by Nancy Adams
“Nate,” she wept, her tears flowing freely down her face. “What are we gonna do?”
“Well, I'm certain that Stan would have radioed our last known position to someone, so there will be a search coming out for us. We shouldn't be stuck here for long, but it might take a day or two to actually find us, so we'll have to see what we can do about water and food, shelter. But, hey, you’re with a Marine! We'll be okay, Babe.”
I opened a cabinet just behind the cockpit door and took out a couple of boxes. One was marked with a big red cross, so she knew it was a first aid kit. The other was unmarked.
I held it up. “Survival kit,” I said. I opened it to show her that it contained two knives, a couple of BIC lighters, a pistol and numerous other things. “Don't leave the ground without it!”
We climbed out through the torn wall and slowly got to our feet. The plane had come down among a lot of trees, and everywhere we looked, trees were all we could see. It looked like the jungle, she said.
“Nope,” I said, “not a jungle. Rocky Mountains, and I'm guessing we're about a hundred miles west, maybe a little northwest of Denver. These are some rough mountains, and fairly high, so don't overexert yourself; the air's pretty thin up here, and you'll wear out easily.” I had opened the survival kit and was taking things out. I tucked the pistol, a Colt .45 like the military used for years, into my waistband, then put one of the knives on my belt. I handed Katelynn the other one, and she saw that it had a clip on the sheath, so she clipped it to her jeans. I gave her one of the lighters, too, and she didn't even ask why, She knew what it was for, making fire, so she didn't try to be funny. It wasn't a funny situation.
There were other things in the kit that I took out and looked over, like a flare gun with five shells, a coil of thin, nylon rope, a folding saw that was about a foot long, a spool of thin steel wire, a few rolls of fishing line and hooks (some with rubber worms and artificial flies on them), a “shaker” flashlight, a folding metal grid that could be used for cooking over a campfire, a couple of metal sporks, a folding plastic water jug, and some small bottles of salt tablets and water purifier pills. I told her what each thing was as I set it out, and then we began dividing it between us. I told her we'd likely need it all before we were found. The flare gun and shells went into one of my pockets, and I put the rope and fishing gear and such into others. I carried the metal rack and water jug.
The first aid kit was laying on the ground beside Katelynn, and she opened it. She used some sterile pads to clean my face with peroxide, and we were glad to see that all that blood was only from some small scratches and cuts. She used iodine on them, and I hissed, but didn't argue. Then I looked her over, and found some on her, so she let me give her the same treatment. She didn't hiss, she called me names.
Once that was done, I said, “Normally, the best thing to do would be to stay close to the plane, but there are animals in the mountains that will smell the blood from the bodies,” I didn't use their names, “and come looking for them. There's nothing I can do about it, because they're crushed inside their seats, and I can't get them out, so we'll have to leave here pretty soon. If a mountain lion or bear comes along, I don’t want to be trying to argue with them.”
I picked up a rock and went to the side of the plane that was intact, then began scratching letters into it. I left a message that we were heading east in hopes of finding a road, then picked up the first aid kit and said, “Let's go for a walk, Baby.”
“Just a minute,” she said, and ducked back inside the plane to come out with a pair of blankets and four bottles of water. I showed her how to turn the blankets into bedrolls and tie them across ourselves to make them easier to carry. She smiled, and we set off.
Katelynn
Chapter Three
A Long and Winding Road
* * * * *
Nate led off, and we started looking for a way through the dense brush. It seemed like there must not be many animals around, to me, because they usually leave trails, but this was like trying to climb through hedges. I did my best to keep up, but Nate still had to stop and wait for me every few minutes or so.
We'd only gone a few hundred yards in about an hour, it was so thick, but then we found a cleared area. Nate got down and looked at some tracks, then turned to me. “Bear tracks,” he whispered, “but they look to be a few days old. I don't think he's still around, but let's be as quiet as we can, anyway. See how the claw marks are way out in front of the footprint? This is a grizzly bear, and we don't want to run into him if we can avoid it.”
