Silver Valley veterinary tech, mother takes another chance at ‘Naked and Afraid,’ this time with XL risks
Some people are born to be caretakers.
Lynsey McCarver knows she “mommed” the other members of her team on the newest season of “Naked and Afraid XL” and she was happy to do it, despite occasional grumbling from Nate Martinez and Terra Short.
“I don’t think Terra liked me momming them so much, but they all kind of get used to it,” McCarver says as she strolls along a walking trail near Smelterville, Idaho. “I’m going to mom you because that’s my job and I don’t have kids to mom out here (in the jungle).
“So if you need cuddling or your back scratched, if you got a big bug bite, I’ll scratch your back and cuddle. You need me to hold some stuff for you, I’ll hold some stuff for you.”
McCarver, a 36-year-old veterinary technician in Kellogg, hasn’t done one stint on the Discovery Channel’s “Naked and Afraid.”
No, no … she didn’t get enough after 21 days of being naked in the jungle. She went back for another try, this time aiming for 40 days.
“Naked and Afraid” is a reality TV series with a simple premise: Strand two strangers, usually a man and a woman, in a remote wilderness environment for 21 days with no food, water or clothing. The participants must rely on their survival skills and cooperation to last three weeks and journey to an extraction point.
The “XL” version is a spinoff, in which the stakes are raised to a 40-day challenge in some of the world’s most unforgiving locations. The 12 participants are split into groups of three. The additional teammate, the length of the challenge and the harsh environment all combine to intensify the physical and mental strain on the contestants.
Who needs a man?
McCarver didn’t seek out the chance to be on “Naked and Afraid.” The show came looking for her.
Producers had seen videos she posted in a North Idaho women’s hiking group on Facebook, including clips of her gutting a deer and foraging in the wilds of North Idaho.
“I posted this one video of me holding up my bloody deer heart and saying, ‘ … Men, we don’t need ’em,’ and later that day, I had somebody reach out to me,” McCarver said.
That somebody was a talent scout for “Naked and Afraid.”
McCarver thought she was getting scammed.
The talent scout convinced McCarver otherwise, though, and got her to apply. McCarver compiled a package of videos of her and her three kids out in the woods building a shelter in the snow, starting a fire and eating edible weeds, a knack she learned from her mom, Deanne Fitzgerald, who runs a community garden in Kellogg.
Next thing she knew, she was being offered a fill-in spot for a woman who bailed out of a “Naked and Afraid” episode to be filmed in Colorado.
McCarver said no. If she was going to do this crazy thing, she was going to have a challenge meant for her, not one she joined as a second thought.
That ended up being in Africa.
The things that matter
What happens when you put two strangers in some of the most extreme environments on Earth – no food, no water, no clothes and only one survival item each – and tell them to survive on their own for 21 days?
Their lives change. At least McCarver’s did.
“I found out who I was out there and just realized what was important to me, what wasn’t important to me,” she said.
Her husband wasn’t thrilled with her newfound confidence and independence, and they divorced. Really, it was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back; the divorce, McCarver said, was a long time coming.
She also changed jobs, finding her way into veterinary medicine. She’d gone to school for nursing but had to drop out of college because she got pregnant.
“Being a caregiver of some sort has always been what I like to do, whether it’s animals or people,” she said. “It’s hard work mentally. You have to go in and help assist with a euthanasia and then 10 minutes later turn around and put a smile on your face for puppy vaccines.
“I’ve struggled with that part of it but going to work every day, I feel like I make a difference when I come home.”
There she was, reveling in this new life, when the call came for “Naked and Afraid XL.”
“I was sitting on my couch and I was like, ‘ … I’ve just handled every single thing that life has possibly thrown at me – getting a divorce, switching jobs, getting a new career as a vet tech and buying a house – and it just happened,” McCarver said.
“I was literally sitting in that moment and I get an email that says, ‘Oh hey, we’re thinking about casting you in the new season of ‘XL,’ are you interested?’ And I was like, you know what? Now’s a good time. Let’s go.”
Naked and totally embarrassed
When McCarver jumped out of the truck in Africa and stripped off all her clothes, she was mortified.
She couldn’t believe what she was about to do.
“I was completely embarrassed,” she said. “I thought, ‘Oh, what am I doing?’ But I was like, ‘Well, I’m here, I guess I’m doing it.’ But it got to the point where I actually craved it. It’s a weird crave, a weird kind of suffering.”
But that’s just been how her life has worked out.
Her parents divorced when she was a teenager, the family battling through her father’s drug addictions.
So she learned how to suffer early in life.
“As an adult, I tried to push all of that away and push all of that stuff into the back of my brain, but being out there (in the jungle) forces me to handle my stuff and forces me to deal with myself,” she said. “I was able to work out my own inner demons and my own problems through extreme suffering and I feel like it made me a better person. I feel more empowered.”
