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The other day during my commute home, the New Jersey Transit train I was on had to pause mid-Meadowlands for some kind of storm-related delay. The conductor announced that we'd be moving again shortly, but I wasn't taking any chances: I immediately constructed a double-sided lean-to from the laptop cases of my fellow passengers, caught three egrets by holding a Hopi bird snare out the emergency-exit window and built a makeshift stove to cook them on using soda cans and iPods. Yes, some of the other passengers looked at me oddly, but that's because they haven't been watching nearly enough survivalist television. I don't mean ''Survivor'' television, though that show is certainly related to the phenomenon. I'm talking about the seemingly endless parade of programs that feature self-appointed experts demonstrating how to survive should you become stranded in a desert, or on an island, or almost anywhere in Alaska or Canada. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Wolves seem to be having something of a moment. In January there was ''Clash: Encounters of Bears and Wolves'' on PBS's ''Nature,'' which looked at how the reintroduction of wolves into Yellowstone National Park has given the grizzlies there competition. Last month came the movie ''The Wolfman,'' with Benicio Del Toro as the man-beast. And on Sunday the Smithsonian Channel offers ''Running With Wolves,'' a film about Gudrun Pflueger, who has been researching wolves in British Columbia and Alberta, Canada, for years. But this isn't really a nature documentary. It's a cancer-survivor documentary. Ms. Pflueger is recovering from a brain tumor, and the program is, at heart, about her efforts to try to do the rigorous wilderness observations she once did. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]