He looked ahead, and pointed out a trail to me. “That's a bear trail. They walk in single file when they're together, and always follow the same path as any bear that went before them if they're alone. That's why the tracks are so prominent, because the earth had been compacted by so many bears passing through here. We can follow it for a little way, because it will probably cross another trail, like a deer run. Then we'll follow that. It'll make the going easier.”
I nodded and he led off again, following the bear trail. I confess I was thoroughly scared to death by this time. A grizzly bear? I'd heard enough horror stories to know I didn't even want to see one at a distance, let alone come face to face with one. However, Nate was right, and following the trail was easier than trying to cut across the forest. We walked softly, stepping into the same tracks the bears had left.
We followed it for about twenty minutes before we found a deer trail, and Nate turned us onto it immediately. It wasn't as easy to walk as the bear trail had been, but he said it was definitely a lot safer. Sometimes, he said, bears actually have nesting areas near their favorite trails, so the longer we were on that one, the more likely we were to run into one of them. I'll take the deer trail, any day!
This trail wasn't that hard to follow, with the majority of the brush broken down by the passage of many, many deer and other animals that follow their trails We actually startled a doe at one point. It had apparently been resting under some bushes, and when we can tramping along, it bolted and almost scared me to death! Nate froze and watched it take off down the trail.
“That's a good sign,” he said, no longer whispering. “That little doe was more afraid of us than she was of anything that might be waiting up ahead, so we'll keep following this trail for a while. Sooner or later, it should cross a road, even if it's only a dirt track for rangers.”
We kept walking for about another hour and came to a large clearing near a pretty wide stream. It was about forty feet across, and the trees right around it were smaller, so the ground there could be easily seen from the air. Nate studied it for a few minutes, then said, “I think we'll make camp here. I don't see any bear tracks, and if we make a fire, that'll keep most other animals away. Best part is, there are fish in the stream, so we can get a bite to eat.”
“Okay,” I said as brightly as I could manage. “What do you want me to do?”
He smiled. “That's my girl! Take the water jug and fill it at the stream, then put two of the purifier tablets in it. Let that sit a while, and we'll have safe water to drink.”
“Isn't it safe already?” I asked. “I can remember when I was a kid, I used to drink out of a stream now and then.”
He shook his head as he withdrew the knife from his belt. “Animals use the bathroom in streams, so any germs they had, you can get. There's one particular bug called giardiasis that gives you debilitating diarrhea, and that's the main one I'm concerned about, but the purifier tablets will take care of pretty much all of them.”
I shuddered. I'm not a bear, so the last thing I wanted was to get the runs in the woods! I took the folding jug and went to the stream.
Nate was right, there were fish in it, and some of them were pretty good sized. I saw what I thought were some very good sized trout, and I know I saw bluegills. My Dad used to take us fishing for those back home when I was a kid, so I know they're good eating. I blew up the jug to make it expand to its regular shape, then held it under the water to let it
fill.
When I was done and had the tablets in it, I capped it and set it in some shade, then looked to see what Nate was doing. He'd been cutting some long, thinner branches and arranging them into the frame of what looked like an Indian Teepee. The base was about nine feet in diameter, and it stood probably fifteen feet tall at the point.
“Okay,” I said to him, “the only thing I wanna know is where you plan to get the buffalo hides to cover it with. Hmm?”
“Hey, who needs buffalo? We've got pine trees!” He finished securing the last pole into place with the wire, and then started piling all the small limbs he'd cleaned off of them around the base, following around the circle. As he came back to where he'd begun, he started another layer on top of the first, all of it leaning against the poles.
“Aha!” I said, catching on, and I grabbed a big pile of it and followed behind him, putting mine on top of his so that we made a double layer with each circuit. We left a small gap in one side, to make a doorway, and when we ran out of pine boughs, we both went and cut more of them from standing trees, until we'd completed our little house. There was a small opening at the top, and I said, “Shouldn't we close that in case it rains?”
