Gordon Buchanan – "The body has a remarkable ability to rise to the challenge"

Wildlife filmmaker Gordon Buchanan reflects on a life of adventure, a need for nature and why exercise has become a non-negotiable

- By Gordon Buchanan

For the past 30 years, Gordon Buchanan MBE has travelled to just about every corner of the globe, filming wild animals in wild places. He’s hand-reared grizzly bear cubs in Siberia, integrated himself with an Arctic wolf pack, and tracked cheetahs on foot through the searing heat of the Kalahari Desert.

To spend months at a time in these environments requires no shortage of physical and mental resilience. Even on days spent driving through the bush, rather than hiking up mountains, time pressures and unpredictable wildlife mean absolute concentration is required at all times.

However, in speaking to Buchanan it becomes clear that whether he’s trekking through a tropical forest, or sinking into knee-deep Arctic tundra, he feels most at home in environments most of us would find inhospitable. The discomfort comes on the return to ‘normal life’: the ringing phone and the cluttered inbox.

He talks openly about his struggles with depression – “the wave rolling in” – but also how exercise and general healthy habits have helped significantly. Strength training provides Buchanan with a sense of achievement and real, observable progress, even when it feels hard to find elsewhere. Equally, he speaks of the healing power of nature, even the type found just outside your front door. Being present, he says – feeling the warmth of the sun or the chill of the breeze – is a powerful thing. We’re all animals, after all.

A LIFE OF ADVENTURE...