Terry Burns
Season 9Age: 30
Hometown: Hurricane, West Virginia and Homer, Alaska
Profession: Commercial Fisherman
Terry Burns was born and raised outside of Hurricane, West Virginia. Growing up, he was consistently drawn outdoors and hunting and fishing nearly every day possible. At age 21, he
was in a life-threatening car accident that ended in him being hit head-on by a semi-truck. That near-death experience gave him a new perspective on life and made him realize there was
much more to life than the materialism and rat race to which he had grown so accustomed.
Realizing the only rational thing to do was move to Alaska, he did just that. Soon he was living in his car in the beautiful port town of Homer, AK. There, he got a job working on the deck of a salmon seining boat, which he鈥檚 been doing ever since.
In the seven-month off-season, Terry has pursued his passions across all 50 states and seven continents, accumulating more than a few close calls and scars from his annual 3-month long
expeditionary backpack hunts and fishing trips. He鈥檚 a man with many stories: from nearly losing his feet to frostbite, to surviving a plane crash in the Amazon, to nearly breaking his back on a caribou hunt in the Arctic. These opportunities have also made it possible for him to abstain from buying meat for the last nine years.
Through the blessings of these transformative experiences, Terry strives for an attitude of gratitude, empathy, resilience, self-reliance and a connectedness with nature. His goal on Alone is to cultivate and foster these attributes in himself and others.
Here聽are聽the ten items Terry selected to bring on his survival journey to聽the remote wilderness valley in Labrador, Canada:
1. Ax
2. Sleeping bag
3. Bow and arrows
4. Fishing line and hooks
5. Ferro rod
6. Paracord
7. 2-quart pot
8. Trapping wire
9. Multitool
10. Cross-cut Saw
