by Paul Greci
But in the tent right now, I’m content to lie head to toe with her to get a few hours of sleep before resuming our foodless search for something green in a spruce forest.
“Josh,” Brooke says softly. “If there’s nothing where Derrick thinks there’s something, we should write something in our journals. All of us should. Just in case, you know, if things keep getting worse and we keep getting weaker, we may not have the energy to write anything.”
“What kind of writing?” I say. Then I sit up. “You mean like what we’re doing?”
“Not just that. More like what we think of our families and what we think of each other. Something to kind of honor the journey we’re on. Something to let people into our hearts who may read our entries if … we don’t make it.”
I have to ask myself again, is this the same Brooke who abandoned trapped Theo to an approaching bear, and who unwillingly, grudgingly dug for survivors?
I take a deep breath and let it out. “Brooke,” I say, “tell me who you are. I mean, I formed one opinion those first few days after the quake, but slowly you’re breaking that opinion apart with your actions.”
“Something changed for me when you took care of my feet,” she says.
I sit there waiting for her to go on.
“All I did leading up to you helping me was oppose you in almost every little thing you did.” Brooke sits up. “I know I was so selfish about Theo when he was dying. But I was also scared of dying. I guess I was trying to preserve my own life at all costs. Basically, I just wanted to survive.” Brooke scoots forward so her face is closer to mine. “All my life, I’ve competed with my older sisters. In a way, they taught me to be selfish, but they also taught me self-preservation.” She puts her hand on my knee. “You taught me. No, you showed me, that I can keep the self-preservation instinct alive and still help other people. I’m not saying I’ve totally got that down all of a sudden, but I’m thinking of others way more than I used to since you fixed my feet.”
“I don’t know what to say,” I say. “I mean, I was feeling like a tyrant for the first several days of this jaunt.” In the dim light, I look Brooke in the eye. “You’re not the only one to learn some things about themselves.” I pause. “The bear spray. Losing my shoe. I was so used to being number one that I was comfortable in the leader role. In the role where I didn’t need help from others. But now, there’s no way I wouldn’t want help. There’s no way that I don’t need help.
“When I was running cross-country, I wanted to do my part to the fullest. My teammates could do what they wanted, but I was going to do extra practices because I was driven to have a shot at number one. That created some distance between me and the rest of the team, but that was a price I was willing to pay to pursue my goal. But out here, that same approach didn’t work. All I created was distance between me and the three of you. Slowly, I’ve been bridging that distance. At least that’s what I’m trying to do.”
“It’s kind of strange that we spent a month at a leadership camp,” Brooke says, “but then when the quake forced us to put those skills to work, it was like we were starting from scratch.”
“I guess when you’re given hypothetical situations to learn from, like we were given at Simon Lake, the learning can only go so far. Like running can only teach me so much about racing, when really the best way to learn about racing is to race.”
Brooke still has her hand on my knee, and right now that’s by far the warmest part of my body. Will the friendship we’re building now hold up back in civilization? Will it turn into something more? The drive to find out compels me all the more to survive.
CHAPTER 49
“WE NEED TO BE THOROUGH,” Derrick says as he stuffs one of the tents into a stuff sack. “It’s not going to be easy to just pick out the spot where I saw that green thing get lowered from the trees.”
We’re getting ready to head into the spruce forest. The sun is a pale orb in the sky, covered by a thin veil of clouds. The land is still sloping downward, so there’s no guarantee we won’t hit a swamp before the land slopes up on the other side, which is where Derrick saw whatever it was.
“If we get all the way out of the spruce forest and don’t find it,” I say as I shoulder my pack, “maybe we’ll be able to see it from above on that side of the valley.”
“I hope we find it soon, and that it helps somehow,” Brooke says. “I’m starving.”
“I’m still full from last night’s imaginary meal.” Derrick pats his stomach and then glances at Shannon. “Right, Chef Shannon?”
