Living on your own in the desert is not everyone's idea of fun, but for a group of young men and women, it was the experience of a lifetime. Earlier this year, Royal Gazette summer student Mathew Macdonald spent ten weeks at Anasazi, a wilderness survival programme in Arizona -- and lived to tell the tale.

Most of us tend to forget how fortunate we are to have the simple necessities that we take for granted every day.

Families, friends, food, stoves, cars and jobs are the first things that pop into my mind when I think back to my ten-week journey into the desert.

Back in April, my parents decided to surprise me with a trip to a "wilderness survival'' school. Being the adventurous type that I am, I decided to go along with the idea, even forgetting to read the brochure.

My mom had already packed my bag, and it crossed my mind to ask her a few questions when I saw how small the bag was, but I decided not to. I was only going there for a month anyway, or so I thought.

My parents and I climbed on the plane to Arizona, and after overnighting in a hotel in Phoenix, I was whisked off to Anasazi's (the name of the company which runs the programme) main office.

While there, five other kids arrived, and as it turned out, we ended up staying together for a week of fun, excitement, and preparation for what was to come.

The instructors issued us our sleeping bags, cups, and basic supplies such as a toothbrush, chlorine to purify the drinking water, and a few pieces of wood for our fire-starting kit.

First, we had to learn how to make our packs out of a sleeping bag and a long-sleeve shirt. This pack was very basic, and simple to make, but very uncomfortable when hiking for days at a time.

Inside that pack was a change of clothes, a cup, some personal hygiene supplies and a pair of sandals: my supplies for what ended up to be a seventy- day ordeal.

After learning to tie our packs, the instructors took us outside and taught us how to make fire by rubbing two sticks together. I was the second person who volunteered to try, and after picking up the bow-drill set, I busted a coal and blew it into flames on my second try. That is something that only 2,000 people in all of the Unites States can do.

Feeling proud of myself, I didn't even hesitate about jumping into the jacked up, four-wheel drive "Suburban'' with the other five kids, who apparently had read the brochure and had some idea of what was coming. The journey ended up taking five hours through highways, mountains, dirt-trails and eventually a road (if you could call it that) where our ride stopped short, due to pot-holes and large boulders that had become permanent features inhibiting travel.

Feeling sick to my stomach, I climbed out into a flurry of snow and cold wind.

I didn't realise it at the time, but it gets quite cold in the desert at night, and all I was wearing were shorts and a T-shirt.

And to make things worse, they handed me my food for the next four days.

Included in my diet was a bag of rice, macaroni, powdered cheese, Tang powdered drink, and wheat, enough food, I thought, to only last me a day.

Surviving the Arizona desert the trail and watched as the van turned around and disappeared into the distance, leaving us kids and the three instructors in a darkness that I had never witnessed or imagined before. That was the last time I saw a car or electric light until I ran away from the desert four weeks later.

A sudden feeling of loneliness swept over me as we hiked away from the road into a dense, black forest that was to be my home for a while.

My hands grew numb, as did my legs and arms after fiddling with the string on my pack for half an hour. Without a flashlight, I discovered that untying my pack, laying out my sleeping bag and wrapping myself up in the tarp/poncho took me close to an hour.

As I closed my eyes to go to sleep, the snow turned to rain which continued on through my sleepless night and into the early morning.

Thinking back, that was probably the worst night of my stay in the desert. I woke up that morning soaked through and had to dry my clothes and sleeping bag over the fire.

My first week at Anasazi was called "Rabbitstick''. We were the new recruits and had to learn the basic tricks before we joined the other groups.

Fire-starting without matches, making leather sheaths for our knives before we were allowed to use them, learning which plants were edible, and setting traps for small animals were a few skills that we practised.

At first, I was very uncomfortable in the desert, but as the days went by, I learned new things to help make myself more comfortable.

I finally came to grips with the fact that I was stranded, and began to make the most of the time I had to myself.

But the things that really affected me were the silence and the simple way of life. I could actually think without being distracted by a phone call or the television and there were only three things I really had to worry about: food, sleep, and fire.

I had no responsibilities any more, no work to get up for, no people to dress up for, no use for money, which all equalled out to `no stress', in the modern-day sense of the word.

