15C sunny

, ‘can’t wait all day for horseflies, so I guess it’s one beetle at a time.’

  He went back to the bush, quickly found another beetle and carried it back and flicked it out.  He waited tensely, spear in hand. A swirl, he thrust, he missed! The beetle and the fish were gone.

  Nat returned again to the bush, another beetle another flick and again another miss.  He repeated this several times, his frustration as well as his hunger growing by the minute.  He realized now that spearing fish in a pond was quite different from TV shows where fish were being speared in shallow streams; he would have to think of something else.

  Returning to his camp, Nat took his snare pole and headed out into the bush walking parallel to the river.  Within an hour he flushed and caught two more spruce partridges.  Again he went back to camp, cleaned and skinned the birds and was soon had them roasting over the fire.  He ate half of one when it was ready, stoked the fire again, then took the entrails of the two birds and his spear and knapsack walked back to the pond.  There he took the last of the snare wire, wrapped several twists around the bird guts and the twisted the other end around a willow branch, he tossed the guts about two feet out into the water then squatted at the waters edge, spear at the ready.

  Within moments three jackfish appeared and attacked the wire rapped guts, Nat plunged the spear down into the struggling fish spearing one through the middle of it body.  He held the fish against the bottom and jumped in the water.  Holding the struggling fish with the spear he wrapped his fingers down and into the gills and flung it out on the bank.  He lunged out of the water, grabbed the flopping fish and killed it.

  Without awareness he lifted the fish over his head and let out a primitive yell of triumph, and cried, “Gotcha, you bastard! I gotcha!”

  Once again he hurried back to his camp, there he filleted the fish and after cutting some forked sticks, hung the two slabs of meat in the smoke and heat of the fire.  He crammed half the remainder of the rest of the fish into the ‘tin of many uses, filled it with water and put it against the fire to boil.

 

  The clouds had lifted somewhat but he didn’t think that they were high enough to allow for any planes to be in his area.  He set about improving his sleeping area and gathering more wood.  He worked for sometime, pushing himself as he tired, ‘just three more loads, you can do it.”  Each time he hauled a third load he set a new three load goal.  He worked on into the afternoon, finally wiping sweat from his face he said, “That’s enough, time for a bath.”

  Heading back to the pond, Nat stripped off all his clothes and waded out and up to his knees into the pond.  He sat down on the muddy bottom and swished water on his upper body and scrubbed all over with his hands.  The water was somewhere between warm and cool and as his body adjusted he relaxed and floated on his back for a few moments.  Finally feeling refreshed he waded back out and after drying his feet with his shirt, pulled on his socks and boots, gathered up his clothes and walked naked back to camp.

  By the time he got back he was reasonably dry and redressed himself in a mix of his own and Fred’s clothes.  He removed the can of fish parts which had become a savory smelling soup, he sipped off some of the liquid, re-stoked the fire then still standing ate one of the smoked filets finishing it off with some more of the soup.  He sat down and stared into the fire.  As he watched the flames his mind slipped back over the events of the days since the crash; he came to realize that there were blank spots in his memory and curiously he kept seeing a white moose in the flames.  It was as if he knew the animal and had no fear. Eventually the combination of a full belly, the nearby noise of the river rushing by and the mesmerization of the flickering flames lulled his thoughts and he slumped into sleep.  Much later the cool night air half aroused him, he threw a couple more sticks on the fire and crawled into his bed.