Asher reckoned that my bag weighed fifty pounds. I also carried an old Samsung handset with its sim card removed, so that I could take photographs. trackers, spare batteries, notepads and pens, a big knife, a sleeping bag, flashlights, fire-lighting equipment, dried food, a few energy-rich snacks, three litres of water, a mosquito shelter, a roll mat, and a tarpaulin. My pack contained clothes, paper maps, a compass, two G.P.S.
I had stuffed my backpack with everything that I thought I might need, within strict guidelines set by Asher: no matches, no tent, no phone. From the moment that Asher left me in the valley, I was allotted two days to walk to a rendezvous point eighteen miles away, over and around mountains. A client is dropped somewhere spectacular and scantly populated, and challenged to find his or her way out within a given time period. The travel firm that organized my trip, Black Tomato, calls this experience Get Lost-a playful misnomer, since the idea is to do the opposite. That morning, he had spent several hours educating me on the rudiments of living in the wilderness, alone. He teaches survival skills to people who have never fast-roped from a helicopter or killed their dinner. Asher, whom I had met only the previous evening, has a gray beard, a piercing gaze, and a bone-dry sense of humor. One recent afternoon in Morocco, a fifty-nine-year-old former Royal Marine Commando named Phil Asher walked me into a desolate valley in the Atlas Mountains, shook my hand, and abandoned me.