Darwin Expedition

by Diane Tullson

  “Fairly straight. Or at least I thought so. With the cloud cover, I can’t tell our direction so well.”

  “But you know where we are.”

  “Of course. I think we should climb back out above the trees. Maybe we’re too low.”

  I won’t mind being in the open. We find a path that is wide enough that our packs don’t snag on the branches and make our way up. By the time we break free of the trees, my thighs are burning and we’re both panting. Under my pack, sweat plasters my jacket to my back. The clouds hang even lower and the drizzle hardens to rain. Below us, the trees are shrouded in mist. It’s like the rain is erasing where we’ve been. Tej pauses.

  “Maybe we should go back down, try to get into the valley.”

  My jaw drops. “We were hours hiking up!”

  He scans the horizon. For a second, he looks worried, but when he turns to me, any concern is gone from his face. “You have a better idea, brainiac?”

  I spin on my heel and head back the way we’ve just come, leaving Tej behind me. In Tej’s smaller tracks, I purposely stomp. It’s not his fault that we’re here. It’s not his fault we took the forestry road, even though everyone knows it’s too early to be on the back roads. They’re labeled “summer only” on the maps for a reason, Tej. It’s not his fault that the truck rolled, even though he oversteers. It’s not his fault that it’s raining, although if the sun were shining, he’d take credit for that. I could have studied the map, tried to figure out a route to the highway. But Tej is better at that than I am. He’s smarter at everything. He’s the one who’s leaving Tremblay after graduation and happy to be going. He’s the one who wants me to go too, get a real job, a city job. Tej is the one who sets the plays and makes the decisions. I can hear Tej behind me, and I know he’s half-running to match my pace.

  In the fringe of aspen, I stop dead. Tej stumbles into my back. “What?”

  On the trail ahead of me, among our own clear footprints, I see the tracks of a grizzly bear. The paw prints flatten ours. The impressions from the bear’s clawed toes cover the toes of our boot prints. It’s like the bear was trying to remove our marks from the trail.

  “It’s following us.” I look over both my shoulders. “The bear is stalking us.”

  Chapter Four

  “It was going the same direction. That doesn’t mean it’s following us.” Tej glances around him, and then he shouts, “Okay, bear, the meadow is all yours. We’re going down to the valley.”

  I slam my hand over Tej’s mouth. “You’re telling it where we are. It’s like ringing a dinner bell.”

  Tej knocks my hand away. “You don’t think the bear knows exactly where we are?” He sniffs at his underarms and then mine. “He knows.”

  I peer into the deepening forest. “It must be close.”

  Tej nods. “It’s just waiting for us to get out of his way.” He steps in front of me on the path. “So let’s get out of his way.”

  I’m not too proud to say I’m glad Tej is going first. But every hair on my back prickles when I think the bear might go for the straggler at the rear. I match my pace to Tej’s, sticking to him so close I can hear him breathing. He says, “We’ve probably walked this close to bears a hundred times. They don’t want to cross paths with us any more than we want to meet up with them. You just don’t want to surprise one.”

  Suddenly I wish I carried one of those lame little bells the tourists use to make noise in the woods.

  I can hear rain pattering on the leaves overhead, but the canopy of branches acts like an umbrella. The trees are dense and sometimes I have to stoop to get under the branches. It’s darker in the forest. I stumble over a tree root and crash into Tej. He swears, and then he says, “Watch your big feet.”

  It’s stupid but I feel like crying. My muscles are on fire; my empty stomach has stopped rumbling and now aches.

  On cue, the rain turns to a torrent and crashes through the canopy of aspen to pour down on us. We tighten our hoods, but it feels like rain is running down my back. Tej is shivering. He says, “We should think about making a camp.”

  “You mean spend the night out here?”

  “It’s getting too dark to hike. You don’t want to fall in the dark and risk breaking something.” He steps off the path and scans the forest.

  “But you said...”

  He lifts his hand to stop me. “If you want to keep walking, go right ahead.”

  He knows I won’t, and I hate him a little for being so sure of that. “You have a lighter to make a fire?”

  He nods. “Matches.”

