13C Sun.
The Pewter Trophy Bowl and dinner went well yesterday. Goes to show you can never count out the older generation; the winning team consisted of an 83 year old skip, an 80 year old 3rd and the lead is 94!!

He still had a few of the small mushrooms, but now realizing that they  were something more than a sleeping aid decided against eating any that night and very soon fell into a dreamless sleep.

  Sometime in the night, it was fully dark, he was jerked into wakefulness by  a huge peel of thunder, as he sat up, his shelter and the forest beyond was bathed in a brilliant flash and quickly a second one followed instantly by a clap of thunder so loud that it left his ears ringing.  Through the ringing in his ears he heard the sound of wood being rendered apart, the smashing of branches and his shelter gave a spasmodic jump and the one trunk he was under dipped and brushed his head, a broken branch stub tearing a groove in his scalp!

 Panicked, he threw himself sideways and then on hands and knees scrabbled out of the shelter; but as quickly as he had reacted he stopped and rolled back hugging his body against the double root ball.  He had quickly realized that there was probably no place safer.

  As he huddled there, there were more lightning flashes and the thunder rolled on and on, but each flash was further away and the thunder peels lessened in intensity and volume.

  Rain started to fall, at first just a few drops, then as though fair warning had been given, a downpour let loose, he crawled back to his abandoned bed and lay there as his fire was quickly extinguished. Then as quickly as the rain had started, it stopped and wind could be heard swishing and tumbling through the tree tops above him.

  He rose again and crawled over to his fire.  There were still some burning embers!  He scraped more pitch and broke off the small dry stubs from under the two tree trunks and in a few moments had coaxed his fire back to where he could rebuild it with the chunks he had gathered earlier.

  As he worked with the fire a constant stream of water ran down his forehead and dripped off the end of his nose, he kept brushing it away.  As the fire grew and flames leapt up his hands became visible and he realized that the stream of water was not water but was blood flowing down out of his hair!

  ‘Damn’ he thought, ‘I don’t have time to be hurt particularly after what’s happened so far’.  He finished building the fire, sat down on his bed and rummaged into the knapsack finally pulling out the small first aid kit from the plane.  Included in its contents was a small bottle of disinfectant, several packages of gauze pads, a tin of boric acid and a tensor bandage.  Carefully parting his hair around where he could feel the gash, he poured on some of the disinfectant, sprinkled on some boric acid and pushed a single gauze pad down onto the wound. Finally he wrapped the tensor bandage across his head and under his jaw fastening it awkwardly with a small metal clip.  “That’ll have to do.” He mumbled aloud and then settled back again.  He was asleep in minutes.

  

14

W

hen Nat awoke the next morning the sun was streaming through the trees, he could hear a drumming sound.  It took a few moments to realize that it wasn’t thunder, but the sound of a drumming grouse.  He crawled out from his shelter, no worse off from the night’s ordeal.  He felt the top of his head, the bandage seemed to be in place so he decided to leave it at least until that night.

His food was all gone so he checked his snares, all three were empty.  Once more the drumming sound; was it close? What direction was it?  He couldn’t tell. He gathered everything together and repacked his pack and started out on the moose trail once more.

  Occasionally he came across more old cranberries; he stuffed them in his mouth as he walked.  Suddenly almost from under his feet there was an explosion of wings and feathers and a flock of spruce partridge flew up into several of the small trees growing beneath the large spruce.  He searched about quickly, found and cut down the longest and straightest pole he could find.  He took out one of his snares and twisted it onto one end of the pole then moved slowly to a tree that three of the grouse had flown into.

 Totally unalarmed all of the grouse watched, their heads cocked in order to look down, as he slowly and carefully eased the pole upwards and as carefully slid the wire noose over the head of the lowest grouse.  He gave the pole a jerk in the same manner a fisherman jerks his fishing rod to set the hook; the noose tightened and the grouse was jerked from the limb, Nat quickly grabbed the bird and snapped its neck.  He looked up at the other birds, none had moved, it was as though they were the audience at some kind of performance.  Nat grinned and said, “They don’t call you fool hens for nothing.”  He was able to snare two more in the same manner before the rest got nervous and moved up higher beyond the reach of his pole.