“It was a stroke of luck that we found that feather to induce vomiting.” Shannon opens her mouth, pretends to stick a feather down her throat, and then fakes throwing up. “I ate so much.”
I think about the serious conversation Brooke and I had in our tent, while these two were playacting. The important thing is we all had a short rest, and now we’re ready to keep going no matter how exhausted we each feel. I wonder if Derrick likes Shannon, and if Shannon likes Derrick, the way I’m starting to like Brooke. And yeah, of course I wonder what Brooke thinks about me.
“What do you all think about me leading today?” Derrick asks. “Not that Josh hasn’t been giving Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, and Natty Bumppo a run for their money on route finding.” He cracks a smile. “It’s just, I know what I saw, and I’m the only one who saw it, so I’d kind of like to be out front.”
“Fine by me,” I say.
Shannon and Brooke both say it’s fine with them, too.
Derrick suggests the general direction he wants to go, pointing in a way that makes it so we’ll angle our way down the next part of the slope, and then, when we get to the bottom, we’ll reevaluate based on whatever we find—a swamp, a stream, or just dry land. Who knows?
We’ve all got our bear spray in our hands—even me and Shannon, who probably have next to none left because of the moose incident—as Derrick leads us into the trees.
Unlike the spruce forest we were in when we emerged from the swamp—the one we set on fire and burned down—this one seems to have way more underbrush. Thorny wild rose plants and blueberry bushes without blueberries grow thick, overlapping one another. According to Shannon, it’s too early in the summer for blueberries. Some of the bushes have tiny green unripe berries, but that’s it.
At first, Derrick leads us around the thickest clumps of brush, but then when the growth gets even thicker, he stops and says, “Let’s put our rain gear on so we can just crash through this worthless stuff without getting scratched up, and without our clothes getting full of rose thorns. I want us to stay on track.”
“The roses aren’t worthless,” Shannon says. “A few weeks ago we could have eaten the flowers that were on them. And at the end of the summer we can eat the fruit they’ll produce—rose hips.”
“Point taken.” Derrick smiles. “I just hope we’re not still out here to see them ripen up.”
It’s kind of warm out to put our rain gear on over our pants and pile jackets, so we all strip down and quickly change into our rain gear before the mosquitoes can turn the scene into a bloodbath. Rain gear with nothing on under it is a sticky way to travel, but at least our clothes won’t be all wet and sweaty later.
I take the time to retie my un-shoe since we’re going to crash through brush intentionally, and then we keep going.
The spruce trees start out small and sickly but grow bigger the farther down the slope we get, and the brush is getting thicker and thicker, too.
I hate putting my foot down through the brush when I can’t see what’s there, which is almost every step through some stretches.
You take so much for granted when you have real shoes on. You can slam your foot through the brush and use it to stomp down rose bushes to get the thorns out of the way. But two stuff sacks, a sock, and a piece of blue foam as a shoe substitute, all tied together with a small string, makes you careful. You have to think and worry and wonder about every step in an overgrown forest like this. When you ad
d in starvation and how your mind doesn’t work great when it’s deprived of energy, you open yourself up to making even more mistakes.
We get to a spot where the brush totally disappears and there’s just spruce trees, but up ahead, in about forty yards, the brush begins again.
Derrick stops and puts his hands on his hips. I decide this is a great place to retie my un-shoe, so I stop a few yards behind him, and as I tie, I say, “Too bad the rest of the forest isn’t like this spot.”
Derrick says, “And just why is that? Why is this spot like this at all?”
Shannon and Brooke enter the clearing and join us. They must’ve heard Derrick because Shannon says, “It’s highly likely that someone cleared the brush out of this spot. It’s so different. It’s been cleared, and it hasn’t grown back. Why?”
Brooke takes her pack off, sits down, and leans against a tree. “This is paradise. Pure paradise compared to that.” She points to where we’ve come from. “Not counting the fact that we’re starving, of course.”
I don’t know if she’s seen where we are headed, which is just as bad, but I don’t say anything because she’ll find out soon enough.
