LIVE Interview with Timber Cleghorn!

What a treat we had sitting down with Timber Cleghorn, the runner up of Season 11 ALONE on the History Channel. Timber shares about growing up off-grid in Indiana, his work in humanitarian aid around the world, bushcraft techniques, killing a moose and his time on the ALONE (on History Channel) show.

He has a new book coming out, a website (www.timbercleghorn.com) with all kinds of cool info and social media galore so give him a follow and check out all he has going on for the good of mankind.

Listen to the PODCAST HERE!  LIVE with TIMBER CLEGHORN 

LIVE SHOW Recording…

Joey – Hey everyone, we are live on the Overland Podcast. Thank you for being here. We appreciate everybody that’s going to be jumping on the podcast here in a minute. This is a live recording, and I’m going to try to get us live here on Instagram as well. There we go. So, we got everything going. Tony, you doing okay?

Tony – Yes, sir. Good to see you.

Joey – Good to see you. Glad you made it through the commute there in Northwest Arkansas.

Tony – Yes, sir. Back to the grind. Had a great weekend. Back to the grind.

Joey – Four-day weekend and here we go again. So back to it.

Tony – That’s right.

Joey – I just want to start the podcast off by just saying for years we have traditionally been a vehicle-based podcast, but we’re spreading our wings, expanding, talking about different ways because whether you’re walking, whether you’re biking, whether you’re traveling or spending time outdoors, you are You’re moving over land. And so, we are enjoying several different people that we’ve talked to about hiking, backpacking, bushcraft, survival techniques. And so, it’s therefore mandatory that we talk to many different people in the world of travel and living life outside. So, this week, it is my special privilege and honor. Oh, my gosh. This is like I just I just got chills. I got chills. to talk to somebody I’ve seen on the live screen, the big screen. And I actually reached out and was so emphatic. I jumped up and down, told my wife. I said, you are never going to believe who we’re going to have on the show. You’re not going to believe this. And she’s already been on here jumping up and down and screaming and saying hi and all that stuff. But anyway, Timber Cleghorn, thank you. Timber, thank you for being on the show. We appreciate you taking time for being with us. We appreciate it.

Timber – Thank you, man. I mean, y’all are too kind. I’m a nobody. I’m really interested in what y’all are doing with these vehicles and stuff. I’ve looked at your vehicles on Instagram and thought, man, I needed one of these in Tajikistan. So, I’m just happy to be here with you guys.

Joey – Oh, we’re excited that you’re here. I have… I am… Look at my wife just can’t get enough on there. So, she’s going to be on there. Galen, appreciate you being on here. So, season eleven of Alone is where we all met you. It’s where the world met you. You say you’re nobody. That’s where you became somebody in the homes of people across the nation. Yeah. And I know. You’re a humble man. You are a good man. And I highly respect you. And that’s why I want to come on here and learn from you. And just talk to you about your life, your character, different things like that. Because just seeing how you act, how you carried yourself on that show made me really want to get to know you better. And so that’s why I reached out to you.

Timber – That means a lot, man. It really means a lot. I appreciate it from both you guys. Thank you.

Joey – You grew up in Salem, Indiana, correct?

Timber – Pretty much, yeah. We came here when I was pretty young, so I’d say I grew up here. I guess I was about five when we came in here and then lived here until I left home at about nineteen.

Joey – Okay. It says on your website, which is www.timbercleghorn.com, I won’t throw that out there so everybody will jump on there. that you grew up completely off grid in the Indiana backwoods. Tell us about what it was like as a child.

Timber – So yeah, it was off grid completely. And what I mean by that is no electricity, no running water, none of the modern conveniences. There’s no TV, no internet, no connection to the outside world. You could stand on a hill on our place and look around Three hundred sixty degrees and not see a light security light or a neighbor’s light. So, we found one of those little pockets, you know. Yeah, we all search out those pockets like we found one of those little pockets or my dad did and moved us all out there, kind of to hide out, so to speak, and then raise this all out there. So, I came up with a really different experience from most folks. my age growing up in America. And in many ways, I’m real lucky because of that. Maybe not every way, but in most ways, yeah.

Joey – No kidding. You experienced some things that most people don’t get to experience and kind of was forced to. Yeah. You know, whether you got to choose to or not, that’s amazing. I just want to point out, we’ve got quite a few people on Instagram that are joining us live. And if you are on Instagram, we’re not able to put your comments. For some reason, it doesn’t allow us to put your comments and stuff. But Dub is on here, and he wanted to say, hey.

Timber – Dub! Hey, man. Love you, buddy.

Joey – Yeah, I have reached out to Dub. I would love to have Dub on here.

Timber – Please do. Please do. Dub is one of a kind and a dear friend for life.

Joey – Yeah, Dub is a cool guy, and I have so much respect for that guy because he went through so much when he broke his glasses. Oh, my gosh. Oh, man. and uh when he when he creates his glasses out of the wood pieces I was like I love this guy!

Timber – This guy cracks me up he’s so funny. If I could throw this in here’s the thing about dub like I think this came across on screen but even more so to me I would call dub after these episodes and be like dude you broke your glasses how’d you get through and he just makes out like it’s not a big deal yeah, I was all right I did something you know it’s like He just makes out like it’s nothing. And that’s how he handles things. He’s wonderful. Calm, cool, and collected.

Joey – You know, that’s what Dub was. And he was definitely a character to watch. And we really enjoyed watching him. But that’s so cool. It says on there that you idolized early frontiersmen when you were growing up. Were there any particular that you kind of wanted to be like? Any ones?

Timber – Simon Kenton, man. I mean, a lot of people don’t know about this character, but he was a contemporary with Daniel Boone, settled a lot of Kentucky and Ohio. He literally saved Daniel Boone’s life by throwing him at two Indians. Daniel Boone had a broken leg. Simon picked him up and threw him at two Indians knocked him down and ran with him to the fort there’s this is one frontiersman that’s like at the head of the pack I used to think man I’d like to be like that and he like he would feed a fort while it was under siege by the Indians you know run out and kill two deer outrun the Indians with the butcher deer on his back and get in the fort you know and feed the people that way and I thought man that’s what I want to do in life there’s just no forts you know surrounded in the siege anymore so I’m lost

Joey – That’s cool. That’s cool. In a world of people that want to be like Mike, that is very refreshing to hear something like that. So, I love that. I love the fact that it says you save money for college by trapping beavers and coyotes. Yep. That’s amazing to me. I don’t know if I’ve ever heard of anybody else that’s done that.

Timber – Well, I didn’t save much money that way. When I went to college, I had… Four hundred and fifty bucks in my pocket. About one hundred and fifty of it came from selling my horse and the rest of it came from those beavers and coyotes.

Joey – Wow. Oh, wow. That’s an incredible story. So, you’re a dad. You have one son or two?

Timber – I’ve got two boys, a ten-year-old and a seven-year-old.

Joey – And recently became a father of a very small little girl.

Timber – Two weeks ago. Brooke McKenzie.

Joey – Two weeks ago. Oh, wow. Well, Tony and I are both fathers of daughters, and we just want to warn you, they will capture your heart. It’s done. Yes. I’m sure it is. Being a dad of a girl is an amazing thing. It really is. It will excite you, break your heart at the same time. So just get ready.

Timber – I was going to say thanks for that, but you said break your heart at the same time.

Joey – Oh, she will. She will. They are the best. The little girls are the best. I want to ask you, not very long ago, your family survived a tornado. Tell us about that in June.

