Surviving Bear Island

by Paul Greci

  I tried to dig my feet in sideways, but the rocky ground was just as slick as the slope above. So I started grabbing the berry bushes by their bases for a little balance. I could see downslope where there were more trees. I hoped it’d be less steep, too. Plus I could go from tree to tree when I got there.

  But for now it was sidestep, sidestep, sidestep, grab a bush at the base, and rest. Then repeat.

  I worked my way around a boulder, and then sucked air into my gut as my foot grazed the rump of a black bear.

  The bear twisted away from me and I jumped backwards. My feet scrambled for grip as my arms reached out for the steep slope. I grabbed a berry bush by the base and it gave way. I fell backwards, like I’d been dumped out of an airplane, and landed on my back with my legs flat, pointing downslope. A sea of green flew over me as I bumped down the slope and gained speed with no sign of stopping.

  I let out a scream.

  Then my heels hit something that sent a jolt through my hips and all the way to the base of my head. I flopped forward, and all of a sudden I was flying through the air. Everything slowed down, like an instant replay of someone doing a ski jump.

  I knew I was moving, was airborne, but felt no pressure—no resistance. Then I slammed into the ground. Face first. Mouth first.

  BEFORE THE ACCIDENT

  The whale stayed in the distance, ignoring us, as we paddled north. But then another group of sea lions swam toward us and Dad turned the kayak further from shore.

  When Dad did this, the sea lions corrected their course like we were a target they’d locked in on. I kept on paddling, my head cocked over my left shoulder watching them close in on us.

  “Keep it steady,” Dad said. “I’ve paddled through herds of them lots of times and nothing has ever happened. But the way that first group nudged the kayak—as much as I like seeing them, I wish they’d just leave us alone.”

  Now they were twenty yards away and one of them surfaced with a salmon in its mouth. It shook its head back and forth, tossed the stunned fish into air, and swam after it. The other sea lions dove. Maybe they were all fishing. I mean, if given the choice between harassing kayakers or eating, they’d probably choose to eat.

  “That’ll keep them busy.” Dad said. “We need to work our way back toward shore.”

  CHAPTER 9

  WHEN I tried to breathe, I felt all these sharp pains, like when I was helping Dad build a deck and my stomach slammed into the end of a beam and knocked the wind out of me, only this was a hundred times worse.

  I rolled onto my side and curled up, my whole body trembling, like how a dog quivers when it’s scared.

  I lay there until the trembling died down and I could breathe without all the pain.

  I lifted my head, then moved my arms and legs. They seemed okay. I sat up. That’s when I noticed the taste in my mouth.

  I spat some bloody saliva, ran my tongue between my teeth and lower lip, and felt two flaps of flesh where there shouldn’t have been any. And under the flaps, I poked the tip of my tongue into two deep gashes.

  I spit more blood. The gashes stung, like pieces of hot metal were pressing into them.

  If my mouth had been open when I’d hit the ground, I’d have broken my teeth.

  Check everything. Carefully.

  I pressed a finger onto my bottom lip and it came back bloody. I wished I had a mirror. I mean, I didn’t know if the blood was from the gashes, or someplace else. I pulled my lip out and curled it down, trying to see the damage, but that didn’t work ’cause my nose blocked my view.

  I ran my hands across my face but didn’t find any more blood. My lip felt tight, like I’d been punched in the mouth by the mountain. And my cheeks on both sides of my nose just below my eyes screamed with pain.

  I lay back down on my side and pulled my knees to my chest. I was never gonna make it to the Sentinels.

  My sweat cooled and I started to shiver.

  Get up.

  “Shut up.” I waited but didn’t hear anything in response. “Good.” I said. “I don’t want you whispering crap into my ear. You say almost nothing for three years. You can’t just turn it on and expect everything to be okay.” Another shiver ran through my body. The bottoms of my feet were going numb.

  “Okay,” I told myself, “If I just lie here, I’ll die for sure. And, what if I don’t find my dad? I make it to the Sentinels but he doesn’t? What then?”

