We reached our encampment and built a sweat lodge—big branches lashed together into a roundhouse frame covered with canvas—and then the camo-squad led us in some bastardized version of a supposedly Native American ritual. This vision quest thing lasted for days. We sat in a circle around a fire, allowed to leave the sweat lodge only to go to the bathroom—except we never had to go to the bathroom because we were given virtually no food or water and were sweating so profusely. We weren’t allowed to sleep for seventy-two hours. If a kid passed out, we dragged them out in the snow to be revived
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