Rasmussen — an Oshkosh native now living in Brooklyn — and 19 other people had been dropped off in the most remote area of Serengeti National Park in Tanzania. Assigned the task of following the 200-mile wildebeest migration on foot with no map, compass or weapons and minimal equipment, the journey would take them six weeks.
If they could make it.
The group of former special operations forces, survivalists, athletes, farmers and others undertook such a challenge for a National Geographic reality TV series to see who would make it to the end. "Mygrations" premieres Monday night on the National Geographic Channel.
The Serengeti is Tanzania's oldest and most popular national park, with more than 5,000 miles of African wilderness. The group traversed an untouched part of the Serengeti, previously off limits to humans for more than 50 years.
About 1.3 million wildebeests attempt a migration from the southern Serengeti plains to the northern Maasai Mara in Kenya, according to National Geographic. The group's goal was to reach the Mara River.
Rasmussen said his background and experience as an adventurist and outdoor educator helped guide him through the journey. Hunting, making sausage, canning and other self-sufficiency skills were part of his life growing up in Oshkosh.
He left Oshkosh in 1992, lived in Milwaukee for a while and then ended up in New York, where he lives with his wife, Kimberly Faith Hickman, and is an actor and activist. Rasmussen has hitchhiked across Europe and has been to every country in the European Union and to every state in America except Alaska.
He'd never been to Africa, though, where only the strong — trees, grass, insects, animals — survive the harsh environment, he said.
"It's one of the oldest ecosystems in the world," he said. "Everything there is so highly adapted to survival, it's really incredible."
The group embarked with just one change of clothes and one blanket each. They shared several coils of rope, four tarps, twine, one big pot and two small pots, four small machete knives, jugs to carry water and a very modest supply of local food, which included biltong (dried meat), tubers (vegetables like potatoes), baobab (a tree that produces a fruit with seeds high in antioxidants) and dried fruit.
The water they drank, the same water the animals drank, was the color of chocolate milk, he said. The group had to collect the water whenever they could find it, then try to remove the chunks and particles in it and boil it to kill the bacteria.
With only a path of hoofs to follow or the wildebeest themselves when in sight, the members of the group navigated by the sun and stars to follow them north.
Among the dangerous situations the group faced were trying to draw water without encountering a crocodile or hippo and, as seen in the show's trailer, getting caught in a lightning storm on the open plains, with no place to take shelter.
"That was truly one of the most frightening experiences," Rasmussen said. "That might have been the moment I was most sure we could all die."
Rasmussen said the reality-show adventure was the hardest thing he's ever done, and there were many times he wasn't sure he'd be able to go on.
But, he said, there was something beautiful about the simplicity that came from living in an untouched ecosystem with the sole focus of getting through the journey — something he'll carry with him for the rest of his life.
"This was such a profound experience that I know I'll be learning what I learned for years and years to come," he said.
By Noell Dickmann, USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin Oshkosh Northwestern