Timber – I forgot about that. We literally came back from that tornado thing. Now, our truck, we just parked at a park, Monroe Lake in Indiana here. There’s a park there. Friends of ours had their RV there, and we pulled in, shut off the truck. I think we stayed one night. The next day, we were just about to cook lunch in the clear sky. In fifteen minutes, boom, the sky’s dark, wind starts blowing, and it starts raining. We’re like, okay, let’s just grab the kid and go inside their RV. I thought, maybe I’ll sit in the truck with Kara. We’ll wait out the rain. It’s just going to be a little shower. But we didn’t. We went in the RV and in two minutes after this, a whole wall of trees fell. There was like a tornado, you know, and some type of wind microburst happened right there where we were. There was a three-foot red oak tree laying across both front seats of the truck, a two-foot hard maple tree laying across both back seats. And I looked at the trucks thinking I almost got in there with my family. And then it was close enough, another tree, a poplar tree, came right through the front of the RV two feet away from my seven-year-old, Elliot, and cut the RV in half right down to the frame. It was crazy. And then we came home, and all of our friends that know us pretty well They shrugged and they’re like, yeah, you guys have almost died so many times. We don’t even think about it anymore. Thanks guys. Oh, my goodness. Thanks for the support.

Joey – Yeah. Yeah. The nine lives, nine lives. You used a couple right there probably.

Timber – It felt like it felt like use a couple, you know, I’ve had other situations with, you know, missiles going ahead, going overhead and things like that. But somehow this felt worse because it felt like it was intended for somebody. I can’t explain that.

Joey – Yeah. That’s crazy. Wow. We know the cliffs notes of you being involved in humanitarian aid work. Uh, we don’t know the ins and outs of us, but, um, tell us back, tell us, take us back to when you fell in love, uh, fell in love with, uh, helping others and, uh, doing humanitarian aid.

Timber – Uh, see, this is a, I have to go back a ways and I’ll try to make it concise. Um, When I was a kid, I had gotten into a state of just anger and depression, so angry that I just wanted to hurt people. You know, my whole goal was to leave home, join the Marine Corps and get into a position where I could hurt people. That’s what I wanted. And it was on a trip. I went with some volunteer workers to Ukraine, no less. It’s two thousand seven, I think. And they were helping orphans. And I thought it was dumb. I thought, you know what they stood for with God and all that. I thought that was dumb. But I saw him helping these kids and I saw these kids, like these kids were also in, in fear and anger and stuff too, from just not being valued, not being wanted by anybody. And I felt like I was, I was liking them. And then as these workers were like telling them, look, I’m here because I love you. I just, I don’t want, you know, they weren’t there for anything. They were just helping. They were passing out candy, singing songs, you know, bringing food to some really underprivileged people, really underprivileged people, truly. And I saw one by one like that light of fear turn off in the eyes of those kids as they heard that they were valued because the workers were like, you are valuable because God made you. And that’s why I’m here. I want to honor that and reach out to you and help. I think it was the first time some of those kids had ever heard that they were valued and that made a difference for them. You know, it was like, uh, I saw a light of Jesus somehow there. I can’t explain it, but it would like, it was turning a fear off in those eyes one after another and give them a sense of value. And that won me over that transformed my life really. Um, I hung out into anger for years, but slowly I began seeing what had happened there. And I said, I want that. So, I, I went into. I tried to get into international aid work for years and studied through college to get a major that I thought would help towards that. And then eventually did get overseas and start getting into places where I felt like the little that we do have was valuable, you know, because of the context that we would find. So that’s kind of how I got into it. You know, it’s it’s it’s come a long way since then. And I don’t know if you what specifically you want to know about any of that, like since that time. But that’s kind of what made me get into it. I saw those kids and I said, That’s meaningful. You know, that’s eternal somehow. I want to be part of what’s going on there, you know.

Joey – Yeah, well, that’s admirable. It’s so cool. I’ve done some mission work myself in several different countries, and there’s very little thing, very few things in this world that are more rewarding than doing something good for somebody else that’s like that. And I think it’s so cool that you actually went to college to become somebody who could further that, and you became a research linguist. uh which is which is pretty cool I’ve never heard of that before so what does a person like that do?

Timber – well you know I knew I was interested in languages and then I began to find out that there’s thousands of languages yet in the world that are in really the backwater wilderness places you know and I’m like well I’m interested in languages I love the wilderness maybe this is where help could need done so um being interested in languages you know there’s hold on I got to back up these thousands of languages that are out there in these backwater places many of them my point was many of them don’t have an alphabet of their own right don’t have reading materials of their own and so their cultures and identities are being gobbled up by the major players in the world you know industrialization along with the major languages and stuff and it’s hurting them you know it’s hurting them and In addition to that, the poverty situations that they live in, there’s just a vortex there. a vortex that keeps, you know, sinking them in situations of, you know, poverty, depression, you know, lack of privilege, you know, things like this. And so, I looked at that and I thought, well, I’ll go to college to become a research linguist. What a research linguist does is basically studies unwritten languages and helps the indigenous people to redo the language to writing. In other words, to give them an alphabet so that they can have a writing system for their language. It can be preserved. It won’t die out. You know, their identity won’t die out. Then they can begin to work on education avenues for their people, and that can help to combat in time poverty and other things where they can engage with the business, the modern business world, and do well and thrive. And this is happening in some areas, some languages where tribal languages have to become confronted with industrialization. Then they need to be equipped for it so that they don’t simply die out. And I just, I began to travel looking at these projects and I began to see a lot of needs there with the linguistic work, but also with really kinesthetic work too, with simply water, food, water wells, playgrounds for children and things like this. And so that was the avenue that kind of got me into international aid work is that research linguistics major.

Joey – That’s amazing. And so, you met your wife in college and you’ve both lived overseas doing this work together for a time. Is that something that you are still ongoing and doing? Is that something that you want to keep pursuing as a part of your life?

Timber – Yeah, man, this really goes into, I wasn’t sure that I wanted to until the end of the Alone show. Hmm. And by the time the end of the alone show rolled around, I was sure that it’s, it’s what I still want, you know, and then that informed some of my decision-making there, which maybe we’ll get into later. I’m not sure, but it is what it’s still like, it’s our identity. You know, I think. it’d be, it’d be great if we, if I could just be a farmer in one spot and, you know, just help my neighbors and stuff, but I’m not cut out for that kind of guy. I have to go. And, um, so it’s what my wife and I do in, in, in just a few months, we’ll be back overseas on another project, kind of finishing up some loose ends and some, some things we’d worked on before with some refugees and some, uh, some research linguistic needs. Um, so it, it’ll definitely be ongoing for us. I hope the rest of our lives, uh, but it’s, it’s, uh, we’re just we’re doing a little different way than the ways that had brought me kind of into a state of exhaustion a couple of years ago

Joey – oh wow I’m sure well helping people is just a part of who you are I can I can tell that yeah what just recently and we talked off air before we came on about, how you had just returned from, helping the victims out in North Carolina with some friends of yours, took a little helicopter ride out there and, and done some things with the United Cajun Navy, which was pretty, pretty interesting. And, so that was pretty cool. Um, my, my wife wants to know, what’s it like to help write a language? What alphabet do you use?

