January 20

1C Overcast.
Skiff of snow overnight but any more precip should be rain.
We will leave this afternoon and overnight just east of Port Angeles.
The birds have been so busy I guess I better top up their feeders once more. Maybe our house sitters will keep them fed.
I can't promise that I'll be on here everyday for the next while, actually I know that I won't because we will be getting wifi  hit and miss. But will pick-up the story when I can.
I will load it into "dropbox" at the last minute. Maybe a flash drive as well just to be sure. I'll make today's piece a little longer.

He eventually got to his hands and knees, dipped his hands into the water and washed his face.

He stood up and walked all the way around the pool. He had a brief thought of making some kind of a shelter nearby, but dismissed that with the realization that most of his food would be coming from the beach area and he did not want to force the deer and other animals to seek water else where.

He washed out the plastic bottles then filled them with water and tied them again to his belt. As he retraced his steps he noticed that here and there there were some patches of pine growing on some of the hillocks. He left the path and as he half expected found blueberry bushes growing amongst the pine. ‘I need to do a berry bush inventory.’ He thought. As he approached where he had sampled the salal berries he noted that there were both high bush blue and red huckleberry bushes, close to the beach he noticed both salmon berry and thimble berry bushes were in a few patches but he had missed them earlier because they were a short distance off the trail.

He gathered some more oysters and piled them with his “booty” and deciding to beach-comb a bit more he continued down the beach.

Each time that he spotted a log that had obviously been cut by a saw he examined it closely, he had reasoned that one of them may have a piece of metal attached which was something he might be able to make into a knife.

He had only walked for a few minutes when he spotted something that looked familiar. Lying just beyond the water’s edge was his boat’s engine cover!

He dragged it up to the edge of the bush, at that moment he had no idea what it could be used for but maybe some use could be found later.

Continuing with his search, Bob resumed his walk along the beach. He decided it must be in the mid afternoon so was not concerned about getting back to where his main stash was. Besides there were no comforts there and if he had to he could spend the night anywhere he stopped.

Within a hundred yards or so he spotted another familiar object, his life vest! Picking it up he slipped it on thinking that now he had something for a pillow or perhaps a small mattress for the night.

His search finally rewarded him with a broken two by twelve plank which when he rolled it over he discovered a piece of rusty steel about a foot long, two inches wide and a quarter inch in thickness. It was held onto the plank by two screws. He tried to smash it off the plank with a rock but to no avail. He sat back on his haunches and thought for a moment then stood and searched around until he finally found a thin flattish rock. He lay it between two more rocks and after several smashes with another rock he was successful in creating a narrow piece. He returned to the plank and using the rock sliver as a wedge he drove it under the chunk of steel and popped the screws from the wood.

“Now I got something,” he muttered. “Wish I had a hammer and anvil.”

Eager to get started on working the piece of steel he decided to turn back; when he reached the engine cover, he hesitated for a moment then picked it up. It was awkward to carry but he was now determined to get it back with everything else.

As he struggled along, he mulled over what he had found and what potential use each thing had. By the time he got back he had a few ideas and after a brief rest and a drink from one of his bottles, he cleared a spot against the bush line of wood chunks and large rocks then scraped up the driest sand he could find and using a couple of the plastic bags he carried the sand to the cleared spot and made a raised bed above the damper sand and pebbles. He went along the bush line breaking off branches from some of the small hemlock and spread them on the sand bed then he took the life vest and opened it up and spread it out at what would be the head of his bed. Lastly he placed the engine cover over the bed with the open end pointing out towards the water.

The day was almost over so starting to feel hunger pangs again, he struggled through the bush behind his new bed and after a few yards found the area to be more open than right at the shore line. He ate a few salal berries then picked more dropping them into one of the plastic bags. ‘I didn’t think these things would have any use,’ he thought. ‘But you never know.’

He spied some salmon berry bushes with a few late berries, these he ate as he knew that they were delicate and mostly a watery juice. After a short while he circled back and returned to the beach a short distance from his “camp”. He dropped the berries beside the cover and walked down to the waters edge. During the early part of the day the water had receded with a minor tide then rose again to about where it had been when he regained consciousness. Now it had receded again exceeding the earlier low and an expanse of fine sand was exposed.

He walked on past several craggy rocks and out onto the tide exposed area, after a few feet he had been squirted twice from small holes in the sand. He went back, picked up the length of steel and returned to where he had been squirted and dropped to his knees. In a few minutes of furious digging he was in possession of  four decent sized clams. He gathered them up and walked back to one of the rocks and knocked several oysters loose then went back to his bed.