Living in the Wild for a Year with Amy and Dave Freeman

Wild Ideas Worth Living

REI Co-op

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4.7 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 5 August 2025

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Amy & Dave Freeman are modern-day explorers who have spent over two decades on human-powered wilderness expeditions. In 2010, they completed a 12,000-mile journey across North America by canoe, kayak, and dog sled. Five years later, they lived off the grid for an entire year without re-entering society. No stores, no electricity, no roads, just the two of them, a nylon tent, and the frozen lakes and forests of Northern Minnesota.

Transcript

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0:00.0	If you spend three weeks in the wilderness, your body adapts and it becomes normal.
0:05.7	After three months, anything else feels abnormal.
0:08.9	Was it harder in the winter because it was cold and we had to spend an hour a day like cutting firewood to to warm our tent and cook our food?
0:16.6	And yeah, it was harder. But once it becomes your routine, you don't think of it as something
0:22.5	that's hard. It's just, it's just life.
0:27.1	That's Dave Freeman. Over the past 20 years, he and his wife Amy have built a life around long,
0:33.7	human-powered expeditions through the wilderness. In 2010, they set out on a 12,000 mile
0:40.1	journey across Canada and down to Florida, traveling by canoe, kayak, and dog sled. Then in 2015,
0:48.1	they spent an entire year living in the wilderness without reentering society. No stores, no electricity, no roads.
0:57.4	Just the two of them, a nylon tent,
1:00.3	and the frozen lakes and forests of northern Minnesota.
1:04.5	I'm Shelby Stanger, and this is Wild Ideas Worth Living,
1:08.1	an REI Co-Op production, presented by Capital One and the
1:13.2	REI Co-Op MasterCard. Amy and Dave are lifelong outdoors people. In their 20s, they each became
1:21.8	wilderness guides in northern Minnesota, leading canoe trips through an extensive network of lakes
1:27.2	called the Boundary Waters.
1:29.7	Dave also started a nonprofit called the Wilderness Classroom, which allowed him to share his
1:34.5	outdoor adventures with kids across the country.
1:39.2	Amy and Dave Freeman, welcome to Wild Ideas Worth Living.
1:43.2	Excited to have you both on. Can we just context? Like, how old are you guys about now?
1:47.6	Or maybe what decade of life are you in if you care to share that? And then like, when did you
1:52.0	meet? Well, we're in our 40s. It's a good decade. I'm a few years older than Amy.
	...

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