Timber – Well, I’ll give you a thumbnail sketch. Basically, um, you can’t choose an alphabet and make it fit a language because it’s so different. It’s its own thing. It’s its own world basically. So you have to study it. So, it can take years for one. You’ve got to break it down and there’s scientific processes for this. There are charts, you know, and, uh, process that you can use to break it down and to find out, you know, exactly what sounds exist when this language is spoken and which of those sounds carry meaning in the mind. And then when you determine that, that’s the, that’s the sounds that need to represent with characters. But then how do you choose which characters to use? Usually, you would choose characters. You would borrow characters from a language that, I mean, if like if, if people are in an Arabic speak, a greater Arabic speaking context, but they’re a small tribal pocket, you’d probably try to adapt Arabic style characters from that alphabet into there so that it can benefit them when they do have young people that have to leave home and engage in business or college or something. So basically, you’re just asking questions of the language and it answers you about which symbols, which sounds it wants represented, you know, and then there’s some choices you have to make. More of a study process than a prescription process to be like, this is what you need. Instead, you ask, what do you need? And you sort it through the processes, get those sounds characterized in the alphabet, then you present and you rework it. Will this alphabet work for you guys? They look it over and you’re like, no. This one’s bad. Okay, well, we’ll go back to the drawing board.

Joey – Are you doing that with younger people or the older people of wherever you are?

Timber – Well, usually you’d want to do it with a good cross-section of both age groups because there’s very different perspectives in multi-generational demographics, especially in these places because the older people may have lived. I know one particular place, a project my wife and I worked on. In the northeastern corner of Afghanistan where the older people had grown up living very close to Stone Age, very, very close to Stone Age, plowing with oxygen without even metal points on the plow, just wood points on the plow. But the younger people had cell phones. And so that created such a disparity in their viewpoints. And so normally you’re trying to serve all of them. So, you try to get the opinion of all of them and try to weigh that and make decisions. It’s hard. Yeah. Yeah. That sounds like a huge challenge. I’m kind of curious. How many languages do you speak? I would only say four. Four? Yeah. I dabble around in more than that, but I would say four.

Tony – Yeah. Sort of reminds me of my uncle. He was a professor of microbiology at the University of Natal in South Africa. He knew obviously English, Spanish, German, and then I think he used to talk about four or five different tribal dialects that he was familiar with. And it just, you know, people that pick-up languages like that to me are just, it’s just incredible, inspiring wise that they can speak more than one. Sometimes I struggle to speak English.

Joey – Yeah, it blows my mind. My father is actually a Bible professor and his degree is in Biblical languages and it was it’s amazing to me that you know he can he can pick up a language you know of course the language of the bible the Greek and the Hebrew and the and the Aramaic and the Coptic and all the languages are dead so none of them are actually spoken uh but he can read them and just picking up a language like that blows my mind.

Timber – I envy being able to pick it up quickly. I think when I was in my twenties, I could do it quickly, but anymore, especially after we’ve transitioned more into war zone and relief type work anymore, my brain just doesn’t handle it so well. You know, it takes hard work. You got so many things to think about, not just, not just the language when you’re over there. So yeah. Even just caring for the people as well.

Joey – Yeah. My wife said his favorite Bible translation is his own. That’s what he tells everybody.

Timber – I understand what he’s meaning by that.

Joey – Yeah, well, people ask him all the time. They ask him all the time, what’s your favorite translation? Because there’s so many now, and they want to kind of back him in a corner. And so that’s the answer that he gives them is my own, because he takes it from the original language. So anyway, that’s the way he gets out of that. Well, before we go any further, we want to take time to talk about our sponsor the show…

Tony – Mamoo’s Camp Kitchen. Holy cow. Timber, have you heard of these guys?

Timber – I have not.

Tony – Mamoo’s Camp Kitchen. So, this is a family out of Louisiana, Farmerville, Louisiana. They started a catering business years ago, and they decided to package, you know, and, uh, uh, freeze dried their food and it’s fantastic. This stuff is, um, I’m sort of shifting my, uh, you know, how I load out. food-wise and going to be relying on these a little bit more. These have, this particular one is the blend of the bayou. And if you like seafood, this has real chunks of crab and shrimp in it. It’s outrageous.

Timber – Yes. Bring it. Bring it.

Joey – Yes. I’ll get your address. I’ll send you stuff. Fantastic stuff. So right now, free shipping on orders over seventy-five dollars, ten percent off with OverlandPodcast10. Go check them out. They are some really neat guys. We met them several weeks ago at one of the events that we were at. And they were they were just like the nicest guys you could possibly meet. Good, good dudes. And he came up to us. Paul came up to us and he said, yeah, I just take some of my grandma’s recipes and we just make them out and put them in the freeze dryer and package them. And they had some right there and it just blew my mind. But because normally the freeze-dried food, it’s a hit and miss whether it’s good or not.

Tony – You said something one time that was cracking me up. You got some stuff for backpacking. You said it tasted like grass.

Joey – Grass clippings. It tastes just like grass clippings. There’s not been a lot of food that I couldn’t eat, and that was one. Well, that’s what sets Mamoo’s apart is its flavor. Love me some Mamoo’s Kitchen.

Timber – How is that company spelled? M-A-M-O-O apostrophe S. M-A-M-O-O-S apostrophe S camp kitchen.

Tony – I’m down to three bags. I got three bags. I think we finished off all the freeze-dried ice cream last weekend too.

Joey – The freeze-dried ice cream sandwiches will blow your mind. It’s crazy. So good. Well, I thought it would be pretty fitting to talk about them on the show since one of the things that you really concentrated on the Alone show was food. And so anyway, you probably dreamed a lot about your favorite food while you were there. I sure did. I just thought about, I thought, oh, Mamoo’s would be perfect for this. So, we’ll talk about that. But let’s go into that. What was the draw? What was the draw for you to be on the show? What made you send your video in?

Timber – to be on the show? Two things. Um, first one, it’s my thing. I mean, I, I idealized that type of activity and skill. Um, I, I heard about the show years ago from a fellow aid worker and they said, hey, there’s the show that you’re probably cut out for. You should check it out. I watched one season, which was Jordan Jonas’s season. And I liked it so much that it hurt. I didn’t want to watch it anymore. So, I refused. I didn’t watch it anymore. Because it was hard to watch people doing it, knowing that, man, I’ll never do this. And then the second reason is that the two thousand nineteen, 2020 and 2021 were really tough years and twenty-two were really tough years for us in aid work. And we just got kind of burned out in a lot of ways, really in a bad kind of a bad mental state, me personally. And I just needed some a way to step back, but way back. And you can’t step farther back than the Arctic. That’s about as far back as you can step. And that was wonderful that that was granted to me as a chance, as a way to step back. Because I just applied once. I just wrote in, and my application seemed like weak sauce. Put it in, and I thought, I’ll never hear from this. And boom, it happened. So, I considered that it was a gift from God, really.

Joey – So, you weren’t very confident that you would be chosen?

Timber – Oh, no. No, not at all. I would say, you know, I was like one percent confident, you know, one percent. That’s pretty low. I’m like, there’s going to be thousands of locations.

Joey – Had you watched the show before? Just that one season, man. Just that one season.

Joey – Well, you know, as somebody that’s on the outside looking in, just a fan of the show, it boggles my mind. the people that they put on there. Cause some people you’re like, oh, this person, yeah, they’re going to do well. And this person, you’re like, what, how in the world? They must’ve had a fantastic video that they sent in to get on. So, it blows my mind. The people that get on the show and you, you know, uh, uh, you know, of course throughout the show, they show everybody’s videos that you send in and you see what they, what they did to approve. So, it’s, it’s, uh, it was neat to see yours. And, uh, and how cool it was. So anyway, I was pretty confident. I was pretty confident after seeing your video. I thought, man, this guy belongs on here.

