Riding out Hurricane Hermine in the woods helped local man prepare for 'Naked and Afraid'

When James Lewis was a teenager, he saw the John Rambo movie “First Blood” and felt a connection to its iconic main character.

In the film, Sylvester Stallone plays a Vietnam War veteran who goes to a small town looking for a friend. Instead, Rambo is harassed by local law enforcement, forcing him to flee into the woods, to dodge the danger.

“As a skinny teenager in high school who occasionally would get beat up and bullied and picked on, I connected a little bit with a character who just wanted to be left alone,” Lewis said. “It’s been a 35-year dream of mine to go into the woods or go into the jungle and try to survive.”

But life got in the way. There were kids to be raised and careers to start.

Then one day, the architect at Clemons, Rutherford and Associates, Inc. saw a show on the Discovery Channel. Two contestants, a man and a woman, were stripped of their clothes and dropped in an exotic location. Without supplies or connections to the outside world, they were supposed to make it 21 days in the wilderness – naked and afraid.

“I‘m thinking, 'Oh my gosh, that’s my dream. They’re actually televising my dream,'” the 50-year-old said. “I watched one season and thought, ‘I have to apply.’”

With the help of his three children, the Crawfordville man did. His youngest, teenage daughter helped him film his "Naked and Afraid" audition. His oldest daughter was available to step in and take care of his youngest should he ever get the call. His son, who is in college, had the machete Lewis used to train.

"I tried to do everything I had seen on the show," he said.

He trained for about 18 months. Lewis learned how to make fire, then made 600 in a year. He hiked several hundred miles barefoot. He went on snake hunts, built fish traps, made shelters.

As Hurricane Hermine raced toward shore in 2016, Lewis took off work and ran into the woods. He made a shelter from sabal palm fronds. As the wind and rain wailed and trees fell around him in the dark, Lewis waited out the storm. He kept a video diary like contestants on the show. He called it the “Four Day Labor Day Almost Naked and Afraid Challenge."

'Nature does not care'

On Sept. 15, at about10 p.m. he got the call. It was a “Naked and Afraid” executive producer. There was an opportunity to go on the show, but Lewis had to leave immediately.

“I was absolutely giddy,” Lewis said. “I could hardly talk.”

Within six hours he was sitting in Tallahassee International Airport waiting to fly to Miami. From there, he would fly to Nicaragua. He was in the jungle within 36 hours.

Flying into the Central American country, Lewis noted palm trees, coconuts, papaya and sugar cane.

“I’m looking down and seeing just all kinds of resources growing wild,” he said. “There were just loads of resources and I’m thinking, ‘This is going to be easy.’ It’s not. It wasn’t.”

Amid the abundant, lush jungle were scorpions, venomous snakes, ants that would tear into the vegetation, jaguars, bull sharks in the nearby water and bugs that would chase anyone who disturbed them.

“Not only were there animals who wanted to hurt you, kill you, eat you, there was vegetation that was almost as bad,” Lewis said.

And then there was the freezing rain.

“There’s one thing that can be said for sure about nature and this challenge specifically,” he said. “Nature does not care whether you’re male or female, black or white, Donald Trump or the school custodian. It’s going to treat you the same and it doesn’t care.”

The reality of 'Rambo'

The contestants on the show don’t meet ahead of time. The first time Lewis and his partner Leah McCabe met, they were both naked. It was awkward for about 15 seconds, Lewis said.

“It’s all out there – literally,” he said. “And we moved on.”

Early on, before the hunger and freezing rain set in, Lewis thought, "Yeah, I’m Rambo. I’m going to get to run through the jungle and swing on the vines.' But within hours reality slaps you in the face.”

One of those moments of reality came when Lewis and McCabe were walking and heard a crash behind them. They turned around and saw a crew member from above had fallen about 5 feet. He was sore but wasn’t hurt.

“It hit home that this is not a playground,” Lewis said.

The challenge reaffirmed for Lewis how important his family is to him. He said he constantly thought about them. While he said he loves his job, he said the experience made him think about his career and future endeavors.

“The pleasure, the joy, the stress relief of only having to worry about food, water and shelter was pretty desirable for me,” Lewis said. “I’m planning to take on more adventures and challenges that are more than my job behind the desk as an architect.”

Lewis can't disclose how the show ended, but he hopes he’ll be invited back to “Naked and Afraid XL." The spinoff takes a larger group of “Naked and Afraid” alumni and asks them to survive for 40 days in the wild.

As for Nicaragua, Lewis said despite the dangers, it was picturesque. He wants to go back one day, with his clothes on.

Watch…

The “Naked and Afraid” episode featuring Lewis airs 9 p.m. Sunday on Discovery Channel