The journey-seeker who discovered her objective within the wild

When she first hears the gunfire, Megan Hine freezes. She’s in a distant a part of Kenya, rigging a stunt for a celeb survival TV present, attaching a rope bridge to 1 aspect of a gorge whereas the remainder of her teammates are on the opposite aspect.

In between them is a river filled with crocodiles, who’re reported to have killed and eaten two locals a few days earlier than.

Because the silence is punctured by volleys of pictures, with sand exploding close to her ft, Hine’s adrenaline spikes. The one method to rejoin her crew is to clamber down a rock face and thru croc-infested waters.

Life-or-death selections like this require a cool head. Hine has confronted loads of them through the years as a survival professional who consults for TV, typically co-presenting exhibits with longtime buddy Bear Grylls. She’s additionally a rafting information, climbing teacher, bushcraft professional, off-road driving tutor in addition to an expedition chief for teams of adults and youngsters alike.

To get out of conditions like this (an altercation between locals which she ultimately escaped unscathed) she footage a field in her thoughts — “a giant wood pirate chest with steel clasps” — and locks her fears inside.

The imaginative and prescient got here to her spontaneously someday when she was blinded by concern throughout a climb. “Abruptly I used to be capable of see once more.”

It’s acquired her by way of many scary conditions, together with being stalked by lions in Namibia, getting caught in an Alpine avalanche, and having a drug cartel monitoring her crew in Mexico.

Since she was first headhunted as a security guide by Bear Grylls, for his present Man Vs Wild, she has labored with him often over 10 years, together with on Working Wild, for which celebs like Channing Tatum, Kate Winslet and Barack Obama had been introduced out into the wilderness. (Grylls has described Hine as his “greatest buddy” and says she’s “stronger than 99% of the boys I do know.”)

It’s led to some surreal experiences. Tenting out with Julia Roberts in Kenya, having sprawling conversations, was “unbelievable,” she says. “You couldn’t pay for that have.”

She’s fast to level out that whether or not somebody is an Oscar winner or contestant on a survival present like The Island, there’s no particular therapy or fakery for the cameras. If something, she worries about pushing individuals too laborious.

“We’re taking away their meals, we’re depriving them of sleep, and that messes with individuals’s heads. Once I’m guiding [usually], I wouldn’t let my shoppers get into the state once they’re an emotional wreck. However it could be boring TV in the event that they didn’t have an emotional response that was seen sufficient for the viewer to see.

“It’s important to be very cautious that you simply don’t get Stockholm Syndrome creating,” she provides. The situation, often related to kidnapping victims who bond with their captors as a survival technique, can develop throughout a shoot. “If they’ve been out with us for lengthy sufficient that they’ve misplaced their sense of having the ability to make decisions for themselves.”

Hine is the one lady in a really small – very macho – group of survival consultants working in TV. “I’ve spent most of my life being the one woman,” she says, going all the way in which again to her membership of the navy cadets as a teen. “In all avenues of my profession I’ve felt like I needed to show myself, or that guys didn’t deal with me the identical method. However I made a decision early on that I wasn’t going to let that trouble me.”

She remembers the times when she would take stag teams off-roading, and they might greet her with scepticism earlier than bombing off. Once they acquired stranded or caught, as they inevitably did, it was Hine who got here to the rescue. “Actions converse louder than phrases,” she says, with a smile. “By the tip of the week, that they had an enormous quantity of respect.”

As a youngster, she drew inspiration from books by pioneering mountain climbers Alison Hargreaves and Lynn Hill. Nevertheless it’s her grandmother, who went snowshoeing together with her within the Alps at 83 and earned a psychology diploma a number of years earlier than her ninetieth birthday, that’s function mannequin primary.

Hine remains to be adjusting to the concept of being a job mannequin herself. “Rising up I used to be a little bit of a insurgent,” she says. “I didn’t actually slot in. I’d be despatched out of classes, or skip faculty to go mountain biking, and can be consuming within the park at 14. As a result of I had all these restrictions round me, I felt so trapped. I’d be sitting in classes, dreaming concerning the mountains.”

At the moment, Hine travels for as much as 11 months a 12 months, at present alternating between the landscapes of Panama and Nevada for an upcoming Netflix present. She’s obsessed with sharing the therapeutic influence the wilderness can have, particularly on individuals who endure from stress and anxiousness. “Once they’re on an expedition, their signs appear to vanish and that occurs far too many occasions for it to be a coincidence.”

Being pushed to your limits out within the wild is probably not everybody’s concept of remedy – however Hine wouldn’t name it ‘stress’. “It’s extra a sense of hyper-awareness,” she says. “You’ll be able to virtually see behind you. Your scent and listening to is heightened. You’re conscious of any motion. It’s virtually like a meditative state. Each cell in your physique is preventing for survival.”

It’s this “primal calling” inside us all that makes survival exhibits so widespread, she says. And the resilience and confidence that stems from overcoming challenges makes up for all of the ache. “I discover it fascinating to see what I’m able to,” she says. “It’s probably the most unbelievable feeling to find that you simply’re stronger than you ever imagined.”