Timber – Well, thanks, man. I was disturbed after seeing my video because that whole thing in my video where I’m like, it was a militia group. We were training for combat. Well, that’s all true, but this is the first time I’m ever saying this to anybody. And for it to be out on TV, see, that was the snippet. You tell hours of your story, and they pick a snippet that they want to tell. So, boom, they’re going to put that snippet on there. And when I heard that snippet on there, I just panicked inside. Now, they did a good job. All the editors did a good job. But I heard that snippet on there. It’s like my bio. yeah and you know it wasn’t clarified for a long time that I had gotten out of that kind of stuff you know when I you know got away from as I became an adult and got away so uh wasn’t clarified for a long time a lot of people texted me a lot of hate and they’re like you know I hate your type you militia type and I’m like look guys that’s how I that’s how I grew up that was my context then so it was different man it was so weird having all that all that out there so weird yeah but yes. I see a question this is the moose from the show if I get back here real close to it, I’m far away from it I want to get close as you can see that it’s actually enormous um that is so big wow sorry to interrupt you guys right there but that’s perfect no that’s perfect that is the moose That is the moose.

Joey – In fact, I wrote on here, we need to have Mamoo’s Kitchen come up with a dish of moose and call it Timber’s Mamoose.

Timber – Tell them I’ll work with them. We’ll make some together.

Joey – I’m going to throw it out there. I’m going to throw it out there and call it Timbers Mamoose if they do a moose dish. I’m still eating moose jerky.

Joey – I bet you are. That’s crazy. You know, that was one of the things, and I’m kind of skipping ahead here to the food, but that was one of the things that my wife had so many questions about, you know, because it did show where you were keeping everything but you never showed the actual jerky inside the container. She’s like, how much do you have in there? I said, do you know how big a moose is? Do you have a guesstimation about how much it weighed?

Timber – I do see on the show, they put twelve hundred pounds, but I thought it was like fourteen hundred. But again, I’m not good at guessing. I was just going by like the size of horses that I’ve had before. You know? Yeah. I’m not good at guessing, but I guessed it weighed like fourteen hundred pounds. And I and I guessed I’d had seven or eight hundred pounds of meat sitting there when it was all fresh. Now, of course. When you smoke that meat all down, it goes down to twenty five percent of the weight. You know, so if you boil it all down, an entire moose doesn’t make more than two hundred pounds of jerky. You know, and I and I ate up. Man, it’s almost incalculable. I ate a lot of that jerky. And before anybody asks, I boiled it. I boiled it a lot. You know, that’s I get that question a lot. And I think a lot of people want to have seen inside the cache to just see to lay eyes on all that food. I filmed it in there. It just never made the cut, never made the show.

Joey – Before you left, getting back, I’m reeling everybody back in, reeling them back in. Before you left and when you were chosen, I’m sure there was a period of time there before you knew that you were going. And also, you know, from the time that you left, did you and your wife have to really come to terms about how long you would be separated?

Timber – We, that was something that we failed to anticipate because we looked at the location and then once you, once you get the location information, you only have a few weeks to prepare. So, I was crazy busy at that time, barely slept, you know, um, just, I was working a job, a big job and then trying to prepare for a loan at night. And what we failed to discuss. how we would both feel if it went past, say, ninety days gone. And I know I she dropped a couple of times like; I hope it crazy. It doesn’t go past ninety days because I don’t want you gone more than three months. But at the same time, we knew. And this is kind of how my wife and I were. Whenever we commit, we’re into something. We’re in it. Yeah, that did weigh on my mind. Eventually, it’s like, wow, we thought that this would only be like a. seventy-day season because it’s an extreme location. Here we are cruising right into the long run. You know, I wonder if she’s OK. And that weighs on your mind.

Joey – Oh, yeah, I’m sure. I’m sure. At that time, when you found out you were going to be on it or when you submitted your video at that time, what did you think would be the hardest part of being on the show?

Timber – Food procurement. I was wrong.

Joey – Keeping it?

Timber – No, no, getting it, just getting it, getting enough, finding and getting enough food. I thought that’d be, that’d be the hardest thing, not having seen the Delta and just getting the info from the info sheet. I thought just procuring enough food would be the hardest part.

Tony – Well, I mean, you, as a contestant, you, you, the moose you took is probably the biggest single animal taken by any contestant. Is that a fair statement?

Timber – It is. And also, um, I caught also a fifty-two fish. So put that together with the moose. I know it’s the most protein ever gotten ever gotten on the show.

Joey – That’s incredible. I did watch another season where another person got a moose, but it wasn’t near the size of yours.

Timber – He and I talk occasionally and it’s funny because he harasses me about how it’s so unwise to kill a big one. You should be selective. A little one. He’s a jokester. He’s really great. Jordan. Yeah, I’m good. I’m good.

Joey – On one of your YouTube videos, you talk about the people on the show. Talk about how they want to be one with nature. And you want to make sure people understand that’s a good thing. But you also say that being one with nature doesn’t mean that nature will be kind to you. What do you mean by that?

Timber – I pretty much mean that the pursuit of being one with nature is great because I see nature as an extension of God’s nature, God’s character. I see it that way. I don’t want to offend anybody with that viewpoint, but that’s my interpretation. So, anyone who’s out in the wilderness being in tune with it, they’re going to get wonderful things from it. But what I mean is that nature is impartial. Um, that’s probably the word I failed to say there on my YouTube. Nature is impartial and it’s not kind. If you see wolves going after it, taking down prey, uh, just recently had to work my son through a thing where he took a mouse from the cat and the mouse had a broken spine. And so, he, he wanted to keep it and raise it. And I’m like, you can’t, we have to put it down, you know? And he was all tore up, but nature is that way. That’s how it happens between the cat and the mouse. Everything out there in nature is brutal. And it is taking each other’s lives. It’s brutal. It’s like that. And nature doesn’t have feelings that can be roused towards us, I don’t think, to just coddle us. It won’t, I don’t think. But being in tune with it is wonderful because then it means that if we’re in tune with it, we’ll put our energy into the correct directions, that it will pay off, I think.

Joey – Was there a, was there a time that you were able to spend with the other contestants? Were there others that you were able to get close with and become friends with?

Timber – You know, you get a little over a week before you launch out into the competition during that week. You’re in the base camp. It’s a funny dynamic cause it’s, you know, all immediately that it’s your type of people. So, Dub listening to this, like he’s, he’s at the top of my list for sure. But you know, William and, and, and Sarah, you know, Jake, just go on down the list. I could be among them and I, and I would drop a comment every now and then, like, this could be my tribe. They have that leathery wholesome energy that wilderness people have. But you can’t get too far with that right now because you’re about to enter a competition where it’s nearly life or death with these people, you know? Yeah. So you kind of just everybody has a little bit of aloof energy, you know, just a little bit while they focus on their own mind and their own strategy to preparing for something that. You know, they can’t be bothered, you know, with the social interaction. So, it was difficult to get to know everybody at first. I didn’t read everybody super well at first in base camp. And I think that coming back afterwards, then you get on phone calls. Of course, I got to spend time with Dub and William in the base camp afterwards. And that was, that was where the deepest connection gets made. And then, but you spend time on the phone afterwards with everybody, and then you really make the connections because then there’s nothing at stake anymore. There’s just friendship.

Joey – Yeah, true. You talk about we talked about Dusty before the show. And Dusty was one of our favorites on the show because he was from Arkansas. He was a hometown boy. But but you made a statement in one of your videos or on your website or something. I can’t remember where I found it. But you said you had a lot of respect for him. Because you all were in a position where you had to kill to survive, but he was put in a position where he had stomach issues and where he couldn’t eat. And he stated that he would not kill anything because he said it would be wasted. And you had great respect for him for that.