  Live in some kind of home for the homeless?

  Or with my uncle and his family in Michigan? I’d seen him once my whole life. He came up after Mom died. Tried to talk my dad into doing some kind of religious ceremony. Said there was still time to save my mom.

  Take one day at a time. One moment at time.

  I sat up and put my hands on my ears. “Shut up. Just shut up.”

  I stood, and pain shot through my right hip.

  Bruises. Just bruises. But in my mind I saw a broken leg. A broken arm. And bleeding, lots of bleeding. No one to help me.

  And then I thought about my dad. If he was down there in Hidden Bay and I just gave up, then what would happen to him? If he lost me, it’d just send him over the edge again. My chest tightened. “I’ll find you, Dad. I’ll make this right.”

  I used baby-steps to pick my way down the last of the steep section, my hip throbbing with every step. I kept glancing over to both sides and behind me. I mean, not that long ago I’d kicked a sleeping bear, and yeah, it’d run away, but it could be anywhere. Bears weren’t as scary when they ran away, but still, if that bear had wanted, it could’ve had me for lunch. Could’ve pinned me down like a flopping salmon.

  Then I was working my way through flat forest, dodging deadfall and fighting brush, and I heard a twig snap behind me. I jerked my head around and jumped backwards.

  I caught a glimpse of a squirrel clinging to the side of a spruce tree; then it dropped to the forest floor and disappeared into some deadfall.

  No way, I thought. No way could that little animal make such a loud sound.

  Then I remembered what my dad had told me around a campfire early in the trip.

  “It was on my first solo kayaking trip,” Dad said. “It was light out and I was in my tent, reading. I kept hearing something walking in the forest. I’d unzip the tent, stick my head out and have a look around. I did that three times in less than twenty minutes. And each time I heard the walking noise, it sounded louder than before. I was drifting off to sleep when I heard it again, and this time it sounded like it was right on top of me. I panicked, shouted to scare whatever it was away, and blew on a whistle I carried. I was sure it was a bear.”

  “What was it?” I asked.

  Dad smiled. “I got out of my tent, looked around, and didn’t see anything. Got back in and heard it again. I thought I was going crazy. I got out and looked again. And then I saw it. And I didn’t know that it was responsible for the noise I was hearing until it moved, and I heard a watered-down version of the walking noise.”

  “What was it?” I asked again, wishing he’d just tell me.

  “I’m kind of embarrassed to say—it was a big black stinkbug perched on top of the rain fly of my tent, and every time it moved it sounded like footsteps. The sound was magnified in the tent. And, since I was alone, I was more sensitive to noises and what might be making them.”

  “A stinkbug,” I said, smiling. “No way.”

  “When you are alone in the wilderness, everything is magnified.”

  The next day I hiked toward the back of Hidden Bay, where the biggest mountains were, eyeing the ground for tracks, or any other sign from my dad. I stopped a couple of times and made rock arrows above the strand line, pointing toward the back of the bay. Pain stabbed my hip with every step and bend and twist. The wounds in my mouth stung, my cheeks ached, and the insides of my arches burned with blisters.

  I remembered those bear-killed fish.

  A stream. All I wanted was one stream, full of salmon.

  What I really wanted was steak
and chicken and mashed potatoes and gravy, and some chocolate ice cream.

  I’d settle for salmon, but worried about how to catch them. I mean, walking around in that creek and having all those fish swim away from me. That sucked. Like the whole world had abandoned me.

  And I couldn’t live on bear-killed remains. I’d be like a seagull, waiting for the bears to finish their meal, and then moving in. Except gulls could cross the mountains in minutes, and go from stream to stream scavenging. I didn’t have that kind of range. I had to learn how to catch them.

  Your mother and I would go to watch bears catch and eat salmon. Those big creeks coming down out of the mountains. That’s where they’re most likely to be. That’s usually where the salmon streams are. Usually. We’d just float in the kayak and watch.

