April 8

7C some high cloud.
Company for lunch yesterday, tyhen company for supper as well but did manage to squeeze in a few more paragraphs on the story. It seems I won't be able to post the new book on Barnes and Noble until after I recieve a copy then approve the thing for release.

Bob sat down on the base piece of the tree and after a brief rest, stood the piece he wanted on end, squatted and tilted the short log onto one shoulder, picked up the saw and headed back.

After he got back to the cabin he spent the rest of the day carefully extracting the reddish core out of the white outer wood, then as evening came on he started shaping the core into a classic long bow shape.

The next morning, up early again, Bob went down the trail a few yards where there was a hemlock windfall just off the path. Using the saw he made partial cuts into the fallen tree and then with his axe, split and pried out several chunks. He repeated this several times, then stacked most of the chunks beside the trail and with the axe and saw took all he could carry and went back up the hill. By the time he stopped to have a late breakfast he had twenty to thirty roughly formed arrows slightly thicker than a pencil. Some of them he split along their length for about three inches. He took them all inside and placed them on the floor beside the stove and weighted them down with a piece of plywood and several pieces of fire wood.

The rest of the day he spent finishing the shaping of the bow and preparing it for stringing.

Going to bed that night, Bob thought, ‘Tomorrow I got to go fishing again and try and find that roll of steel line.’

The next day he retrieved the spin casting rod from the  beneath a tree near the reef; as he waded out on the reef he smiled as he recalled his excitement the morning he had spotted the rod and reel laying across the rafters near the door. Up till then he had fished with only a hand line with limited success. With the discovery came the realization that there should be more lures than the single one that was attached to the line and he finally found several more wrapped in an oily rag and pushed into a knot hole in one of the building logs.

Within a few minutes he hooked an eighteen inch rockfish and carried it to shore. He hooked it on a branch where he left the fishing rod and started down the beach looking for the spot where he had tossed a small roll of steel down rigger line wrapped around a short chunk of two by four.

This one of the few finds he had not flagged with a bag and as he had found it a couple of weeks earlier, its exact location was difficult to pinpoint.