Timber – I certainly do. I regard that so highly. And I think that that moment is my favorite Dusty moment where he said, until I can digest, I’m not going to kill another animal because… you know, he valued their life. And I hope that it can come through on screen also that I value life like that. I know that I killed so many animals. I was getting so much protein killing so many animals that it could, it could seem like I’m just an over killer. I remember a day when I took that rabbit and its head popped off and I talked about valuing life. I prayed that day. I said, God, um, if you’ve got an idea about when I really ought to go home, I don’t know. I am not planning to go home, but if you’ve got an idea of when, don’t let me kill one animal I need beyond this. If I don’t need to go beyond that point, stop me from killing anything else. And guess what? It stopped. I think only killed one rabbit after that period. It was bonkers.

Joey – Yeah it was it was crazy you went straight to fishing there for there for a while with the uh with the little special hooks that you made

Timber – oh yeah, the moose bones the moose bones yeah So cool.

Joey – One of the things that really caught me and made me realize, because me and my wife talk about this show all the time and how it’s just mesmerizing about how you go out there and spend all this time about yourself, but you make the statement, the real terror of being on this show is that it’s a one-shot deal. You get one shot at it, you screw it up, and that will make you regret it the rest of your life. So, do you have any regrets about making that call?

Timber – That’s a tough question because I think I’d make the same call again, looking at the ingredients of my life and how I need to face those ingredients. I know that the money could only solve one round of decisions for me, and then what I would have left is still just me. And that was what I needed the most from the show is I needed me to be found and well and grounded. And I think that scratching on towards the money afterwards would have been arguing with that peace and wellness that I found inside me. So, I think I’d make the same decision again, I think. Maybe I got into my head too much and got messed up thinking about how the money would mess up my life. But I think I’d make the same decision again. But I’ll tell you, you asked if I have regret that there’s a percentage inside me that will always look back and be like, I’d like to be that one man, you know, because now having not won in a lot of audience’s eyes, everything that I did throughout is garbage, you know, because it doesn’t lead to a win. Yeah. Well, if you look at. There are just different ways to look at it like that. I won’t go on because I don’t want to take anything away from the actual winner, William, who deserves it the most.

Joey – William was an amazing guy. I have a lot of respect for him. One of the few people that did not take a bow and arrow and how he was able to… get all those grouse with that pole just blew my mind. I’ve never seen anything like that before.

Timber – That and the level of comfort that he displayed being in those cold conditions. I couldn’t display that much comfort being in those because I wasn’t comfortable. Yeah. Yeah, and the little animal that was always getting at his food, he thought it was a game. He played it like a game and just always had the best attitude, have a lot of respect for him. I wish there was a point system where if you lose a certain amount of food, you lose points. No, I’m just kidding. Yeah, because he had a lot of food stolen. Oh, yeah. Yeah, he was not very fortunate in a lot of things. But nothing, don’t let ever anything that I would say detract from the win that William deserves. That’s not what I intended all by anything that I would say. People ask me, could you go on? Yeah, I could go on. But William won.

Joey – Yeah, he was well deserving. And, you know, I think about it. If you guys if you hadn’t made that call, how long it could have went? forever. It could have you could have still been there. It was it was amazing.

Timber – Yeah, I had a big stack of jerky still. And William was still catching fish with his spot and occasional grouse. I think we’d have been till spring. I honestly think Dub could have gone till spring, too. There’s no doubt he’s that kind of guy.

Joey – Yeah, it’s some of the best, most qualified contestants I’ve ever seen on any of the seasons. And we’ve watched every single season. And that’s what really made it. the best season for us is how many good quality candidates that there were that they had put on there. It was, man, when it got later on into the show, you know, because it, the first part of the season, it seemed like it was day by day. And at the end of the season, they were really having to speed things up because we thought this could go on for a long time. And then, you know, everything ended pretty quick after that.

Timber – But, uh, I guess that is the one regret I do have is that if I was going to make this decision again and do it the same way, great. Should have done it after a hundred days anyways, just to be legendary. Maybe a hundred days when we were set for it already had food for past a hundred days. Yeah. True. That is true. I love the comments that we’re getting. I’ll just have to say, you know, the support for all of us there and by for what you said about us contestants being qualified and stuff from all ten of us thank you guys

Joey – you bet yeah, I’m really curious uh one of the questions I had is Justin Williams asked how difficult it is to pick the items that you take with you

Timber – it’s pretty difficult because you don’t stop to think the winner never boils down to, it’s not determined by what tin items he takes. The winner could win with a different ten items. That’s clear, you know, but you don’t stop to think that in advance, you know, you’ve got to take tin items and what you’re stuck thinking on is this fact, you know, you could walk out with tin items into the McKinsey Delta up there, and you could find a spot where those tin items have worked perfectly. No matter what you choose, you could find a spot, but not but not when you’re limited like on a loan to one spot of territory, then you can’t pick your spot. So, you better have chosen, right. But you can’t, you can’t know anyways, you can’t know if you, if fish hooks are going to work or not work. You can’t know if you’re going to need that big saw or not need that big salt where you go. So, it’s a real crap shoot and it’s a lot of stress.

Joey – That’s true. And this was the first, this was the first season where they showed how they pick the spots where you go up and you pick the and it shows you where you are. It’s totally random.

Timber – Yeah, it’s totally random.

Joey – And it’s so neat to see where everybody goes. And, you know, since we’ve got on that, talking about the gear, I wanted to, of course, we love gear. If you know us, you see that, you know, our vehicles, we’re gearheads. We’re super gear people. I like it. Was it a grueling decision? How long did it take you to pick out your ten things?

Timber – Well, I guess… It took the whole time. I mean, you know, from the time I heard back from them and they said, we want to hear more about you. It was a few months and I was I was stressing out about it for all those for all those months. But then really, when it comes down to the location that you find out about location, you have about a month. So that month is really stressful. But there’s one saving grace. You can you can bring one or two other things to the base camp with you. And then switch it out and select the ten items finally there. And that’s a real saving grace. So, I took salt with me as something that maybe this will be one of my ten items. Turns out in the end that would have been good because that’s where I lost all the weight, I lost looking skinny. It was all salt with the hydration.

Joey – Wow. I never would have thought of that. My wife, she says, I don’t know how they eat without salt. I don’t know how they eat without salt. They don’t salt anything out that they even eat if the food doesn’t taste, have any flavor.

Timber – Well, special message to your wife then. For the first few days, eating pike boiled with no salt was horrible. And then I woke up one day and it tasted good and it stayed that way to the end.

Joey – Wow. Uh, and I knew, I knew Michael was going to ask this. Uh, Michael’s a good friend of ours. He makes his own knives. And, I know, being a bush crafter, you probably have your favorite, kind of knife. What’s your favorite survival bushcraft knife?

Timber – You know, Michael, I’m trying to build what will be my favorite knife. Uh, it’s, I get a knife every time and then I’m like I just wish something little was different about it but in the end it’s just because I like knives I’m really into them it’s not like it would require a special knife to do the bushcraft stuff because you know you can do it all with a Swiss army knife or something simple but I’m always after the pursuit of like that one little bit better thing and so I’m trying to make a knife right now I’m not great at making knives and I’m trying to design some stuff but basically what I do most of my bushcraft with is a is a BenchMade folding pocket knife Adamus 275. That’s typically my knife.

Tony – Wow. Yeah. Michael makes some incredible knives. Yeah. Joey has like out of all the ones he’s made. Joey has the biggest collection.

Timber – Yeah. Oh, man. The biggest customer. We could we could talk knives then. Yeah. Can I answer this question coming up on the screen right here? You bet. That’d be salt. The eleventh item would be salt.