  I sigh. “I’ll find some wood.”

  This makes us both laugh. We’re in the middle of a forest, after all.

  We set up camp in the lee of an overturned pine tree, its shallow roots still encased in a plate of dirt. The roots form a back wall for our shelter and a bit of overhang for a roof. Not much overhang—we won’t both fit in the sliver of dry ground.

  “Look for some small deadfall. We can make a lean-to.” Tej takes off his pack and settles himself under the overhang out of the rain.

  “We?” I sling my pack next to him.

  You’d think that in a forest it would be easy to collect small tree trunks and branches. Not. Fallen trees are heavy, and small ones in the ground are too green to snap. I haul what I can back to the shelter. I’m sweating and want more than anything to take off my jacket. But the rain would douse me in seconds. I set the bigger trunks up against the dirt overhang, and then I layer on branches to form a barrier from the rain. I set small green branches on the floor of the shelter as a mattress between the wet ground and our butts. It is small, but the shelter keeps the worst of the rain off.

  Tej has gathered a pile of twigs and small branches. He’s shredding bark with his knife. He says, “We need more dry wood for the fire.”

  I look at the heap I’ve already hauled to the shelter. “More?”

  “Do you have to question everything I say?” He reaches for another piece of bark and attacks it with his knife.

  “You’re going to cut yourself.”

  He tells me to commit a physically impossible sex act.

  I say, “I’ll make the fire. You get more wood.”

  His look says what he doesn’t have to: You can’t make a fire.

  I say, “One match. I do it all the time.”

  “To light a bush fire with half a can of white gas.” But he stands up and tosses me the matches. Then he plods off to get firewood.

  I choose a spot for the fire in the opening of the shelter, not so close that we burn ourselves down, but under the overhang of the tree roots to keep as much rain out of the fire as possible. I arrange bark strips, shredding some even finer with my fingers. I take out a match, wooden, waterproof—trust Tej to think of packing these—and scrape the match head against the package. It flares, and I set the flame to the pile of bark. It catches. A strand of smoke lifts from the tiny pile. I grab some twigs to feed the fire, and in that instant the fire sputters out.

  This time I pull everything I need close at hand. I add more bark strips to the pile and light it. The flame is bright and I feed it a small twig. Then another. The twigs are damp, everything is, and the fire fades to a red ember. I drop to my knees and blow gently. The fire catches again and I hold a twig in the flame, puffing air into the flame. I grab another twig, and another. Smoke is burning my eyes, but I keep blowing on the fire. I have to get it burning hot enough to add bigger bits of wood. I’m kneeling over the fire, my butt in the air, feeling like I’ve finally got the fire started, when I hear a branch snap in the forest right next to the shelter.

  I sit upright. New sweat prickles under my arms. “Tej?”

  No answer.

  I peer into the trees. My mouth is suddenly so dry that my tongue feels like a sock. “That wasn’t funny, Tej.”

  Nothing. I yank back my hood so I can hear better. Rain sizzles into my small fire. “Okay, Mr. Bear. You can piss off now.”

  The forest is
quiet.

  I want fire and I want it now. I look down at my fire to find it’s gone out. With shaking hands I grab more bark, lots of it, and put a match to it. And another match, just for good measure. I toss on a twig, blowing hard so that the flame jumps, and then add a bigger twig. The fire is going, but my head is light from blowing on it More twigs. I dump on a handful. Smoke pours from the fire and I empty my lungs into it, but the twigs drop into the fire, smothering it. Again, the fire dies.

  Nothing I’m saying is polite enough to repeat.

  I grab the last of the shredded bark. “Light. Please light.” I set the match to the bark, holding it until it burns down to my fingers. Puff. Puff. Twigs, one at a time. Don’t look away from the fire. Puff. It’s starting to crackle. A bigger twig. More smoke, but the fire is strong. Grab a small branch. Breathe on the fire. The fire is the size of a basketball now. I snap dry branches over my shin and feed these to the blaze.

  “You got it going.”

  Tej’s voice makes me jump. He’s returned to the shelter with his arms full of dead branches. He drops these into the pile, and then he stoops next to the fire. Taking a branch from me, he stacks it on the fire. Then he holds his hand out. “Matches.”

