Commentary: Surviving in the Wild

By Margaret Gordetsky

taff Reporter

What does it take to survive as truck driver these days?

Consider the character of Susan Hawk. She spent weeks on an almost-deserted island in the middle of the ocean as a member of a makeshift tribe, ordered to survive on wit and cunning in a highly competitive — and eventually nasty — hunt for basic sustenance, all for the amusement of a vast TV audience.

Maybe therein lies a lesson for this industry: You got to be tough as nails.

Hawk, a 38-year old driver of a cement truck and member of the 1996 Wisconsin Road Team, was one of the castaways on CBS television’s 13-week “reality” show, “Survivor,” which reached its climax last week with the declaration of a winner.

The show took 16 contestants, lured by the promise of $1 million to the last survivor, and plunked them down with almost nothing on an island in the South China Sea.

At first, the participants were organized into two tribes. After numerous “contests,” the losers had to vote one of their own off the island each. As their numbers dwindled, the survivors were combined into one tribe and the real fun began. Four members of Hawk’s original tribe formed an alliance, whose strategy was to vote in a bloc to get rid of the remaining members of the other tribe, picking them off one by one. It was better than a soap opera, with plenty of intrigue and back-stabbing.

After the dust cleared, Susan had outlasted all but three of the survivalists.

As the token blue collar girl, Hawk lent a certain grittiness to the goings-on. The first time Richard Hatch, a “corporate trainer” in real life and the eventual winner of this odd affair, tried his boardroom approach on Hawk, she deftly pricked his balloon, saying she didn’t know anything about the corporate world; she just spoke plain English.

Time and again Hawk relied on her direct manner in her dealings with other island residents. She’s a trucker and she made that clear — a no-nonsense girl from midde America with an iron will and a sharp tongue, who gave no apologies for who she is. Her husband told the New York Times that Susan is a “a man in a woman’s body.”

That’s tough.

In her plain speech, she never minced words. At one point, obviously disgusted with the laziness she saw around her, she labeled fellow contestant Gervase, who seemed to spend most of his time sleeping or playing cards, a “slacker.” In the last vote to determine a winner, Susan let loose with her own true brand of plainspeak on her fellow finalists, Kelly and Rich. Rich, she said, was a snake and an “openly arrogant, pompous human being,” but she admired his shrewdness and the fact that he remained true to himself. Kelly, she said, was a rat and “two-faced and manipulative.”

Susan, you nailed it.

Hawk’s working-class ethic, as she called it, showed through time and again in her willingness to play the game and work hard in the harsh physical and psychological environment in which she found herself. Despite all the deprivation — lacking food and most necessities, including soap — Hawk claimed being a “Survivor” was easier than driving a truck to Chicago any day.

Susan Hawk’s work ethic stood up well to the test. Her behavior gave us all a peek into her character while trapped on that tiny island for 39 days and silently told volumes about what it is like to survive in a harsh environment.

As she said, not as tough as driving a truck for a living.