They have to hang all of the food and their toiletries overnight from the tallest tree they can find, which is always a huge pain in the ass, but otherwise the bears will be drawn to the campsite and might even get into your tent/tarp.

Christian has a knife, and Amber has a bear spray canister, and Evan and Brandon have this rumor going that Christian even has a gun somewhere, which Dawn can’t really fathom but kind of hopes is true, given how the Bear Pack is, like, marooned in the middle of nowhere, miles from any civilization and close to all sorts of scary wildlife.

(She’s only seen one bear so far—one real bear—but it was far away down in a grassy meadow, and besides, Amber said it was a black bear and probably just as scared of humans as humans were of it.)

Christian and Amber are supposed to have a radio, too, and an emergency beacon so that if something goes terribly wrong they can contact the home base and alert the proper authorities. According to Lucas, Out of the Wild leases a thousand square miles of terrain that they use for these programs, and it all backs onto some national park, which is like another million acres of mountains and forest and nothingness.

“So if we get lost or go the wrong way, we’ll probably die,” he says, cheerfully.

Dawn rolls her eyes, but it’s actually pretty scary. They’ve been hiking for five days now, and she hasn’t seen another human being besides the other kids in the group. She hasn’t even seen any sign of humanity besides the occasional piece of fluorescent flagging tape stuck to a tree to tell the counselors where the trail’s supposed to go, and the occasional jet trail from an airplane high in the sky, a reminder that life’s going on, somewhere, far from this forest.

Dawn wonders if anyone misses her.

She wonders if it matters.

According to Kyla, who’s been here the longest, Out of the Wild has seven or eight different trails through the backcountry that they use to keep Bear Packs moving.

“Each one takes six days,” Kyla tells Dawn. “It’s like a big circle. We go out for six days and then we come back and get more food and supplies and go out again. Over and over, until you go insane or you graduate.”

“Whichever comes first,” Lucas says.

They don’t know if there are other Bear Packs, or if they’re the only one. No one’s ever seen another person out here, so they must keep the groups far apart, if there are other groups. Christian and Amber won’t say.

“You’ve been here for, like, months,” Dawn tells Kyla. “If there’s only seven trails, you must have done this one before, right? Do you recognize it?”