In “The Revenant,” which is now in theatres, Leonardo de Caprio portrays mountain man Hugh Glass who was a real trapper in the early 1800s in the Western United States. The movie is spectacular and has already been nominated for a variety of Oscars including Best Actor and Best Cinematography. But how much of it is accurate and what is it really like to live and travel through the woods in wintertime?
A majority of the movie is of Glass travelling across the winter landscape restoring his body and evading capture. The movie does a good job portraying the sublime beauty of the winter landscapes as well as the profound indifference nature has towards man. If you haven’t seen it yet it is quite violent in parts but the way it is done somehow transforms a terrifying struggle into a surreal odyssey. These are punctuated with many moments of magical realism and illuminated by profound visual storytelling. Yet what was most fascinating to me was the familiarity of the landscapes concurrent with the feeling I got of primal connection and physical repulsion. The movie was truly a full body experience that I felt deeply.
Maybe this is what the director Alejandro González Iñárritu was going for but that begs the question how “real” an experience of the mountains and the truth of Glass’s story can you get sitting in a warm movie theatre with popcorn? Just about everything was trying to kill Glass and his suffering was nearly unbearable (no pun intended, wink wink) in “The Revenant.” So I, for one, wouldn’t want the full experience even if I could get it, but maybe there is something to be said for getting out into the mountains, snow and woods ourselves. When we do we use every sense as Glass did. We can experience the melting water droplets falling from the tree limbs, the expansive white moon-like landscape and the beautiful shadows cast by the low winter sun through the groves of aspen trees.
When you take our “Revenant” snowshoe tour you get to imagine what it may have been like to travel across the snow, explore new territories, trap, track, and find food in the 1800s. To mountain men such as Hugh Glass, skis and snowshoes were a critical tool of everyday survival as they explored the snowy mountain landscapes, landscapes you can experience as well in New Mexico’s wilderness.