Joey – For the hydration or the flavor?

Timber – Hydration, hydration.

Tony – Yeah. Oh, wow. And that, that is going to be, uh, one of my, uh, that’s going to come up here in just a little bit, but yeah, I was going to, I was going to say, I’ve got a question about, you know, and we, that’s, we can, if I’m jumping out of, out of order here, let me know. But I was kind of curious how you prepared your body for this.

Timber – Yeah. Um, I had thought maybe I’ll prepare my body kind of like Juan Pablo and try to put on a bunch of weight. and I knew right away that that won’t work for me because I can’t put on weight that that easily um so I took a ton of protein I did gain around five pounds over my normal weight but at the time I was working really hard like twelve-hour days on this job site, we were, I was sweating, we were doing black roof metal for the last two weeks before I went and it was, I just sweat it. I would lose, I would feel like I lose a pound a day and I’d come back and just try to slam an enormous protein smoothie in the evening. Um, so what, what I think though, it changed my mentality about it. The, the lead survival consultant, Dave is always going on about this. I think he would, wouldn’t mind me saying this. He wants to see people do this type of challenge. without relying on the eleventh item of extra weight that is an eleventh item make no mistake that’s an eleventh item yeah um and he wants to see somebody walk in with five ten pounds over and be able to do the whole thing just with what you get from the land and I think after going through it I think that what people need to do to prepare their bodies is just make your body strong and hard you know make your joints resilient so whatever you can be like mountain climbing and you know stuff like that better than gym work with weights and stuff like that. I don’t know. I don’t know how that can, how that benefits the joints. It could even make them more vulnerable possibly, but like mountain climbing and hiking and stuff like that, whatever you can do in advance to make your body like as resilient and in shape as possible, I think is a better strategy because I do think I’m an example that you can get to the end of a loan just fine. without having taken that eleventh item of fifty or sixty pounds of belly fat with you. Now, I’m not dissing anybody who’s done this strategy because both are perfectly viable strategies. But I think it’s just my advice for people would be to be in to be in stronger shape more and don’t necessarily gain all the weight. And I guess it comes from the standpoint of it’s the only strategy I could adopt because I couldn’t I couldn’t gain the weight. So, I had to live off of just what I lived from, just what I got from the land. And the medic at the end told me that there was no danger of being pulled for weight loss for me. I could have lost a lot more weight. I was still okay as far as body mass index and stuff. So, it can be done. If folks are wondering which strategy to choose, it can definitely be done without that eleventh item. And I know both the strategies are viable, but that extra weight is an eleventh item.

Tony – wow I never would have guessed you know like muscle like muscle health you know when you touched on joint you know, making sure your joints are, are good.

Timber – You know, that’s. Joints are a big deal on the mental factor. I mean, there’s been contestants in the show before that were taken out because of injury there. You know, if you’re carrying around a ton of weight, your risk for injury is really up, but there’s a bigger risk to it in my book. well, firstly, the discomfort, if you have aching joints all the time can really work on you mentally. And that can, that can compound over time. But I think the biggest risk for, um, a more sedentary strategy like a Juan Pablo might have done. He has a special body for that. The risk to the rest of us would be our digestive systems. And we’ve seen that happen now this season. If the digestive system is used to just taking this huge quantities of a certain type of food to bulk up weight, and then it’s just using off of the weight, and then it’s trying to transition to berries, roots, and other stuff, I think that it’s a high risk of being thrown into digestive shock, which can cause possibly the constipation and different things. I’m not a medical professional. I’m just guessing at this. And I thought about this before I left, and I thought maybe it’s a good thing that I have to work on this job because it just made my joints and muscles, it worked there more than anything. I don’t know if that answers the question.

Joey – You lost quite a bit of weight on the show. And I’ve seen several people interviewed after the show that said with all the weight that they lost, the things that they did to their body on the show, it’s taken them years to recover from that. Did you feel that way when you got back? Did it take a long time to recover?

Timber – There’s two phases of it or two aspects of it. And the answer is yes, it did take a long time. The weight, like in about a week, I looked just like I look right now as far as weight goes because it was water weight. Right. But then with my digestion, I came back and I did have pizza and other things like that, and it tore me up. It took me for a rodeo, man, and it was terrible. And it’s still not quite right. It’s hard. And the teeth, the teeth are bad.

Joey – Wow. That’s probably the one thing that I would have missed the most would have been toothpaste.

Timber – Oh, man. Yeah. Now, spruce tea.

Tony – You wouldn’t have missed toothpaste. You would have missed coffee. Spruce tea. Coffee would have been number one.

Timber – Yeah. That spruce tea can be a pretty good mouthwash, tooth cleanser. It can help you there. Toothpaste. I just forgot that it existed eventually out there. I don’t think you’d miss it for long.

Joey – Yeah, probably so. Your mind goes other places trying to survive, I’m sure. Did you struggle with any physical pain while you were there?

Timber – I injured my back pushing a tree down because I had huge trees to deal with. So, I had a tree that was about a foot across and I got it hung up in another tree and I lifted it in a stupid way and I injured my back. And for two weeks… That really gave me a lot of pain. Otherwise, I really didn’t have any physical pain to speak of out there. I’m prone to headaches, but I just didn’t get them out there. I don’t know why.

Joey – The one thing that I wondered about on the show, and I’m pretty sure this is not a behind-the-scenes thing, but how spread out was everything between your shelter where you hunted, where you killed the moose, where you fished? How much walking did you do in a day?

Timber – Uh, I did too much walk and that’s where Dub was pretty smart. Having a shelter kind of halfway in, in the river channel. And in a way it was kind of, I know we had mud to walk through, but mine was a little farther from the river. Cause I had to kind of go up the bank and go on down through. So, about a hundred yards from my shelter, every time I went to get a pot of water, I washed my hands, which you ended up doing a thousand times day, you know, if you’re dealing with fish, you and other stuff. And then, um, from there’s about another, thirty yards from that trail over to my food cash. That was okay. Um, but where I killed the moose, I calculated it up. I believe I walked about thirty miles total with, uh, carrying out all that moose back and forth, back to camp and getting it all back to camp. Um, by the time I got the hide and the head back and had everything done, I, I think that was probably about thirty miles in some, in some heavy terrain. So that, that really took some energy out of me. Yeah. All the while having to watch your back for a predator. Yeah, I was a bloody snack. I mean, come day three, no, at the end of day two, because I got the rest of it carried back at the end of day two of the kill, I was so drenched with blood down my rain jacket from carrying meat on my back. I could smell it. I smelled like a caveman that just climbed out from inside a mammoth. I smelled like that. A grizzly would have thought I was great.

Joey – Oh yeah. They called you lunch for sure. One of the things that probably made you one of the most popular contestants all time was the way that you pass the time. And that’s one of the biggest things that the, one of the things that I think about the most is when I’m watching the show is you’re out there with no TV, no cell phone, no way to communicate with the outside world. It’s just you and nature and passing the time and how you pass the time and is one of the most incredible things to me to think about. So, uh, did, did it seem like at times that time would fly by or, or did it drag all the time? Did you have to constantly keep yourself doing something all the time?