  From the top of a headland, I saw the signs of a salmon stream. Yellow-green, seaweed-covered rocks dotted with gulls at the mouth of the creek. As I walked down the slope, I spotted three bald eagles perched in the tree tops. The creek spread out and split into a few channels before flowing into the bay.

  Yes.

  Yes.

  Yes.

  I stopped at the first channel. The water was shallow, just shin deep. No fish. So I waded across.

  I tromped up one channel and down the next. Covered them all, shallow and deep, but found not one salmon, dead or alive.

  At the far side of the last channel I shouted, “Not fair!”

  I raised a big rock over my head and slammed it into the creek. I took a deep breath and paced back and forth on the gravel bar bordering the stream. I grabbed another big rock and slammed it into the water.

  I pictured the creek where I’d scavenged the bear-killed salmon. The one in front of me looked just like it. And why were the eagles hanging around if there were no salmon? They weren’t stupid, like me. They actually lived here. They knew where the fish were.

  All day I’d been thinking about the fish. Even slime-covered remains with bear drool a quarter-inch thick would do. Something I could cook on a fire. Something that would stay in my stomach to let me know I’d eaten. The worm-filled blueberries would be good to fill in around the fish, or to eat as I found them, but I couldn’t live on them, not with all the walking in front of me.

  I let out a scream that emptied my lungs of air, stomped my feet on the ground, and then sat down and cried.

  At first I cried like a little kid who wasn’t getting his way. But soon I was crying for my dad—where was he? And for my mom, for her short life. And because I knew that with every failure to find food, the chances of ever seeing anyone again grew slimmer.

  Six days since the accident or was it seven, I wondered, as I wiped tears from my eyes.

  Fish once, two Meal Pack bars and berries, lots of berries. My stomach let out a growl that could’ve scared a bear away.

  “Food,” I said. “This is my biggest problem. And I need to fix it.” My mind churned away, trying to solve it. Like if I thought hard enough an endless supply of burgers and fries would just appear. A chill ran up my spine. The cold ground sucked the heat out of my legs.

  I picked myself up and started for the trees in search of firewood and a campsite.

  I draped my sweat-soaked socks on the tops of my boots close to the fire, thrilled that it wasn’t raining. I was sitting barefoot atop one of the life vests, letting my blistered feet air out. The wormy blueberries I’d eaten sat in my stomach like a tiny puddle on the bottom of an empty swimming pool.

  In my mind I started a song like my mom would’ve done. She made songs for every thing.

  Wormy blueberries will help.

  But alone will only make me yelp.

  Like a dog without enough to eat.

  Salmon for the Sentinels can’t be beat.

  I know my mom could’ve come up with something better, but she’d be happy that I was making a song. A song with her in mind. “Let the music flow through you,” she’d say. “Play with it. You don’t make mistakes when you make music. You make discoveries.”

  There had to be a salmon stream farther back in the bay. Had to be, or else I’d have to cut off some fingers and roast them. Maybe I could work that in.

  So the whole thing would go like this:

  Wormy blue berries will help.

  But alone will only make me yelp.

  Like a dog I need more than a treat.

  Salmon for the Sentinels can’t be beat.

  If I don’t find any, then fingers I’ll eat.

  By the firelight I took one of the four, identical, big pixie lures—a silver spoon with a bumpy pink center with a treble hook dangling beneath—from its package.

  Spawning salmon don’t bite, I remembered.

  They’ve stopped feeding.

  Spawning salmon don’t bite, but I do.

  When I catch one I’ll chew and chew.

  That could be the next verse to my rotten little song.

  I searched my firewood pile and chose a branch still covered with bark and about six feet long that I could just get my hand around.

  The word. What was the word? Hook on a pole. We used one when Dad took me halibut fishing when I was little. Besides me puking into a bucket, I remembered the guide slamming a pole into the halibut.

  “Gaff!” I said. “I’m gonna make a gaff!” Yeah, talking to myself again. Or to the world. To anyone who would listen. And singing to the bears so they would know I was here and to go find their own spots.