  I hand him the package. He shakes it and gives me a look.

  We pile up wood at the entrance to the shelter and crawl in. I add more wood to the fire. The fire is like a furnace. More than that, it’s like a barricade.

  I tell Tej about hearing the noise in the forest.

  He says, “Liam, if that bear had wanted us, he’d be eating us now.”

  I look out through the smoke into the woods. It’s dark now, too dark to see. I put another stick on the fire. I feed that fire all night long, only falling asleep with the first light of dawn.

  Chapter Five

  During the night the sky clears, which is good because the rain has stopped. But without the cloud cover, it’s cold. Our breath puffs out like smoke. Every joint in my body is complaining. Hunger wrings my guts.

  Tej isn’t wasting any time. He’s got his woolen snowboarding toque pulled down low over his ears and he’s walking fast.

  “I think I know where we went wrong yesterday.”

  I can hear the shiver in his voice.

  He continues, “When we went off the road, we must have been farther north than we thought. That’s why we didn’t reach the highway. But we can’t be far now.”

  I stride along behind him. We’re keeping to a well-worn deer trail. Tej says it’s the right direction, more or less. The dense undergrowth among the trees makes a more direct route impossible. In an opening, I call for Tej to stop. “Just for a minute.”

  Nature’s call. I leave the path for a bit of privacy, just far enough that I’m out of sight of Tej. As I’m doing up my pants, I spot a quick movement on the forest floor. A bird bursts into flight right under my nose, which makes me jump. Just inches from my right foot is a small nest of eggs.

  I kneel down to inspect the nest. The eggs are the size of the end of my thumb, five of them, pale brown with speckles. They blend so well with the ground that if the bird hadn’t flown up, I never would have seen the nest. Probably I was just about to step on it. I would have crushed the eggs and the adult bird.

  My stomach rumbles. Eggs. Protein.

  Not that I’m a fan of raw eggs. I like my eggs fried so the yolk is solid but still soft.

  My stomach gurgles and growls.

  These eggs are so small I bet I could swallow them whole. I pick up an egg. It feels warm in my palm. The forest falls quiet all of a sudden, as if it knows I’m taking an egg. I look around for the adult bird but nothing is moving. I’ll just take two, one for me and one for Tej. I select another egg.

  Tej is saying something, but I can’t hear what it is. His voice sounds high-pitched, like a whine.

  It’s stupid, but finding these eggs makes me feel powerful, like we could make it out here, if we had to. I straighten up and take a couple of steps toward the path.

  Tej is standing with his back to me, his arms straight at his sides. I can see his shoulders moving as he breathes, the exhaled air puffing out as if he’s panting. Then he sucks in his breath.

  Just on the other side of Tej, something big and brown is on the trail. It shifts and now I know why Tej is scared witless. It’s a bear.

  Chapter Six

  I try to call to Tej but my voice barely squeaks. The bear is on all fours, swaying its head back and forth, sniffing the air. Its brown fur is tipped with lighter brown, and its eyes, close to the middle of its face, are round and black. Its ears are like brown tennis balls on the side of its head. The bear is looking at Tej, and then it sees me. I feel the eggs slip out of my hand.

  We are so close to the bear I can smell it, a gagging smell that is rank and sweet at the same time. The bear rears up, getting a better look at us.

  Tej backs into me. He speaks to me in a singsong voice, trying to soothe the bear, I guess. “Walk backward, you idiot.” I force my feet to shuffle backward on the path. “Slowly,” he says. “Don’t make eye contact with it. And don’t run or he’ll charge for sure.”

  Tej is between the bear and me. I could turn and run right now, and the bear would get him. I’d get away and the bear would get Tej. I think about this for a shamefully long time, but then I do as Tej says

  The bear on its hind legs is as tall as Tej, maybe as tall as me. So long as the bear is on its hind legs, we’re all right. A bear can’t charge on two legs.

  The bear drops to all fours.

  Tej mutters, “Crap.”

  Good thing I already did.

