WRITTEN AGED 15, NOW 18. A MORE UP TO DATE VERSION COMING SOON!!!
My name is Evan and I want to tell you about the last 15 years of my life. My Story is a bit of a unique one.
All Boys are born with a love for adventure in them. If you look at history it comes from a very distant relation to the smelly, dirty, sabertooth tiger hunting, spear-wielding cave man of which teen boys still mimic their unique language to this day made up of grunts and groans.
We may share a relation with these primitive humans and maybe some more than others, but I’d say I share a bit more than a few genes with these hairy humans from the stone age.
My life has been full of peaks as high as Mount Everest and troughs as low as the depths of the ocean, a journey from struggles to strengths, negativity to positivity and from a downward dive to learning to thrive.
For me, I can only really remember as far back as to where I live now. Before here my family lived in a two bedroom brick and mortar house in the Cotswolds. But when I was three we moved into the Big Blue Bus and set out on an adventure that my parents tell me they called “For Evan’s Sake”.
Why was it called that, well that’s a whole other story in itself!
Our first stop was a farm/campsite in Sussex. We didn’t know it yet but this place was to change our lives forever. Dad had rung up the farmer a few weeks before and arranged for us to stay for a couple of weeks whilst we got used to our new home and smaller living space. When we arrived the farmer showed us where to park in the field, it was February, the ground was wet and muddy and slowly we sank into it. Two weeks passed by, then three, then a month and now 12 years. Our home which had been built on wheels had got stuck in the mud and we’ve lived on that farm ever since.
Life couldn’t get any better for me, mud, mud, mud for all the eye could see and great climbing trees.
In the first few weeks I turned from a toddler to a feral boy and I stayed this way for years to come.
I’m home-ed, I’ve never been to school and probably never will. Till the age of about 11 any opportunity or free time was spent outdoors. When I was just a young lad the wild was my playground but as I grew older it turned into a classroom and now into my college. Where messing around turned into learning about what I love…… SURVIVAL.
A big part of my childhood was the gang I was part of, we called ourselves The Bear Gorrillas! We were a lot like a bunch of outlaws roaming round trying to find as many crazy outdoor things to do as we could, we were wild. To become a member you had to go through an initiation, you had to eat a worm and drink your own pee, we had 10 members!!! We would light fires, build treehouses, camp out under the stars, float rafts on the flooded fields in winter, play games in the woods at night, set up ropes and traverse across an old moat and declare war on visiting campers. The Big Blue Bus, now abandoned, became our club house and we met up at every opportunity to hang out and plan our next adventure.
Since we got stuck in the mud and to the present day we’ve lived in some amazing but rather unusual homes. We lived in the Blue Bus for a couple of years but Dad then decided to build us a tiny house to live in called an Izba. An Izba is a Russian word meaning ‘Simple Dwelling’, traditionally a log cabin built on the edge of the farmstead.
Dad is a carpenter and really creative. He’s since built a campervan on the back of an old P100, a log cabin on a 1930’s French Citroen pick up, converted a pedal powered canal boat and during lockdown built a house entirely out of junk we found lying around on the farm.
When I was nine Dad bought a wreck of a 1968 Morris Traveller and together we turned it into an amazing campervan. We’ve had lots of incredible adventures in it as a family, the most epic being the challenge we took on in 2019 where we drove 7,430 miles round coast of the UK living on a tenner a day. Again this is another story for another time!
Me and my dad have a very close relationship and bond, ultimately I trust him and he trusts me.
Throughout my life me and my dad have always loved spending time together and leaning new things. He was the person that gave me my love for being outdoors. Together we’ve been through a lot, we’ve had our misunderstandings, we’ve both got really mad with each other but we’ve always come out of those dark times and managed to keep our bond so strong.
Dad always looks out for me, he throws opportunities at me all the time, some I don’t catch and others I grab hold of. Just like the time he asked some of our friends if I could volunteer doing anything with their bushcraft company team.
