the Adventure Lifestyle magazine

As Hulot says, risk is subjective. His brand of self-testing does not match the trials which his frustrated nine-to-fiver viewers face daily. Hippos are a part of Hulot's routine just as stress, money and family are for others. Hulot has boiled the turmoil and confusion of life neatly down to the black and white world of physical challenge, often with life at stake. if he's been over this before: "The only self. And the secret of happiness is What are the challenges for the Normal people? Hulot explains it as liberty in life is the liberty of being your­ to be yourself' True happiness is when �ou can live in harmony with your true nature. And to know your true nature, you must find yourself in life, and the day that you do so is the day that you know yourself, and you have taken the most important step toward happiness." For all Hulot's intensity about one's true nature and emotion, his delivery steers conspicuously clear of emotion. He's quick to tell you how life functions but disinclined to say how that really feels. It's easy to see how a lifestyle which requires precise execution in order to merely remain alive might make nagging questions of salary or love handles or, for that matter, personal sentiments seem rather lightweight. On the other hand, Hulot truly is in a world of his own. A man who lives by taking risks for a TV audience and who communicates through his actions really has no peers. Why spend the energy trying to explain to someone what it feels like to be alone in the Arctic? How could anyone possibly understand? As much as Nicolas Hulot is a phenomenon in of human psycholo­ gy, he is an undeniable success story. His conversion of an extreme lifestyle, to which his passions led him, into a commercially sanctioned enterprise is something to admire-especially in light of its dumb luck. "I'm astonished every day by what has happened because I have never calculated things in terms of success. I am not at all a businessman. The only company I ever tried to start went bankrupt in its second year." While the French have considerable admiration for this should-be pipe dream, it can be difficult to be taken seriously by a people fixated on culture, class, and cheese. It can be even more difficult when 'these people frequently see you in precarious, often preventable, pinches, Hulot becomes sick in the backseat of a Mirage jet, gets bitten between the legs by a dead­ ly Conger eel and passes out with his crew in a balloon over the French Alps. "I try a little bit to keep the spontaneity. I'm not a special ist in everything, so moron of "adventure television." The program will, for the first time, go before an international audience late this year, CNBC will spin Ushuaia to its core stock-ticker audience, hoping some of America's greatest risk-takers will walk the bridge from after-work financial reports to racier evening pro­ gramming. Meanwhile, back in France, Hulot has moved on in concept and practice, Last year marked the debut of a new direction in Ushuai'an televi­ sion: Ushuai'a presents: Operation Okavango, A monthly program with a more in-depth and educational approach, Okavango's agenda is to unveil one continent per year into the beginning of the next millennium, Hulot contends that while Okavango softens the frenzy of his Ushuai"a-era thirty to forty annual trips to only eight, this is more a maturation in his interests than a mere relaxation. "My enthusiasm is the same. My capacity to laugh is the same, My astonishment with nature is the same," he explains, And Okavango's means of exploring nature will be unchanged: hang glider, hot-air balloon, scaling cl iffs and scuba diving. Hulot will sti ll get there th'e hard way, The awesome popula rity of I also try to reta in the candor of the innocent so'that the spectator can profit from that, If you put only specialists in front of them, that's not going to inter­ est viewers. I present myself as the person who knows nothing and wants to understand." And so Hulot has succeeded in breaking down the formidable oxy- Ushuai"a in France and the fact of its acquisition for the international mar­ ket may say something about a quiet boom in interest in outdoor experi­ ence and extreme sports in the Western world, Ushuai"a may fascinate us by giving us a proxy through which to vicariously experience risk, But most likely, the pro­ gram's success is wrapped in the feel­ ing that watching Ushuai'a gives, that the world is an open door. By bearing witness to his wide eyes and his pas­ sion-even if we think Nicolas Hulot is half crazy-we trust that we're seeing this man in the process of living. ph otography:

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