  Wormy blueberries will help.

  But alone will only make me yelp.

  Like a dog I need more than a treat.

  Salmon for the Sentinels can’t be beat.

  If I don’t find any, then fingers I’ll eat.

  Spawning salmon don’t bite, but I do.

  When I catch one I’ll chew and chew.

  I pulled out one of my knives, put my hunger aside, ignored my aching hip, sore mouth and blistered feet, and worked the bark off one end of the branch just enough so the lure fit into the barked-out area with hook attached to it hanging off the end of the branch.

  Then I took a small piece of rope, wrapped it around the lure and branch three times, and tied it. I grabbed the hook, and pulled. The lure slid partway out of the rope’s grip.

  “Not good enough.”

  I sang my new song a few more times. It still sounded pretty bad, but at least it was something. Something I’d created.

  I piled more wood on the fire, and kept working on the gaff. Planning ahead. For a time when there would be fish.

  That’s what grownups do, I thought. They plan ahead.

  Their plans didn’t always work out, but at least they were prepared to try. I focused on the fire and remembered my favorite of Mom’s lyrics, and once they were there, they just kept running through my head like background music:

  Every fire’s a ceremony

  Every story’s a testimony

  If you pay attention, you will know what the river knows.

  Her words sounded way better than mine, but she’d had more practice than me.

  I don’t know how long I worked at it. I didn’t have a watch and it was just plain dark beyond the firelight, but I had finally made something that I thought would work.

  With the lure secured by rope in the barked-out area, I’d threaded fishing line through the eyehole at the end of the lure opposite the hook. I’d wrapped the line around the branch and ran it up to the top of the pole. Then I’d tied it in a notch I’d made with my knife.

  I hoped the fishing line would keep the lure from sliding up and down, and the rope would keep it from swinging back and forth.

  Just within the boundary of the firelight, I sunk the hook into the trunk of an alder tree, and pulled. The line gave a little, but held. It was gonna work. It had to work.

  All I needed now were some fish.

  CHAPTER 10

  FISH. Thousands of fish, I hoped.

  I’d walked in the mist all day and had crossed some small streams, but now I was perc
hed on a rocky outcrop above a big creek at the back of Hidden Bay. The creek poured out of some craggy mountains spotted with snow. Islands of yellow-green seaweed separated several stream channels flowing into the cove.

  My empty stomach burned with anticipation. I knew I’d starve if I ate only berries.

  Fish, fish, fish. I needed fish.

  The rush of flowing water filled my ears. Gaff in one hand, I scrambled down from the headland and walked the shore towards the creek,.

  In the disappearing daylight, I checked the first of several channels and found nothing. Not even dead salmon. My dad said there were over nine hundred salmon streams in Prince William Sound. This just had to be one of them.

  I crossed two more shallow channels with no sign of fish, and trudged upstream on a gravel bar, my blistered feet burning with every step.

  Gulls squawked as they lifted off the ground and flew away from me.

  I approached the main channel and stopped. Dorsal fins, small triangles poking out of the moving water, swaying back and forth, pointed upstream. I took a step forward and they all moved across the channel and downstream.

  Fish all piled on top of one another.

  The school was as big as a full-sized pickup truck. Like Dad said: You really could walk across their backs and stay dry if they didn’t move.

  I pictured the empty creek yesterday and gripped my gaff harder. I needed to understand this. I couldn’t just stumble around in the forest and eat berries until I was too weak to walk. There was so much I didn’t know. And this was a chance—a chance to know something. A chance to discover. A chance to survive.

  I stood like a statue. I had to do this, and do it right.

  When Dad took me dip-netting for salmon on the Copper River the summer Mom died, he had said, “Picture the fish swimming into your net.”

  The Copper River was so full of silt that you never saw a fish swim into your net, you only felt it. You try to hold a net the size of a big trash can in the water on the end of a twelve-foot-long pole. You just feel a thump and haul your net out. But it was like pulling a net through wet cement.