My first time volunteering for them was on two week-long school camps one after the other and to my complete surprise I wasn’t just the donkey to lug the kit around they made me a Junior Instructor. Jumping in to help out on each workshop, helping the kids, making sure they were using the knives safely and even teaching and doing some demonstrations in the classes. Of course I also wheel-barrowed a lot of the kit around from 7am to 11 pm. I also had to get up at 6am to cook the whole camp breakfast. It was great and I learnt tons, not only about practical skills but also teaching and leading. Whenever I get the opportunity I still do work with them but now not only do I supervise workshops but I run my own and assist the other teachers in theirs too, oh and of course as I’m bigger and stronger I can carry much more kit around!!!!!!!!!!!
I love it. In 2019 I was given the chance to go with them on an expedition to a little village hundreds of miles into the Arctic Circle in the very north of Finland. Just to make it even better it was in February, meaning the temperature during the day was around -10 at the warmest and at night it dropped to between -22 and -27. The snow was just amazing, when you walked off the track you sunk in it up to your neck.
One day we climbed a mountain where you could see the Russian border from, we went on a long trek in a blizzard pulling all our kit in sleds, we dog sled through the frozen tree woods and slept out under the stars just in warm sleeping bags. And then staring up at the sky we watched the Northern Nights swaying brightly and flickering above us.
When we write about ourselves we can make it sound like our lives are perfect, ticka-ti-boo, so that viewers read it in the light you want to show yourself in. I’m no Charles Dickens or JK Rowling when it comes to writing, I don’t understand grammar and spelling so let’s just not mention that!!!. The main thing I have on my side, my secret weapon, is honesty. What you’ve read about me so far only tells part of my story.
My life has been one long rollercoaster, highs and lows, twists and turns and loop the loops. As a baby, then a toddler and then right through into my teens and up until now, I’ve struggled. Part of my character is that I’ve always been frustrated and negative. The best way to explain it is that I see the cup half empty and inside my head I pick out the negative points in most things, seeing things completely differently to other people, not just my family but everyone.
This, as I’m sure you can imagine, isn’t good, and you’re right, often this is just the beginning of one steep decline. There’s no end to where that could take me but I’ve painfully learnt it’s probably best not to explore down there because from past experiences all that place has shown me is misery, destruction, extreme frustration and anger. My parents at this point could see that these reactions were only just the start of something that if wasn’t stopped would destroy me and anyone close to me.
I had to do something, something to stop this dark unknown abyss swallowing me up leaving no escape route. I had to make a decision and fast – swim for my life or drown. Not only was my life on the line but if I made the wrong choice I would have ruined the strong bond that was built over a lifetime with my dad, it was only time before the inevitable would happen and our bond would disintegrate and crumble apart.
I had to do something, I couldn’t tread water forever just coping with it, every time the water got a little choppy and a wave crashed over me I’d lose a bit more energy trying to stay afloat. It was only time before the last wave would finish me off. It wouldn’t have to be a big one. I was on the edge, walking a fine line, exhausted, tired and miserable with these words on loop inside my head, swim or drown, swim or drown, swim or drown……….
Of course I want the first option but maybe I couldn’t. Maybe it was impossible for someone who from the first minute, of the first day, of the first year of their life they’ve been in the sea slowly sinking but only now did I really realise the intensity, when I was up to my neck and rapidly being pulled under.
I’m going to tell you something, that day I didn’t drown, if I had I wouldn’t be here today. But it wasn’t swimming that saved me either, it was a lifeboat, it turned up and on the deck was my dad with an arm stretched out leaning towards me, he shouted out “I’m here to help you, but you’ve got to make the first move. Grab my hand”, and so I did.
I’m not going to say something now like and I never looked back or we lived happily ever after because that would be a lie. I was used to that negative mindset and found it comfortable, time after time I’ve felt myself slip back to that cup half empty attitude.
On my own I would never have made it, I’d be at the bottom of the ocean like the Titanic. It’s legacy that lives on is that it had such potential but hit hard tough times and couldn’t cope, destroying itself, its passengers and their families lives as well.
The moment I grabbed my Dads hand and was pulled onto the lifeboat it wasn’t like “kaboom” my struggles all disappeared, they were still there, I’d just taken the first step. From there, well who knows where it’s going to lead, I guess I’m figuring that out now and I want to share my journey with the world. So if you want to join me on my expedition into the unknown pack your bags because all expeditions need a team.
Junior Survivors 