Before I knew it, I was in "Badgerstone'', the next group up in the programme. My "Rabbitstick'' group was split up, and I was introduced to a new bunch of kids, all of them guys.

For the next four weeks, we hiked 10 to 15 miles on Mondays, Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays. On Tuesdays we received our new food pack which was better than than the first one, but just not good enough.

We also received letters from our parents, and a chance to talk to our "shadow'', the man who acted as our counsellor and the link between my parents and me.

I was learning how to live in a simple, straightforward way, using whatever I had to hand and making whatever else I needed from what nature provided me.

Incredibly, I was able to make soap, shampoo, arrows, spears, mats, fire-starting kits and many other weapons that would come into use if I saw a snake or wanted to kill a squirrel.

The first creature that I ate in the desert was a rat.

It wasn't very big, and James, another kid in the group, decided he would skin it and rest it over the fire.

I had the rat leg, and it tasted exactly as you would expect a rat would taste like. I almost ran to the trees to puke! While I was in the desert I ate many strange creatures including chipmunks, snakes, ants, trout (found in the occasional river), craudads, grasshoppers, tadpoles, frogs, lizards and squirrels. Some tasted better than others, but none of them tasted too good.

Our foodpacks were now a bit bigger, but they still lacked the seasonings that make our food at home taste so good. I began to grow very attached to food -- in fact, we would actually sit around the camp-fire and talk about what we would eat when we finally got out.

My "Badgerstone'' foodpack consisted of rice, macaroni, lentils, oats, cornmeal, wheat, brown sugar, Tang, salt, bullion, sunflower seeds, powdered milk, an apple, two carrots, a potato and an onion.

This was enough food for two cups a day, without snacks, and many people ran out before the following Tuesday.

Living on that diet caused me to lose 30 pounds, and the hiking built up my legs and shoulders. Immensely overweight people tended to lose a pound a day out on the trail, with one of my friends who weighed 285 pounds going down to about 200.

Life was simple, although not easy. People would run away from the group only to find there was nowhere to go. One of my friends made it all the way to Phoenix, a 300-mile trip. He was an Anasazi hero amongst the kids and inspired me and two others to run the following night.

Sometimes you need a little excitement, and it was a thrill to run away and have no idea where you were going. After a 20-mile night-hike, we reached a rancher's house and called Anasazi, telling them where we were.

At least we got to eat some bread, cheese and a banana. That made the hike completely worth it.

The days in the desert would run by slowly and the weeks would travel a lot faster. Before I knew it, I had earned the trust of Anasazi, and learned how to live fairly comfortably.

I was promoted to the next and final group programme which lasted another four weeks. I was now happy with my simple life. In "Morning Star'', we were in charge, and the counsellors left us to do our own thing.

We hiked when we felt like it, we did radio check-ins to the main office, studied maps as we were now leading the hikes, and we all cooked together in a big pot.

The final weeks were about living together peacefully, and the instructors said that we looked so much happier than when we first came into the programme.

I had seen so much, done so many new things and met so many new people. I felt at peace inside and I had sorted out my problems at home through correspondence with my parents in letters.

At last, the day finally came when they arrived to live with me for three days.

I had been sent off by myself, and I lived on my own for two days. At the end of the second day, my parents were dropped off at my campsite. I had never been so excited to see them in my entire life.

My mother looked shocked when her smelly, bearded, ape of a son came running up and gave her a hug.

Together, we camped out for three days. My parents had to eat the same food as me, sleep on the same rocky ground and cook in the same fire as me. I spared them from rat dinner! On the final day of Anasazi, I was packed and ready to go home, but unprepared now for what I was about to face. I had forgotten how much noise a crowd of chattering people can make, how `fake' the voices on the radio sound, how good real food really is! I nearly passed out when I saw all the food in the gas station -- and the lady who served me nearly passed out from my stench. I ended up ordering $30 of McDonald's hamburgers and $20 of candy-bars which I finished in under an hour.

My stomach almost went into convulsions! It took me close to a week to get used to city-life again, the feelings of pressure, stress and deadlines had been removed from my life for so long. It was strange to see people running around, in a rush to go places and to do things, controlled by money and their own personal problems.

It seemed to me that people have lost sight of priorities and I found myself swearing that I would never fall into that trap again!