Via Community News Service, a University of Vermont journalism internship
Dug North never felt himself fall. He was standing in the South African desert, focused on surviving another day, then the next minute he was pulling himself out of a bush.
It was May 2024, and North was one of five contestants left on the History Channel’s survival series, “Alone,” in line to get a $500,000 prize. But North, a trained survivalist, had made a promise to himself and to his wife, Julia: if he risked permanent bodily harm, he would take himself out of the running. He had to make a decision.
His chapter on television was at a crossroads, but North’s story started decades earlier in Norwich, Vermont, where a childhood spent wandering in the woods taught North the basics of how to survive in the wild. Today, he’s teaching those same skills to a new generation of Vermonters.
“When people learn that I practice wilderness skills, there’s a tendency to assume that I’m preparing for the end of the world,” North said. “Truth be told, I’m not. For me, these skills are a way to learn about the world — about science, culture, history.”
Dug North, 55, learned long before television that solitude wasn’t something to fear. With few neighbors and endless miles of woods to explore, the Upper Valley landscape became both his playground and his classroom.
When he was 10 years old, a teacher read his class a story about a boy who leaves civilization behind to survive alone in the wilderness. The book landed with unusual force.
North, who split time between his mother’s home in Norwich and his father’s over the border in Easton, New Hampshire, would disappear into the woods for hours at a time, always finding his way home for dinner. His father, an avid hunter and fisherman, never worried. The woods were familiar territory for both of them.
One of the first skills North learned was one of humanity’s oldest technologies: making fire from friction.
Armed with an old how-to book containing only a handful of sketches and a few paragraphs of instruction, he carved his first bow-drill, a primitive tool that spins a wooden rod against a slab of dry wood to create a fire. After a lot of splinters, an ember appeared.
“It was the closest thing to alchemy or magic that I’ve ever experienced,” North said. “It seemed to tap into something very deep that I didn’t even know was there. It was almost like I had direct access to my ancestors who depended on these skills.”
That first fire sparked a lifelong fascination with ancestral knowledge and a simple question that still drives him today: How little do humans actually need to survive?
Friends remember North’s diligence in the outdoors stretching back to high school.
During one party interrupted by police, North’s classmates scattered in every direction. Many were quickly caught. North wasn’t. Instead, he climbed roughly 30 feet up a pine tree and remained hidden. By the time his friends realized he was missing, he had effectively vanished.
After studying anthropology at the University of Vermont, North settled into a career as a web designer. Outside of work, he continued engineering tools, studying primitive technologies and refining wilderness skills.
The same patience, creativity and attention to detail that he honed during his upbringing would soon be essential to surviving in one of the harshest landscapes on Earth.
In 2024, he applied for and was selected to compete on Season 12 of “Alone,” a series that drops contestants into the remote wilderness with video cameras and 10 other self-selected items and sees how long they can survive. Over 13 seasons, “Alone” has taken contestants to the Arctic, Patagonia and Mongolia. North’s season aired in 2025.
To prepare, North traveled to Ontario to train with former “Alone” contestant Kielyn Marrone. The experience quickly dismantled any romantic notions he still held about the competition.
“All these plans that you have in your head, like I’m going to make an igloo and a sled, and I’m going to make a catapult — it all really comes crashing down to earth,” he said. “You think, I’ve got to keep this really simple.”
A month before filming, contestants learned they would be heading to South Africa’s Great Karoo Desert, a vast, arid landscape often called the “Land of Great Thirst.”
Some Vermont skills would transfer. Hunting an impala, North figured, wasn’t fundamentally different from hunting a white-tailed deer.
Others required starting from scratch.
With weeks to prepare, he immersed himself in the desert’s ecology. Some plants were valuable food sources or medicines. Others had historically been used to make poison arrow tips — with no known antidote.
When North finally stepped into the Great Karoo, he remembered his training and focused on the basics.
Every calorie mattered. Every drop of water was essential. Every choice carried consequences.
But because he’d grown up in rural Vermont, isolation didn’t unsettle him the way he expected.
“I expected it to feel scary and alien,” he said. “Instead, it felt comforting.”
For much of his life, North said, his inner voice had been relentlessly self-critical. Alone in the desert, with no distractions and no one else to rely on, that voice became impossible to ignore.
Despite years of fishing experience, North repeatedly lost hooks and struggled to catch enough food. Hungry and exhausted, he had no option but to keep trying.
“I needed an ally,” he said. “And I was the only one there.”
Slowly, without a conscious effort, the voice in his head stopped being critical. Parts of his personality that he once viewed negatively, such as anxious tendencies, he now recognized as necessary hypervigilance.
“I made a friend of myself,” he said. “It came as a complete surprise. What a blessing to become aware of that inner voice — and realize it could be something else. It could be a friendly relationship.”
One day, North gashed his hip and developed a painful infection. Drawing on the plant knowledge and attention to detail he had spent years refining, he flushed the wound with water using a syringe from his medical kit before packing it with crushed leaves from a native shrub known for its antiseptic properties.
“Within a few days it stopped being red. It stopped oozing,” he said.
As the challenge continued, North settled into a rhythm. He was catching fish and feeling confident. But while focused on food, he let another essential resource slip: water.
On day 14, without warning, he blacked out and collapsed into a bush. Had he fallen only a few feet in another direction, he could have landed on the sharp rocks that carpeted the desert floor.
The close call forced him to confront his promise to his wife. He decided to tap out.
“I had already decided what was too dangerous,” he said.
“The biggest survival skill I demonstrated out there was tapping out,” he added. “Being honest with myself.”
Today, North has settled back into everyday life, balancing work, family and the wilderness skills that first captivated him as a child.
When he isn’t at his day job, he’s often carving tools, experimenting with ancestral technologies or practicing what he calls the most difficult skill he has ever attempted: making stone arrowheads.
Increasingly, he has turned his attention toward teaching.
North now leads introductory wilderness skills courses in Vermont, where students learn everything from safe knife handling and fire building to creating fire from friction with a bow drill — the same skill that first captured his imagination decades ago.
His last class took place on June 27, on a remote property in Roxbury, Vermont where he revisited his childhood hobbies, and taught students how to carve a bow drill.
Hosted by two “Alone” fans, the day started with North teaching the small group about the history of technology. The group first learned basic knife skills and then were taught how to carve and use their own bow drill.
One of the attendees, Chris McGrody, has been friends with North since middle school. At the end of the day, McGrody was kneeling on the dirt, sweating and swearing while putting all of his might into the wood.
North stood behind him with his hands on his back, not letting him give up. After a lot of elbow grease and multiple F-bombs, the timber sizzled and McGrody finally held a glowing fire in his hands. The group erupted and McGrody beamed from ear to ear — just like North did when he was a child.
The woods taught North everything he needed to survive. Now, he’s determined to teach Vermonters that they are capable of doing the same.