Look at me now
Then came “XL” in the Badlands of Colombia.
She jumped out of the truck with more confidence, tearing off her clothes and ready to go.
She’d not met Short and Martinez before, but they became comfortable with each other right away.
Short is a “Naked and Afraid” veteran, appearing on Season 14 and “Naked and Afraid: Solo.” They made history as the first transgender woman to embark on the show’s 21-day challenge in 2022.
“I felt more open this time,” McCarver said. “Terra is nonbinary and transgender. So my biggest thought is if Terra is doing this and getting out and showing all the world their goodies, this should be cake for me.
“So I was more excited I think to just get naked and get into it and just do it. The first time I was very standoffish and very shy and nervous, but this time, I was kind of, like, ‘Let’s do this.’ ”
Primal mode
If one were to embark on a challenge to survive the wilds of North Idaho, they might encounter bears, wolves, coyotes and gnarly rain or snowstorms.
Head to the Badlands of Colombia, though, and survival skills are tested by pumas, caimans and other variants of crocodile, poison dart frogs and fer-de-lance, the most dangerous snake of Central and South America that causes more human deaths than any other American reptile
.
“I really don’t think there’s anything that can prepare you for something like that,” McCarver said. “I did a lot of studying. I studied what was venomous, what I could eat, what I couldn’t eat, but I feel like I faced all these fears within the first two days of being out there.”
The bugs were biting her everywhere, snakes were slithering around, and she and her team were plodding through “nasty, murky” water.
“Your brain kind of shuts off and goes into this weird primal mode,” she says. “Everything that I thought that I struggled with in real life, like my job, my kids, you know, figuring out how to get them to sports, all of this stuff, it just kind of goes to the back of your brain and you have to pull something else out. I don’t even think I knew this part of me existed.”
It truly was live or die.
‘Why are you here?’
A team of producers is watching the participants, ready to deliver medical care when necessary, and the participants can “tap out” whenever they want.
McCarver is determined to keep secret whether she or any of her teammates tapped out, but she warns they each reach a bit of a breaking point.
McCarver hopes her moment doesn’t end up on the cutting room floor.
“We had no food and our fire kept going out and it was raining and we had a flood coming through our shelter,” she said. “Even our raised bed was halfway under water. It had to have been at least 12 hours. I was sitting there in this fetal position, shivering and shaking and everything.
“All I could think was, ‘Why are you here? Your kids need you, you’re not there for them.’ All of these bad, negative thoughts that I wouldn’t normally think all of a sudden are just piling on me like crazy.”
But there was one thought that terrified her even more: tapping out.
“It was my biggest fear,” she said. “I didn’t want to be a quitter … I was in sports in high school and ran track and even went to state. My dad always said, ‘We don’t say quit. We don’t know how to quit in this house.’ I was never allowed to quit.”
Her jungle family
McCarver has lost touch with Darvil McBride, her “Naked and Afraid” partner featured in Season 13, Episode 2, entitled “Two is a Crowd.”
She doesn’t want that to happen with Martinez and Short.
Short has become like a sister, McCarver said, and one with whom she didn’t always see eye to eye.
“When you’re in that kind of situation, where you’re hungry and everything else, like of course, no one’s gonna get along all the time,” she said. “Of course, there’s gonna be issues, and we get snippy with each other.”
They and Martinez are, however, her jungle family.
“I still talk to all of them,” McCarver said. “We have our own message group called the Wolfpack. I am forever friends with them and I wish I could have that same kind of relationship with Darvil.”
Little valley, big world
The world in the Silver Valley of North Idaho seems a lot smaller to McCarver now.
And that’s OK.
She’s ready to go the second producers call with a spot and hang out with her crazy little jungle family. Maybe not an XL, since 40 days – 55 in total – was a little too long to be away from her three kids.
But she looks forward to feeling in sync with her teammates again.
“I just feel like we all kind of don’t quite fit into society or there’s something that’s just not quite meshing up for us,” she said. “We’re all looking for that bigger adventure or for something that’s missing in all of our lives.
“I feel like we’ve all been through something traumatic in our past that has pushed us to this point of why we need to do it.”
The Silver Valley is base camp, even though she feels like there’s something “more” out there.
“I like the quiet,” she said. “I like small towns. I’m not a city person, but I am all about traveling and seeing more parts of the world.”
She wants her children to understand there’s more out there for them too.
“We have a lot more heart-to-heart talks since I came back,” McCarver said. “I want to understand them more and how their brains work and push them, push them to be better.
“I think they’re wonderful as they are, but I want them to see that they can do anything and I want them to be the best versions of themselves.”