Presumably the process would reveal something about the dawn of civilization. What society would look like if it were made from scratch, that sort of thing. How it might be different. You could practically hear the pitch meeting.

But really it was just a survival show. That’s what they told Mara in the auditions. She said, “Look, I’m not trying to rebuild society. I’m just trying to get out of it.” She had plenty to get away from. Her boyfriend, Ethan, for one thing, who was the real survival geek of the two of them. The casting agent said, “Don’t worry about the conceit. How are you at building shelters? Have you ever used snares?” Of course she had, and he knew that. So she mumbled along, and she must have fit whatever slot they were looking to fill. Young woman with experience, not beautiful, to balance out Ashley, who was beautiful but inexperienced. They must have done that with the men, too. The Eagle Scout, the math teacher, the old grouch who had a heart of gold—or with the right edits, the right music, they could make it seem like he did. The survivors might as well have introduced themselves by their archetypes.

At the time the show found Mara, she was living in a camper with Ethan pretty deep in the woods. The camper wasn’t road-worthy, but they’d built two walls and a roof around it, so it stayed dry even in the soggy Washington winter. They had lived there three years at that point, and the camper felt smaller each season. They were always in each other’s way. They did laundry in a pond and smoked too much. It bothered Ethan that Mara had grown up off-grid, whereas he’d come to the lifestyle for the aesthetic, or at least that’s what she said when they fought. But he had the dedication of a convert. He was always coming up with new ideas—solar ovens, beehives, a greenhouse made of reclaimed windows from the dump. She wanted a dishwasher.

Four days a week, Ethan and Mara worked at a survival school run by a former blockchain developer named Bjørn. They taught classes sometimes, trapping and fire-building and so on, but the school’s biggest business was leaving clients in the woods overnight. There were always people willing to pay for the experience: a steady stream of tech bros, spiritual seekers, and corporate burnouts from Seattle, for whom camping itself would have felt too banal. If they paid good money, their night outside was recognized, celebrated.

In the mornings, Mara gathered clients from their assigned sites and made them scrambled eggs over a campfire, assuring them that they had indeed conquered the wilderness, though a fair number spent the night shivering, and never built or caught anything at all. Then she gave out braided leather bracelets in a fireside ceremony. She could tell people treasured them. Like they’d wear their bracelets to the office on Monday, and touch them throughout the day to remind themselves who they really were.