“Clearing this would take some work.” Derrick gestures with his arm, sweeping it in a circle. “Why here?”
“Why couldn’t it be natural?” Brooke asks.
“Look at the border on all sides,” Shannon says. “It is so definitive. Things like this don’t happen very often in nature. Usually natural boundaries are more crooked.”
I finish tying my un-shoe. “Whatever it is, no matter how it got here, I hope there’s more of it beyond that jungle of brush.” I point in the direction we’re heading.
We leave paradise and keep crashing through the brush. Derrick is so focused on keeping his direction true that he bashes right by the second clue that this area might have been visited by humans.
CHAPTER 50
“HOW OLD DO YOU THINK it is?” I say, pointing.
Shannon picks it up and crinkles it a little bit. “It’s not disintegrating in my hand so it can’t be super old, I think.”
The piece of black plastic sheeting is about four feet long and a foot wide.
“I was so focused on moving forward,” Derrick says. “I’d picked my next tree and was heading toward it. Leapfrogging from the last one. I blew right by it.”
“Isn’t it odd that there’s just one piece?” Brooke asks.
“Yes,” Shannon says, nodding. “Just like it was odd that there was that one small clearing.”
“We could’ve missed other clearings,” I say. “We hit that clearing because it was in our path, but we had no idea it was there. It wasn’t like we saw it and headed for it.”
“True.” Derrick stretches his arms over his head. “We could be missing a lot of stuff made invisible by the brush.”
“Let’s just keep going.” I point forward. “And let’s all keep a close eye out for anything out of the ordinary. Anything at all.”
The wind picks up and is blowing at our backs. My un-shoe is staying on my foot. The top of my shin is still sore from when the big rock slid into it but doesn’t seem to be getting worse. Yeah, hunger is our number one problem. It’s hard to get un-hungry when you don’t have any food. I’m feeling light-headed from pushing my body without resupplying my muscles.
The land levels out but we’re not at the bottom of the valley yet because I can see where it starts going down again. In this level area, we start to see small birch trees mixed in with the spruce, and the brush seems to have thinned a little bit.
Up ahead, Derrick stops and says, “Everyone, check this out.” He motions us forward with his arm.
Where he’s standing looks just like where I’m standing. I keep walking toward him, lifting my un-shoe high with every step to lessen the chances of snagging it on rose thorns and sharp branches.
I can hear Shannon and Brooke behind me.
They catch up with me just as I catch up to Derrick.
“What gives?” I say.
Derrick points down and in front of him.
At first, I don’t see anything different from what we’ve just bashed our way through, but as I look more closely, I see two straight lines running parallel to each other and just a few feet off the ground. They’re about ten feet apart, surrounded by brush.
“Old cabin walls,” Shannon says.
“Who would build something out here?” Brooke asks.
“Maybe it was part of a trap line,” Shannon responds. “A place where a trapper could take shelter in the winter when checking traps.”
I take a few steps beyond Derrick and bend down for a closer look. “Where are the other logs? I mean, if the walls fell apart, wouldn’t the ground be bumpy around here from the logs falling and lying all over the place?”
“Maybe this is as far as the person got,” Brooke offers. “After getting the walls this high, maybe he or she abandoned the project. I know I would have.” She lets out a breath.
“True. It could be just another failed Alaskan dream,” Shannon says. “The whole state is littered with them. My mom says people in general used to be tougher than they are today. Her people—my people—used to live seasonally based on where the resources were.”
“Kind of like nomads?” Derrick asks.
“Yes,” Shannon responds. “Except they would go to the same places year after year, traveling by foot in Interior Alaska. Like we are, except they had established routes.”
I say, “At least these remains show that someone was here at least once. Maybe when we get to the bottom and go up the other side, the walking will be easier. I have a hard time believing whoever started to build this place got here by the same route we did. It’s just got to get easier.”
“It better,” Brooke says.
