News
Porcupine, Anyone? Trish Bulinsky's Alaska Adventure
By Ryan Fennell
MIDDLETOWN - Planning a trip to visit a friend who'd recently moved to Alaska, Middletown resident Trish Bulinsky, 37, was searching the Internet for things to do in Anchorage when an application to participate in a reality television show caught her interest.
Bulinsky decided to fill out the application for the Discovery Channel television program Out of The Wild: The Alaska Experiment.
The show's aim was to bring nine people together and drop them off in the Alaskan wilderness with limited survival skills and track them as they attempted to hike back to civilization. "It was pretty accidental," Bulinsky said. "It was almost like a joke that I filled (the application) out. I did it very much in jest (with) the answers that I gave, and to my surprise they liked them."
They also liked the video that Bulinsky's nine-year-old son shot of her. She was one of nine people chosen overall and one of two from New Jersey who won out over 100,000 applicants. She was flown out to Los Angeles where she and her fellow "volunteers" received a crash course in survival training.
"It was kind of unique that there were over 100,000 applicants and two of them chosen were from New Jersey," said Bulinsky. "I thought that was pretty special."
In September 2008, she and the eight other volunteers boarded a small plane and were dropped off on a lake in the middle of the Alaskan wilderness to begin their survival mission.
Unlike other reality television shows, there was no prize to be won for making it through to the end.
"There was no million dollars, there was no surprise gift at the end," Bulinsky said. "It was pretty unique to see people working together when there's no prize. The only prize was what you take from it yourself."
"My husband said that it was my luck I would get picked for a reality show with no prize, and it's not on an island," Bulinsky added.
Bulinsky and the other participants were allowed to bring limited survival supplies and were given basic maps that directed them to several campsites along the hike.
"We hiked based on the map we were given at the time from camp to camp and each one was different and some of them offered different things such as one place we were left some rice, another place some whiskey, and another lentils," Bulinsky said.
"It was a collaborative effort between the five men and four women," Bulinsky said. "We basically had to work together to make fire, keep warm, and we had to hunt everyday to get our own food. We didn't have any help from the production crew."
Bulinsky said that she and the other participants had to carry approximately 60 pounds in supplies during the hikes in handmade back packs and that the cold and lack of food became a major issue.
"It was very, very cold," Bulinsky said. "Food was a big issue because when you metabolize your fat cells, you can't keep warm. The less and less we had to eat the more and more we felt the cold."
Bulinsky said that they had a shotgun and homemade snares to use for hunting and trapping as well as limited fishing supplies.
"I did a lot of hunting personally," Bulinsky added. "There was the native bird, the big meal was porcupine. We had a mouse and some squirrels and a whole lot of blueberries."
Although it was a rough experience, Bulinsky said she would do it again "in a heartbeat."
"If they called me tonight I would be packed tomorrow," said Bulinsky, who grew up in Port Monmouth and now lives in Middletown with her husband and three children. She is a school bus driver for the Middletown schools.
"I came away with a greater appreciation for family and friends and everything that I have," she said. "Just the simple things and not being stressed about the little things like traffic and long lines at the store."
