"I'M DONE SURVIVING," I wrote in my journal. "Today I begin to live." After 15 days of foraging for food and drinking murky water, I had plateaued. I wasn't dying or going crazy, but I wasn't thriving, either.

There was one skill I was convinced would haul me up the evolutionary ladder from surviving to living: basket weaving. I spent more than a day weaving hacked-up saplings and vines into a basket and lid, both cone-shaped. It worked perfectly. I slung it over my shoulder to collect slime nuggets, and it held twice as many as the empty coconut shell I had been using. It didn't look half bad, either. Making that first basket was my proudest moment on the island.

A basket, you see, has multiple uses. Flip the lid upside down, insert it into the bottom, and the whole thing becomes a fish trap: They could swim in but might not swim out. I filled the basket with rocks and slime nuggets and stuffed it into a crevice where fish gathered. I tied one end of the fishing line to the basket and the other to an empty bleach bottle that floated like a buoy. I could leave it out all night secured like this and the next morning it was sure to hold something. Just one small success would change everything. On the afternoon of day 17, I set my first trap and headed into the jungle for a celebratory run to the Sugar Factory.

Slogging through a creekbed covered in thigh-deep leaf litter, I saw, 18 inches away, an iguana. I had seen a million iguanas on this island and hadn't gotten within 20 feet, and here was one sitting a foot and a half away. It didn't matter that I didn't have fire—hell, if I caught an iguana, I'd piss fire. Or I'd dry the meat and make iguana jerky. I'd swat flies away all night—it's not like I was sleeping anyway.

I picked a large branch off the ground, summoned all my savagery, and bashed the lizard on the neck—a direct hit. The branch snapped in my hand; the iguana didn't move. Just as the words "Maybe it's dead" raced through my mind, the iguana tore into the bush. It had practically crawled onto my dinner plate, and still I blew it.

After a quick stop at the Sugar Factory, I returned to camp. The basket trap was gone, swept away by the outgoing tide. "If ever there was a sign ..." I told myself. I spent the day's last minutes getting hopped up on sugar, then stayed awake half the night wondering what iguana meat tastes like.

By day 19, I came to a few realizations: If survival depended on making fire and catching fish, I'd be in trouble. If survival depended on eating slime nuggets and drinking water from a muddy hole, I could do it indefinitely. I had been delusional to think that I would master primitive survival in a few weeks, after we humans spent millions of years learning these skills and then millennia forgetting them. Though I'd lost 14 pounds, I'd gained one ton of humility. Pierce Brosnan flew over and I shouted, "I want a turkey sandwich!" Entirely disinterested, he flew back to his nest.

The next morning, I did, too.