraising adventure to Antarctica where he got injured kite-skiing (as you do!).