February 1

Had a problem getting the internet tonight but here now.
I'll just get to what I produced on the story today.

After sitting for a while, he stood gathered his water bottles and headed for the spring.

The trip was quicker this time, he didn’t take any time to re – examine what he had seen before and he wanted to get on with more exploring and to see if he could find anything that would suggest where he was.

He filled the bottles but left all but one beside the spring then picking up the trail again he struck off past the pool and followed a route that led around the bottom of the hill. Again other trails angled into the one he was following, a couple almost as well defined as the one he considered the main trail.

For the first quarter mile or so the scenery stayed much the same as what he had seen coming from the beach, then subtly at first a change in the tree species crept in, there was more fir, that gradually gave way to spruce and then suddenly was a mix of spruce, cedar and hemlock. Eventually the trail split and forked into two main trails. He hesitated for a second then struck off to his right and in a few minutes found that he was climbing a bit.

He contemplated turning and going back to take the other fork, but just as the thought occurred he spotted something that made him give a small gasp of surprise; there on a tree was the unmistakable mark of an axe! He looked ahead a few feet and yes, there was another and then another! He walked to the second one and looked at it closely; it wasn’t fresh, but it had been there for awhile, perhaps ten to fifteen years he guessed.

All thought of turning back disappeared from his mind he picked up his pace and hurried forward, every few yards there was another blaze and then he noticed that brush and smaller trees had been cut and twice he found where an old windfall had been chopped out to provide for passage.

“No doubt about it,” he said aloud. “Someone cleared this trail and I bet the animals have kept it open.”

The incline was slight and he kept moving forward at a rapid pace.

Some fifteen minutes after noticing the first blaze he suddenly walked out into a small clearing; across the twenty feet of the brushed in opening was a roughly built log cabin!

Bob paused for a few seconds scanning the open space, he saw at once a small area that definitely looked like it had been cultivated at one time. There, just outside of the shack door a few feet was what had once been a fire pit.

Excited now by his find, Bob ran over to the half open door and pushed it wide open.

Inside was a mess; squirrels had obviously found it convenient as a storage area as there was a small pile of fir cones and discarded cone bracts and cores in one corner.

There was a rough bed made from small poles along one wall and centered in an end wall was a barrel balanced off the floor on rocks from the top a stovepipe ran up to and out through the roof. A rough door with no hinges had been hacked in the front and the top dad been beaten down so that there was a relatively flat area.