He shook his head. “No,” he said. “I'll put a small patch over it to deflect any rain down the sides, but we need that hole so we can have a small fire inside if it gets cool later. We're already into late September, and at this altitude, it can get pretty cold at night.”
“You're so smart,” I said, and he turned around and put his arms around me for the first time since we'd started walking. I put my own around his neck and pulled him down for a kiss.
By the time we'd finished the Teepee, it was late afternoon. I'd finished off both of my water bottles, so I asked if the water in the jug should be okay yet. He said it would be fine, so I filled them back up, and then filled Nate's. It was just easier to drink from the smaller bottles.
Nate decided it was time to start thinking about dinner, so he sat me down beside the stream with two small fishing poles he'd whipped up out of pine branches. He'd tied some of the fishing line to them and added the pre-baited hooks, then tied on a small piece of bark to use as a bobber on each one. He'd also made me a stringer from some of the wire, so I could keep any fish I caught. I'd gone fishing many times with my folks as a kid; this was something I darn well knew how to do!
Meanwhile, he went for a walk, he said, to Nature's Grocery Store. That meant following the water upstream for a ways, looking for edible plants like berries and roots to add to dinner. I wasn't too sure about that, but he seemed to know what he was doing. I was just thankful that we were alive, and together.
Of course, this meant that I was all alone in the woods on top of a mountain. Did you know that when you’re all alone, your hearing becomes super-acute? I could suddenly hear every sound within a mile, I was certain, and some of them sounded downright ominous! A mountain lion's roar is terrifying even when you know it isn't anywhere close to you, and even the snapping of a twig can make you jump, sure that a grizzly is about to add you to his diet.
“Everything okay, Babe?” I heard Nate call to me, and that made me smile. “I'm fine,” I replied, and at that very moment one of my bark bobbers disappeared beneath the surface of the water. I yanked back on the pole to set the hook, then started pulling the line in, but darned if it wasn't hard to do. I'd caught a fish that was putting up a fight, and when it came into view, I saw that it was a huge trout. I hauled it in and got it unhooked, ran the stringer through its gill and mouth, then set it back in the water to keep it alive. The stringer was tied off to my belt, so it wasn't going anywhere!
“I caught a fish!” I shouted. “A great big one!”
“Great, Babe! I'll be back soon, I've found us some treats!”
I wondered what kind of treats he might have found, but the excitement of catching such a big fish was making me a little daring. I envisioned eating some giant berries or something for desert, after we roasted the fish over a fire, and suddenly I felt like Nate and I could survive anything, as long as we were together.
Then I thought about our families, and how worried they must be. By now, everyone would know we must have gone down, because we never arrived in San Francisco. Even if the pilot hadn't been able to radio for help before he died, it would be obvious to anyone that something had happened to us.
I felt the tears come before I even knew I was crying. Mom and Dad would be in shock and panic, and I was sure Nate's parents would be just as bad. I wished there were some way we could let them know we were okay, tell them where we were, but when I checked my phone again, it still had no signal. I powered it back down to conserve the battery as long as possible. If we ended up having to walk out, sooner or later we'd come into range of a cell tower.
I heard Nate coming back, splashing through the edge of the stream. He came into view a moment later and hurried over to me. He looked at the big fish, first, and let out a whistle.
“Baby, that's dinner,” he said. “I'm sure there are professional fishermen who look forward to catching a trout that big. He's probably over twenty pounds!”
I smiled. “Yeah? I did good, huh?”
“You did great, Babe. And I found a few things to go with it,” he said, and I noticed her had a bunch of stuff in his shirt tail. He knelt down and laid it all out on a fairly clear spot, and I saw an amazing pile of wild plant things. There were red berries, thin stalks with tiny little onions, pine cones and some huge leaves. I looked at him questioningly, and he read my mind.