“Whatever,” Derrick responds. “It’s obvious that this place has nothing to do with what I saw, especially now that you’ve pointed out that maybe the place didn’t even get built.”
“Let’s get down to the bottom.” I cough a dry cough. “I’m hoping there’s some water we can drink.”
“This is taking way longer than I thought it would,” Brooke says as we all start walking, following Derrick’s lead.
At the edge of the flat area, the brush thickens, and as we start down I think I see something snaking its way through the trees. A tiny ribbon of water running down the center of the valley. Even if Derrick’s sighting turns out to be nothing, at least we’ll be able to drink some water soon and fool our bellies into thinking they’re full for a while.
CHAPTER 51
“IT DIDN’T LOOK THIS BIG from above.” I stare at the sluggish but wide creek in front of us.
“We’re going to get soaked again?” Brooke sighs. “Do we have to cross?”
I look up and down the creek. “It’s brushy in both directions,” I say. “Looking for a different place to cross would be a real pain. I—”
“And it’d get us off track,” Derrick says, pointing in the direction he thinks we need to go, which is pretty much across the creek and then up to the left.
Shannon has her water bottle out of her pack and is filling it up. I get mine out to copy her.
Derrick and Brooke take their packs off and get their bottles out, too.
I fill mine, drink the entire thing, and then fill it again. The water is cold and tastes pretty good, but I’m still nervous about it having bacteria in it that could get us sick. But since I don’t have any way of purifying it, I just drink, knowing that dehydration can cause headaches and basically make you feel sleepy.
“Make sure you all drink a lot,” I say. “At least a bottleful right now.”
“How many times are you going to tell us to drink?” Derrick asks. “Do you think we all have short-term memory problems?”
“It’s just that it’s important—”
“To stay hydrated,” Shannon, Brooke, and Derrick say, finishing my sentence.
“Okay,” I say. “Point noted.
” Sometimes words come out of my mouth before I’ve thought about what I’m saying. I take a few more glugs out of my bottle and then top it off in the creek. Just drink, I think, and let the others drink, too.
“If we can keep our packs dry,” Shannon says, “we can keep our clothes dry since we’re only wearing rain gear.”
“What do you all think about taking our shoes and socks off?” Derrick asks. “We could keep those dry, too.”
“We could keep everything dry,” Brooke adds, “even our rain gear, if we crossed naked.”
“The only bummer would be if it were so deep that if our packs went under, everything would get wet anyway,” I say. “Other than that, I like the idea.”
“I’m in,” Derrick says. “It’ll be like taking a quick swim.”
“We don’t want to injure our feet,” Shannon says. “I’ll do it. I’m taking my socks off, but I’m keeping my boots on.”
Derrick looks at me. “What do you think, Ole One Shoe?”
“Socks off. Shoes on,” I say. “For the crossing, I’ll use one stuff sack and the piece of blue foam cinched down tightly with the string.”
“Maybe I should go first,” Derrick says. “In case it’s super deep, I can help with everyone’s pack.”
“Frankenstein to the rescue again,” Shannon says.
“We could do a bucket line, except it’d be a pack line,” I say. “With Derrick in the deepest water.” I point to the creek. “It does look kind of deep in the middle.”
We talk a little more and decide to get the pack line set up and organized. Brooke will wade in and hand packs to me. I’ll transfer them to Derrick, and he’ll get them across the deep part and give them to Shannon, who will take them to the opposite shore.
The mosquitoes, like they can sense something good is about to happen, start hovering around us in larger and larger numbers as we make our plan.
We all strip and put our shoes back on, and I do a pretty good job of keeping my eyes to myself.
Shannon wades in and manages to walk across the deepest part with her mouth and nose just above the water. Derrick goes next and stops when the water is up to his armpits. Then I go in and stop about ten feet from Derrick, the water topping out just below my chest. I turn around and Brooke is right there with the first pack, holding it out to me. I grab the pack, hold it over my head, and wade to Derrick and hand it to him. I return to my spot, where Brooke is already waiting with the second pack.