If you were asked to ditch your cell phone, social media, the latest news and even contact with friends and family for the adventure of a lifetime, would you do it?
Well that’s exactly what avid-adventurer Lucie Levesque does in this episode of Only Human - a podcast about the human experience in its raw, and sometimes unexpected form.
Today, the idea of going off- grid and taking a breather from this multidimensional online ‘connected’ world we live in seems like a distant and unattainable dream. But for Lucie Levesque, being stuck in an isolated no-man’s land was just what the doctor ordered.
Levesque jumped at the chance to do a three month stint living and working out of a remote lodge in the Spatsizi Plateau in north-central British Columbia where her primary company was a pack of horses which were so big, she could only mount one by standing on a fence. And the only sign of civilization was an 8-day trek on horseback with no running water, and food supplies had to be sent by float plane.
Blogs and travel articles describe the Spatsizi terrain as a kind of brutal face-off with nature - a place that has taken people physically and mentally to the point of no return.
But with a thirst for newness, Levesque was up for the unexpected. And boy did she get more than she bargained for. With very little human contact she began losing her ability to speak, followed swiftly by a sequence of challenging and life threatening events that nothing could prepare her for.
“One day I was by myself with the horses and there was a grizzly bear rubbing his back near my little cabin...I didn’t know what to do,” says Levesque, who froze with shock in that moment.
What happened next is almost beyond belief…
Find out more in the second episode of RNZ podcast Only Human where Lucie Levesque shares the story of life threatening events that changed her perspective on what it means to appreciate the simple things in life.