Timber – I think that, I think it dragged more than I would care to admit. Um, I’d like to hear from the other contestants someday on this topic, too. But time is elastic to me. You know, there were times that just flew by. But after about day, day fifty at really after about day forty, time didn’t fly by anymore because it’s getting dark, you know, and it’s most of the day is darkness ended up being just about three hours per day of twilight. It’s just twilight, you know, and then that’s it. Twenty-one hours then of pitch darkness, I think, in the sleeping bag. So that dragged that really that really dragged. And then You can’t even do the guitar songs and the crafting and stuff once that you’re in sleeping bag, just, just trying to dwell in your mind. Um, so I think, I think, I think the time really dragged at that time, but then you kind of come to peace with that towards as the, as the day, AD mark went by. And then those, those last few days, I started feeling like I needed. that much quiet time as what I was having to sleep. I felt like I had to have it weird

Joey – you were one of the best I’ve ever seen on any season at finding things to do you made a guitar uh you actually made a music video with your guitar and you can see that on your YouTube channel I hope everybody will go watch that that is phenomenal thanks man you made games you danced you sang you did I don’t know, video things that was entertaining. You just seemed like you were having fun, enjoying your time there. Do you feel like having a camera around and the requirement to film everything really helped pass the time, keep you busy?

Timber – Oh, yeah. Yeah, that camera became Wilson for me. I needed that camera. Yeah. There were times when I would, I would be eating fried fish because one thing that didn’t make the show at all, it was that I got golden crispy fried fish that I did. For full, I had, I had a meal of fried fish. It fried in moose lard and it was all crispy and just delicious. Um, and there were, there would be times that I would feel so ashamed of having it that good, you know, with the fried fish. that I would feel embarrassed to be filming it, to present it to her. And I would try to turn the camera off. And then it just felt uncomfortable to not be sharing that experience with anybody, you know, and I’d have to turn the camera back on. So, the camera really helped. It helped in, it helped having to think I’m going to do something for the camera. So, then I’d come up with a game or something, but it also helped processing my inner self, because if I’m just in the wilderness, I’m not even going to talk to myself about the dark things of the past or this or that or whatever. You know, I’m just going to I’m just going to leave it in the well where it is. And then, you know, I don’t process it. But having to talk about stuff to the camera constantly caused me to accidentally just process things that I didn’t even realize. And that went in really that really became part of my transformation story, I guess.

Joey – Wow. That’s so cool. Let’s talk about your shelter for a minute. Tell us the idea, the vision you had behind a place that you would spend, end up spending, like you said, about ninety percent of your day. You didn’t move into it right off the bat. In fact, you used it as a smoker before you moved into it. It was a very nice shelter. Moose horns on the front, you know, just a superb place. amazing place um but talk about your vision behind what you wanted to do and how you wanted it to be.

Timber – ah thanks man good old Fort Moosehead I missed that place yeah that was my home okay so I didn’t envision building that like that when I got there, I envisioned doing dub shelter pretty much where you dig into a cut bank And then you dig the fireplace into the bank and the chimney out behind it. That’s my favorite thing to do with the Bushcraft shelter. It’s the shelter I auditioned with to get on the show. I did exactly that. And then Dub did it. That’s what I wanted to do. But I just didn’t have any of the ingredients. I didn’t have a bank that could be used like that. The one bank I had is where you see me catching fish. And it’s facing north and it’s very low. It would have been ten degrees colder than everywhere else. Um, and I have, uh, any decent poles to use, you know, small poles and stuff like that. So, I just said, you know what, I’m going to cut these big old trees and just make a lean too. So, I stressed out about how to do the fireplace. And as you know, that caused me problems with the smoke for a while. Um, my whole plan was to cut into a bank and, and build a fireplace that way. Um, if I’d had any rocks out of, of course, built a rock chimney or something like that. But what I ended up doing, I don’t know if you can ever see it on there. I made the back wall, that shelter where it leaned outwards. And then I plastered that silty mud from the river on there. It’s sandy silt from the river. It’s the only non-flammable material around there. And if it dried, if you plastered it on vertical and it dried out, it just sloughed right off like sand. So, I made that wall lean and plastered it all on the wall this way. And that’s how I had that firewall on the back and it caused me problems for a while, but in, in the end things got better and the smoke drafted better and it was okay. That, that didn’t, that didn’t send me home or anything. Yeah. Oh, that’s what I love for that shelter. Good old Fort moose head, man. It was a, it was a home. It was a home with a, with a door that didn’t even squeak when it opened.

Joey – That was so cool. We got a few questions I want to get here to, what was your most memorable moment or event of the show?

Timber – Uh, Killing the moose was one of the most memorable. I think catching a fish on the moose bone was equal in my mind, even though it’s just a fish. But that victory was equal in my mind. And then there was this particular moment that I built my shelter, tamped the chinking into the cracks, and I stopped. And I had this overwhelming certainty that I can’t explain that my little brother could see what I was doing. and that god could see what I was doing and that he was happy and that meant that was at least as big as killing the moose to me it was a moment like it’s one of those intangibles that you can’t really relate you know um but that was those were the things from the show that were the biggest to me.

Joey – Yeah, you talk about your brother a lot on there and about how his life ended way too soon. But a lot of that memory was a lot of the motivation you had to keep going. You talked about him a lot.

Timber – Yeah, yeah. You know, I hope, you know, the end of the show when I leave, there’s a special feature on the History Channel website. And the producer asked me, what do I think my brother would have thought of, of my time out there? And I’d encourage anybody, if you’re, if you’re interested in any more content, just get on the history channel website and watch, watch that little snippet. I meet my wife in the camp there and stuff, but I, I was thinking about my little brother from beginning to end really. And, uh, I think he, I think he really would have loved it. Yeah. I think he really did love it.

Joey – How do you, how do you think the show changed you?

Timber – Um, it’s hard for us to self-evaluate a lot. My wife is here. She could maybe speak to this. Those words would be more meaningful than my words, but I guess I would say that aloneness showed me what’s more valuable in life. it showed me more about me uh I really enjoy quiet a lot more I used to talk too much just to cover up the fact that I’m an introvert and full of anxiety I was I used to just talk too much but now I don’t need to do that I can just I can just sit and be silent for hours and just be totally satisfied and uh also I think that one way it changed me was Just coming away with a certainty that I’d seen a piece of God, at least a small piece. I hope that sticks with me forever because, oh my gosh, it was really something. And what I mean by that is not any visual thing. I just mean that his hand was in the experience. God was good to me out there. People said I was lucky, but I instead think that God did some good stuff for me. Yeah. Wow. I think you do it for anybody. I’m not special. Please understand, everyone. I’m not I’m not special by this. I’m not God’s favorite person. I’m a I’m a hooligan. But I just think God do wonderful stuff for anyone.

Joey – I started putting on the bottom of the screen your Web site. I want to encourage people to go there because you have some blog articles on there that are incredible. And one of the things that you write on there about you talk about the most critical survival skill that you can have. Yeah. And you say it’s you know, it’s not this. It’s not that it’s hard work. And on the show, you prove that you worked so hard every day. There was only a day or two in all the time that you were there where you were sick. You didn’t feel good that you didn’t do much. But the rest of the time you were always doing something. always busy

Timber – that’s true that’s true. I worked too hard from a from a from a strategy standpoint I worked too hard but from my own standpoint I didn’t want to miss a dang thing from the experience you know I didn’t want to I didn’t want there to be a snowflake fall and I didn’t see it

Joey – yeah well there’s there’s certain restrictions on this interview that we had to go through with the History Channel but um I know you can’t talk about everything uh but, you do have a book coming out where you talk about, so much more. And I want to encourage everybody, Memoir of a Wild Man is coming out. So, tell us what we can expect this book and how we can get a copy.

