‘Naked and Afraid’ competitor blazes wilderness trail for transgender outdoors people

Quince Mountain has passed more than his share of survival tests.

As a kid in Northern Illinois, Mountain endured intense and violent bullying while he worked to understand his gender identity.

As an adult, Mountain and his wife, Blair Braverman, 31, endure life-threatening arctic conditions to compete in grueling sled-dog races across Alaska and the Yukon.

So, when it came time to test himself once again, this time on a 21-day expedition in the Honduran jungle where he would become the first openly transgender person to participate on the survival show “Naked and Afraid,” Mountain was ready for the challenge.

“Being trans and surviving what I did gave me a leg up on coping skills,” said Mountain during a phone interview from his home in Wisconsin. “I think I have a lot of mental toughness.”

The idea of the show, now in its 10th season on the Discovery Channel, is for viewers to watch as two people are dropped into a wilderness survival situation with no supplies, not even clothing.

The objective for the participants is to work together for 21 days to create shelter, find food and water and endure the harsh conditions.

Mountain’s episode, which aired June 16, filmed near the city of La Ceiba in northern Honduras. He was paired with Teresa Owens, a police officer from Satsuma, Florida.

The episode features a tense moment when Mountain tells Owens that his surgical scars are the result of his gender transition.

“People don’t know I’m trans when they meet me,” Mountain said. “In a way, life is much easier when people just read me as male.”

Mountain said producers gave him the option of keeping his gender transition private. But he declined and chose to discuss it openly.

He welcomed the chance to be himself and discuss gender identity on his own terms, an opportunity transgender people are often denied.

“People seem to think your junk is their business. But always on their terms,” Mountain said in a tweet thread describing the experience. “So I have always wanted to share more of my life on my own terms. And here was a chance. The wilderness could care less about my body. And gender is relational/social, but here I would have only myself and my partner to look out for.”

He described it in contrast to his younger days when being himself was even more difficult.

Mountain grew up in an evangelical community he said pressured kids and adults to adhere to stereotypical gender roles.

It made life particularly confusing for Mountain, who can remember feeling forced to behave in ways that conflicted with who he was as a person, even as a young child.

“As a kid, I said I was a boy,” Mountain said. “People would tell me that was wrong.”

Mountain said he felt no choice but to give in to the pressure to conform to adults’ ideas about how he should act.

He even began to internalize the pressure to the point he was applying it to himself.

“I thought if I did the right thing I would pass the gender thing and it would just work itself out,” Mountain said. “I just was an awkward person; it was maybe not a compelling performance, but I tried.”

Although the pressure to conform to his female birth identity was strong, Mountain found ways to cope.

At Bible camp he learned to work in the horse stables where he could wear jeans and shirts instead of a dress and practice skills such as horseback riding and wrangling.

Later, he served in the Wisconsin Army National Guard. He said the military gave him a sense of belonging in part because even though he enrolled as a woman, he was treated according to his ability to perform tasks.

He underwent surgery and treatment after his service and met, fell in love with and married Braverman, an accomplished musher and writer.

Mountain learned dog-sledding and the couple live in rural Wisconsin where Mountain moved as a teenager and found a more welcoming environment.

They applied to participate on “Naked and Afraid” as a couple. They were each chosen to appear, but separately. Braverman’s episode, which already aired, was in South Africa.

Mountain said even though he wouldn’t get to participate with Braverman, he embraced the chance to go on the show.

Braverman said she was "extremely proud" of Mountain and that the couple had already received well-wishes from people who had seen promos for Mountain's episode.

The responses from people who said they're learning about transgender issues or parents of transgender kids have been particularly gratifying, she said.

"The outdoor industry tends to focus on a fairly narrow section," of people, said Braverman. "Anyone who challenges those stereotypes is making space for other people to challenge those stereotypes."

Braverman also said Mountain's participation on the show has a positive social value. Specifically, she said Mountain's visibility is especially important in light of anti-transgender policies of the administration of President Donald Trump.

Those include bans on transgender people serving openly in the military and proposals that would make it easier to prevent transgender people from accessing everything from medical care to housing.

The National Center for Transgender Equality has called it a "nonstop onslaught" of anti-transgender policy and rhetoric.

"I think (Mountain) being out there doing something that is tremendously difficult and happening to be trans while doing it is an incredibly public statement that he is not going to let public policy dictate his life and what people in the trans community can and can’t do," Braverman said. "Sometimes even I can forget how powerful it is to live visibly."

Showrunner Mathilde Bittner said Mountain was a good candidate for the show because he had experience in survival situations and charisma that would show through on camera.

She said the fact he is transgender and willing to discuss it openly was a good fit for the show, which already has a reputation for breaking taboos on subjects such as nudity.

“It was about Quince, but he happened to be transgendered,” Bittner said. “The wild is what helped him get through all the bullying he had to endure.”

Although Mountain’s gender identity is an essential part of his character, it wasn’t the deciding factor, she said.

“At the end of the day the people who make it through this challenge are the ones who have the will and the skills,” Bittner said. “It really doesn’t matter if you are gay or straight or transgendered. If this is something you want to take on, bring it on.”

Mountain prepared by eating more in weeks leading up to taping and then starting to fast just days before entering the jungle. The fast, he said, was a chance to get used to operating on fewer calories. He also spent months walking around barefoot to toughen his feet.

The preparation helped him through the grueling time in the jungle.

He described the days as a succession of survival tasks such as finding water and creating shelter. The nights, which included a visit from a curious jaguar, were long and it was difficult to sleep.

“It is not fun, it is not sexy,” Mountain said. “It is boring rote manual labor as your body is deteriorating.”

But in the end Mountain said it was an incredible learning experience that’s still paying dividends in his life many months since his return.

Stripping down to the bare minimum needed for survival helped him put the challenges of daily life into perspective, Mountain said.

“It was really cool to see what life was like with no one in your way and no one to blame. I was responsible,” he said. “Your survival is really on you.”

This article originally appeared on Reno Gazette Journal: ‘Naked and Afraid’ competitor blazes wilderness trail for transgender outdoors people