  The bear lowers its head. When a dog looks like this, it means you could get bitten. When a bear looks like this, it means you could be lunch. The bear’s eyes harden, as if it has lost patience with us. We’re on his trail and he wants us off. The bear opens its jaws. Big jaws. Really big teeth. His jaws make a smacking sound.

  I whisper, “He’s going to eat us.”

  Tej is backing up faster now. He says, “For once in your life, you might be right.”

  I reach down for a rock.

  The bear huffs, and then it sweeps its front paw across the path. Big paw. Really big claws. Dirt sprays up. I feel a clod of mud hit my cheek.

  The rock in my hand is the size of a cantaloupe. I don’t know why I’m holding it—a rock is useless against a bear.

  The bear huffs and pops its jaw.

  A bad sign, a very bad sign.

  The bear shakes its head like it’s making up its mind. Then it charges.

  Tej goes totally still. The bear is so close now I can see bits of dried grass in its fur. Saliva hangs in ropes from its jaws. Its eyes are flat black. It’s not so much a decision as a reaction—I lob the rock up.

  The toss is so weak I could be pitching to first-grade T-ballers. But it arcs straight up over Tej, hangs in the air and then plummets. The rock clunks square in the center of the bear’s skull.

  The bear blinks and rears back onto its ass. It shakes its head and lets out a bawling wail. Then it runs away from us, up the trail in the direction we came.

  Tej bursts out laughing. “It was just a yearling,” Tej says. “Hardly more than a cub.”

  I’m not laughing, not yet. My knees are jelly and my hands are shaking. “Right, just a teddy bear.”

  On the ground by my feet is a mess of smashed egg. I lean down. Two miniature birds lie folded in the broken yellow sacs.

  Chapter Seven

  “If that bear was just a yearling, I’d hate to see it when it’s full-grown.”

  We’re in an open meadow of long grass. Ahead of me on the trail, Tej waves his hand. “I’d hate to see it with its mother. We’d be hamburger.”

  “You would be. I’d still be running.”

  “You ca n’t out r un a bear, Liam. They’re faster than they look. Remember that video my dad took of the grizzly getting the sheep?”

  I remember. It was at his uncle’s ranch in Montana. Tej�
�s dad had videotaped the grizzly from his truck. The bear was in Tej’s uncle’s sheep pasture, chasing the flock. The video showed the bear taking the sheep, lunging with its front paws to bring the sheep down, and then tearing into the sheep with its teeth. It didn’t take long for that sheep to die. I say, “Your uncle shot the bear, and then he yelled at your dad for sitting there with his camera instead of doing something to save his sheep.”

  Tej says, “That’s right. You think you could have run faster than that bear?”

  I think about how fast that yearling bear closed the distance between it and us, how it drove with its front legs, how its shoulders rolled with each long stride.

  I say, “The bear got the slowest sheep. I don’t have to outrun the bear. It’s like Darwin said about survival of the fastest. I just have to be faster than you.”

  “Ha ha. Darwin’s theory is survival of the fittest, by the way, and mental fitness counts. Human beings didn’t get to the top of the food chain by being big and dumb.”

  I wish that sounded more like a joke. “By big and dumb, you’re talking about the bear, right?”

  He either ignores me or doesn’t hear me. Probably he’s ignoring me. Tej pauses on the trail. “Look,” he says, “you can see where a bear has been eating.”

  The meadow grass has been cropped into jagged swaths. “Bears eat grass?”

  Tej nods. “In the spring they do, when the grass is high in protein.”

  I pull a stalk of grass and chew it. It tastes like, well, grass. “Just grass?”

  “Pretty much, until the berries ripen.” Tej starts walking. “They’ll hunt if it’s easy, like a young or wounded elk.”

  “Or a nice fat sheep in a pasture.”

  “That was unusual, apparently.”

  “Maybe the bear took the elk calf we saw yesterday.”

  “If it didn’t, it probably ate it anyway. Anything dead is food for a bear.”

  I look over my shoulder for the hundredth time, just in case that yearling brings its mama to kick some human butt. Nice fresh human butt. I step up closer to Tej. “I sure nailed it with that rock.”