Timber – Well, the cool thing is, I was just working on the last formatting and stuff today for this book. I think it’s safe to say that it’ll be available worldwide on Amazon in a week I think I can make that that’s the deadline I’m going to make myself keep and it will make it happen there’s still a couple more read-throughs to do to try to catch any typos and do little formatting things on the computer that I’m not any good at so it takes me extra time um but uh I hope everybody will get it. It’ll be on Amazon worldwide. It’ll also be available through me if you want autographed copies. But what’s in this book basically is stuff like… I push the boundaries hard about how much can be said about a loan. Now, the History Channel did have to go through it, and there might have been a case or two where they’re like, look, you sure you want to say this much? But they were really good people about it. They don’t put the kibosh on us too heavy. I’ve said exactly what it’s like and what the rules were and all that in this book. I’ve said exactly what the whole experience feels like, tastes like, and sounds like. So basically, it’s that from beginning to end days one through eighty-three blow by blow. I wrote it down as soon as I came back. But it’s also sprinkled throughout there is all these weird, random and crazy stories that are my experiences that have like flavor this whole alone thing. And so, if you’re interested, if anybody’s interested in like. what kind of strange creature I am and what kind of strange life I’ve lived. It’s in there. It’s in there. And there’s a lot of a lot of weird and crazy stories in there. It’s a deep dive. And so, I really hope that folks will just enjoy it. I get it for Christmas gifts this this winter for any alone fan that you guys know. So, I’d be deeply honored. You know, if you guys go grab this, look for it in one week on Amazon.

Joey – Memoir of a wild man. So, when we say we can also get it from you, will you have it available on your website? Is that what you’re talking about on your store?

Timber – Yeah. Now I’ve, I have yet to research how’s the best way I can send out autograph copies, but I promise I will make it happen. So, everybody that wants autograph copy, get with me and I promise I’ll make it happen. I’ll have to charge something for shipping on that if I just send them out from my house, but I’ll definitely make it happen. I’ll, of course, get a big bulk order of them, and then I’ll just sign them and put a personal note in them if anybody wants and send it out. But I’ll have that spelled out on my website. I can’t hardly keep up with this website stuff and all. I’d rather go out and just drop sticks and kill a deer.

Joey – Oh, we feel you. We feel you right there. Yeah. Is there anything you filmed they didn’t show that you wish they had shown?

Timber – I wish they’d have shown me boiling the jerky. That’s for sure because it would have just answered so many questions. I wish they’d have shown my stack of frozen fish in that food cache that I made and how safe it kept the food from that wolverine that tried to get in there. I wish they’d have shown that a little bit. And then I wish they’d have shown how I got that fish back in the river. There’s a fish that got away on a big stringer pole, right? And then I got the fish back. Well, that was pretty incredible, that event. That’s in my book, but I wish they’d have shown that more specifically. Parts of it had to be cut just the way they had to story tell amongst all the contestants going through there.

Joey – Yeah. Wow. Cool. Well, I want to encourage everybody to follow Timber on Instagram, Facebook. It’s @timbercleghorn. And YouTube, on your YouTube, you can look up TimberClegHorn as well. On your website, www.TimberClegHorn.com. It has a lot of things on there. You’re about your blog. You can contact your upcoming events and stuff. I love that you are not afraid to talk about your faith. And I appreciate you sharing that on here. I greatly admire that you’re someone who generally genuinely cares about others. And I love that. I would love to attend one of your events that you hopefully will put on in the future. Men’s retreat survival deal or whatever I think it would be cool to hang out you just seem like a cool guy

Timber – Well that that means a lot to me man and I’ve I know I’m just a bozo who, you know, I’m just a strange little creature. I’m nothing special, but I would be greatly honored just to meet you guys. You know, as I as I said, I’ve followed you guys on Instagram. I see your truck rigs. I think, man, that really helped me in Tajikistan. I’m going to set one up like that to roll on these humanitarian missions. And, you know, but I just love to meet you all.

Joey – There he is. Dub gone wild.

Timber – Hey, Dub, man. I miss you, bro.

Joey – You can be next on here, Dub. Contact us and holler at me. We would love to have you on here. Let’s do it. Love me some Dub. We always, the number one question that people always ask, and I know Michael Pruitt is doing this just to get under my skin. Um, this is the, this is the one question that everybody asks. And I was going to ask you, what was the one food that you missed the most, that you missed the most while you were out there?

Timber – Oh, um, one thing, you know, uh, I thought I missed pizza the most, but I dreamed about chocolate cake.

Joey – Really? Chocolate cake? Yeah. That is awesome.

Timber – I was going through a church line in my dream, taking armloads of chocolate cake, stashing it in my vehicle, stashing it in cabinets, stashing it in the nursery. Then I got caught, and they said I was a thief, and I woke up.

Joey – Oh, that’s great. That is so good. You should put that in the book to make sure that’s in there. Well, I was wondering about that because, you know, you know what your favorite foods are. But when you’re put in a position like that, you really don’t know what your favorite foods are until you figure out what you’re missing the most. And, you know, I watched the video that you did of your first cup of coffee. When you got back in the tent and I was like, I can’t imagine going. Ninety days without coffee.

Tony – You can’t hardly go nine hours without coffee.

Timber – I think it was eight months for me because I cut it out as soon as they emailed me that I might get on the show. I cut coffee right then because I I kind of get dependent on coffee and then I get headaches really bad when I trim it out. So, I did like eight months without it. And I hope to never do that again.

Joey – Yeah, that just sounds that horrible. Wow. That’d be terrible. Yeah. That’s what happens to people when they don’t go to heaven. They just cut coffee out rather than that.

Timber – Yeah, you know, hell is the absence of coffee.

Joey – Exactly.

Timber – That’s in the Bible somewhere. Third Timothy, seventeen nine.

Joey – Well, man, we probably need to get off here. I know you need to get back to your family, but I just wanted to tell you I greatly appreciate you coming on here. We have had the best possible time that we possibly could have. I just wanted to get to know you a little better and get to visit with you one-on-one in person, and it has been such a truly blessing to me and Tony. I guarantee it.

Tony – It’s been amazing. Big thank you to your wife and family for sharing you with us this evening. We enjoyed your time. our time together.

Timber – So they say, thank you for sharing me. She’s right here. Thank you guys. I’ve really, I’ve really loved this as well. You guys seem like my kind of folks and I’ve absolutely loved it.

Joey – You bet. Well, we wish you the best and we can’t wait to see everything that you’re doing. We want to support you in your humanitarian work. So, I hope you put that out there and let us know what you’re doing so we can get the word out there and support you in every way we can. Thank you. And if you ever need somebody to go with you, I’m in. I just want you to know that.

Timber – That can happen. That can happen.

Tony – And if you ever want to come hang out in the Ozarks, come on.

Timber – Thank you. You know, you just… I know this is I’m stealing extra seconds here, but this is the real thing I stayed shown and they didn’t. You just keep me on to more than anything else. When I put that fish out there in the snow, you know, they just made it. They cut out the names of these countries, Afghanistan and Burma. And I was like, children are starving in these countries. You know, I want this to mean something for that. But, you know, they had to cut out the names of countries. And so that it just came across really as kind of weak sauce. But I’m telling you, like I can I can I can hook you up to get into these places, you know, if you want, if you want to be there.

Joey – That’d be cool. Well, we need to we need to get off here and cut it down. But I want to appreciate everybody who joined in and joined in on the chat. We really appreciate y’all being here. This will be live on all podcast platforms as soon as I can get it done. First thing in the morning, as soon as I get to the office. So, it’s going to be an amazing, amazing time. So, thank you again for being on here. Thank you for everybody who listened. We hope you have a wonderful week. Make sure and follow Timber Cleghorn on all his socials and his website. On behalf of Tony and myself, we appreciate you being on here. And we’ll see us. Thanks, guys. Same time next week.  Here we go!

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