Who Would You Want Leading You Out of the Woods?

A new survey for Open Air Magazine, a new project from USA Today take a look at who Americans would most want leading them in the backcountry. The results, courtesy of Yahoo Finance are quite interesting.

The survey was called "The Great Outdoors Survey" and while most of it's questions and the responses won't be revealed until Fall, a few tantalizing results were released today. For instance, one of the questions asked: "You are lost in the woods and a storm is coming, who would you choose to lead you to safety?", with a list of current political names listed and, for good measure I suppose, the fictional character of Homer Simpson. The results had Barak Obama on top with 22% of the vote, followed closely by Hillary Clinton with 19%. John McCain clocked in next with 18.5%. Homer Simpson was fourth (16.8%) besting President Bush who lagged behind the others with just 12.1%. 11.6% of those surveyed gave "no response".

Now, personally, I'd call that 11.6% who didn't respond the intelligent ones, as I'm not sure I"d want any of the above leading me out the woods in a storm. I suppose you could make a case for McCain, whose military experience could at lest possibly come in handy in knowing how to survive, although at 71, I'd probably be carrying him out. As for Hillary and Obama. When is the last time either of those two stepped foot in the woods? Especially Hillary? This is no commentary on anyones ability to be President, but I don't think I'd be following any of them.

The next two questions dealt with who you would prefer to spend a day-long hike, or day-long bike trip with. Once again, Obama takes top honors on the bike trip, with Hillary in second. On the day hike however, Oprah Winfrey was number 1 (she hikes regularly I'm sure), Bill Gates was #2, and The Pope was third. These questions kind of come down to persona choice on who you would want to spend your time with. Obviously you want someone to have a great conversation so it should be someone interesting and personable. Failing all of that, they should at least be easy to look at. ;)

I guess we'll have to wait until Fall to find out the other responses that people gave. All I know is that if this were an open question survey and someone asked me who I'd want leading me out of the woods, I'd take someone like Andrew Skurka. Maybe Les Stoud or Bear Grylls.