“The berries are wild raspberries; they grow all through the Rockies and the berries come out in the fall, so they're all over the place right now, so they'll be part of dessert. These are wild onions, very similar to garlic, which will give your fish some extra flavor. The pine cones,” and he picked one up and smacked it against his hand to show me that a bunch of seeds fell out, “are full of dried pine nuts that we'll snack on as we walk; they're loaded down with protein and vitamins.”
I pointed at the big leaves. “And those are for salad?”
He grinned. “No, those are for boiling water,” he said. “I'm going to make us some raspberry pine needle tea, and bake us some bread.”
I think my eyes went wide. “Boiling water?”
“Yep. Watch.” He took two of the big leaves and laid them together, one on top of the other, then got out the thin wire and began using it to basically sew the edges together. As he worked, the edges curled up until he had a bowl that was about eight inches deep and maybe ten inches across. “Now to get the rest of the ingredients,” he said, and got up to walk toward a stand of cattails beside where I'd been fishing. He dug down into the muddy water and began pulling them up by the roots, long skinny things that were black and nasty looking.
“Don't judge them by their color,” he said with a laugh. “These will become mashed potatoes and bread in just a bit.”
When he'd gathered a pretty big pile, he started cutting them up, first cutting the stalks off of them and then cutting off the dried parts of those. He passed me a piece of the lower stalk and told me to try it. I looked at it for a moment, then bit into it; it tasted like a cross between a cucumber and a stalk of celery, with the celery's crunchy texture. It was actually pretty good.
When I'd eaten it, Nate told me to gather up some dry wood, the pieces that had fallen off of trees and were lying on the ground, and start building a fire. I'd gone camping with Mom and Dad when I was young, and knew how to build a fire, so I got started. Meanwhile, he cut up the rest of the cattail roots into chunks and put them in his leaf bucket, then carried it over and filled it with water. When I had the fire going pretty good, he set the folding rack up over it, and carefully put the leaf bucket on top. The way it was made, it didn't leak much, and with a little adjustment, he was able to get it to sit level on the rack.
“Wow,” I said. “But won't the fire burn the leaves?”
He shook his head. “Not as long as there's water in it. T
he edges will dry out and burn down to the surface of the water, then the water will keep the rest from getting dry enough to burn. You'll see.”
He went back to the stream and hauled out the fish, then gutted and cleaned it on a rock. He cut off the head and tail and fins, of course, but I was expecting him to filet it, and he didn't. Instead, he began chopping up the onions and crushing some of the pine nuts, then stuffing the mixture inside the fish. He used wire to tie it together so the stuffing wouldn't fall out, and then laid it on the rack beside the bucket, but not directly over the fire. Within a few minutes, the smell of grilling fish filled the area, and the water in the leaves was boiling. He let it boil for a few minutes, then used a spork to fish out the chunks of root.
He split them open and used the spork to scrape the insides out, until he had what actually looked like a nice mound of mashed potatoes. He let me try a bite, and I was really surprised at how much it tasted like them, too. He put the pile on a leaf, and set it near the fire to keep warm, then put the remaining pieces of root back into the water, which was still boiling.
I was keeping the fire going, and watching this marvelous man of mine as he prepared what seemed like a gourmet feast in the middle of the wilds. The more I watched, the more I thanked God for him. With Nate Simmons, I was learning, I didn't need to ever worry about what the world might throw at us. No matter what it was, we'd get through it together.
“I love you,” I said, and he looked at me with the most beautiful smile I'd ever seen.
“I love you, too,” he said simply.
Jim
Chapter Four
Daddy's Gone A-Hunting
* * * * *
We'd wished the kids a safe trip before they went to bed the night before their flight, and even said a prayer before we went to sleep. When we got up, they were already gone, and we went about our normal daily routines. I went to my office, and my wife was planning to do some shopping, pay a few bills and think of a few thousand more things she absolutely had to have for Katelynn's wedding.