PORTLAND, Maine — Cheeny Plante had a pretty good idea what she was getting into when she agreed to spend three weeks in the wild with one tool, no clothing, and no one to help her.
In the Air Force, after all, she’d been an instructor who taught airmen about SERE—Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape.
Those skills served her well a couple of years ago when she agreed to be a contestant on the reality show "Naked and Afraid," and she would need them even more when she agreed to go back a second time for a spinoff series, "Naked and Afraid: Solo."
The premise for "Solo" is basically the same as the original series. Contestants have to spend three weeks in an isolated setting, creating fire and shelter and finding or catching food.
In the original series, though, each contestant is paired with another contestant and they work as a team. On "Solo" a contestant is alone—and, of course, naked.
Returning to the series wasn’t something that Plante, who is from Sanford, had considered at first.
"On the first show I could not wait for day 21," she recalled. "I was running to the extraction vehicle. I just couldn’t wait to get out of there. And I was like, I am never doing that again. That was miserable."
It wasn’t money that lured her back a second time—the show offers no big prizes, no dazzling payoff—but the challenge, the opportunity to test herself in the most demanding of environments, had a primal appeal she could not resist.
"Life was more simple [while doing the show]," she said. "It’s weird, it’s like you tap into a different part of your brain. You’re waking up a part of yourself that’s been asleep for so long. Because there’s no technology, there’s no lights, there’s no bad news… It’s hard to put into words, but it’s really powerful—and you miss it."
Because the series hasn’t aired yet, Plante couldn’t talk in our interview about where she spent the three weeks filming "Naked and Afraid: Solo." But she did reveal that the hardest part was enduring cold temperatures with no clothes.
"It was brutal," she said with conviction. "Not what I was expecting."
It comes as no surprise that after the first series aired Plante was bombarded with questions about what the experience was like. The strangest queries have been "weird marriage proposals" from people in other countries.
"But nothing creepy," she added cheerfully. "It’s been flattering."
Note: "Naked and Afraid: Solo" premieres Sunday, March 12, at 10 p.m. on Discovery. Cheeny Plante is expected to be featured in several episodes of the series.