Maximum Exposure

Benton man shows more than grit on survival show.

By Dwain Hebda | Photography by Brian Chilson 

First things first: The nudity factor on the TV show “Naked and Afraid” is no big deal. 

So said Matthew Garland, a third-generation Eagle Scout, who has twice been on the show, the premise of which is to strip contestants down (literally) against the elements, leaving them with little more than their wits to survive. 

In fact, considering everything else there is to worry about, it’s easy to see how the married 34-year-old would describe the nudity as the easy part.

“For me, it’s one of those things where everybody’s built the same. For lack of a better term, you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all,” he said. “The part of nudity that most people would be apprehensive about, the shock and awe of being naked, is really not what comes into play. Usually, it’s more about being freezing cold. That’s where the nudity becomes a problem.”

Garland trained for the show unintentionally; in 2009 he and his wife, Kelsey, decided to simplify their lifestyle to its most elemental. The couple homesteaded on a patch of ground in Lonsdale near Hot Springs where they built their own house.

“We built a tiny house before tiny houses were cool,” he said. “We slowly upgraded and made a few add-ons, and as we built our home, every screw, nail and board we put in it was paid for.”

Though he didn’t grow up hunting, Garland’s fondness for the outdoors made him want to learn, and during the couple’s homesteading years, while not totally dependent on the land for food, they took on the challenge of supplementing the family’s larder. 

“Growing up in Scouts, I always loved the outdoors. I always wanted to be outside,” he said. “I wanted to have my own pond and be able to catch my own fish and hunt my own deer, rabbits and squirrels as seasons permit, of course. I learned how to reload ammo out there and I did get pretty proficient at setting some traps. 

“Until then, my wife and I really didn’t have much of an understanding of how to hunt or do anything like that. We kind of figured that out together.”

None of what the Garlands were doing was in preparation for landing on a reality TV show. In fact, the first time he heard about “Naked & Afraid” Garland offered a well-worn assessment of the premise. 

“My response was, ‘What idiot would do that?’ I kind of laughed,” he said. “Then a friend of mine had it turned on in the background one time and I was hook, line and sinker. I binged the entire series in no time.”

On a night in with friends, Garland popped off about how he could survive the show, a pronouncement that was met with such derision it touched a nerve. 

“Before you know it, I’ve got a palm tree in the backyard hacked down and I’m showing them how to eat the heart of a palm and I’m taking some palm fronds and rubbing them together showing them how to start fires,” he said. “My wife is videoing it and she was like, ‘I’m going to send this in to them.’ I just laughed. I was like, ‘They’re not going to call some small-town guy from Arkansas.’”

Of course, representatives from the show did call back and by late 2020, Garland had dropped his pants for a 14-day challenge in Arizona’s Chiricahua National Forest just north of the Mexican border. He was invited back in 2022 where he and his partner were turned loose in a remote stretch of Zambia. 

“You’re given a tool of your choosing,” he said. “Production will say, ‘Hey, we want you to bring a variety. Then when you look at the landscape you can choose from there.’ In Africa, I didn’t know my partner, so I chose a bow and arrow. What I didn’t know is that my partner is a pescetarian and she only ate fish. It would have been a better choice to have a hook and line or mosquito net or something like that. Typically, you’ll have some kind of a blade.

“But as far as where you’re going to stay or how you’re going to eat, it’s really completely up to you. The only tools you have are the tools that you get to go out there and whatever you bring in your brain.” 

Garland insisted that contrary to what the viewers think, the footage is culled from two weeks of as close to actually being stranded as possible. The crew was instructed to limit interaction to a minimum and not to intervene except in the case of a serious medical situation. 

For Garland, who said he would do the show again in a heartbeat, the unique perspective the experience gave him of the natural world, and his place in it, was revelatory.

“The experience really connects you in a spiritual and physical way with nature,” he said. “I’d be out there in the middle of nowhere and I could smell things from miles off. It sounds crazy, but I can tell you 90% of the time, I could smell the crew coming before I could hear them. If somebody on the crew washed their hands with a scented soap, I could smell it. It connected me to the earth like I can’t even describe.”

Find Matthew Garland:
Faccebook @MatthewGarlandNandA