Naked and Marooned

by Ed Stafford

  As I continued working on the gate for the goat trap I began to realise that I was tending towards building things that would take a long time. It was a self-inflicted torture that I had no one to blame for but myself. As I stripped the hibiscus, cut down the wood and lashed it all on I was constantly and uneasily aware that it was all taking too much time. How did I get to this place of having two months to fill and yet always feeling under time pressure? Of committing to huge construction projects when perhaps they were not the best use of my time? My apparent need to be immersed in something constructive in its literal sense meant that I could never relax and I seemed to be for ever chasing a tangible goal that would put my mind at ease. But that goal just kept slipping further and further away.

  As it was Friday it was time for my end-of-week exercises. I’d been on the island for five weeks now and I’d eaten really well recently but I had no energy at all. I think I was beginning to get depressed. I didn’t feel grounded and my emotions were erratic, causing huge mood swings. Often I had to drag myself up from feeling extraordinarily low. Having eaten so well, I felt as if I was putting weight back − the lack of energy must be down to my mental state.

  I could only manage ten chin-ups. As I released my grip on the branch and allowed myself to drop to the ground I felt pathetic. I had managed fewer repeats of every exercise than I had done at the end of week one.

  I dragged my bow and arrows to the beach for some target practice. I had to become proficient with the new weapon if it was to be of any use at all.

  Late that afternoon I left on a search for crabs and snails and didn’t get back until five minutes before it was dark. Apathy had meant that I hadn’t even worked out timings and I cooked in the dark. My harvest was twelve crabs, which was now quite normal and nothing to complain about, and so I ate eight of them for supper in two successive pots and saved four for breakfast. I now needed it to rain again as I was close to having to dip into my seven litres of emergency water in the cave. My most basic fears about water came flooding back again and once more I felt as out of control as I had on day one.

  My depression then led me to panic and look at other options for food like fish. I talked to the camera about the reef having an abundance of fish and that I was wasting my time trying to catch a goat. They were too fast and too wily to catch. I made a drama out of the dangers of building a raft and became overwhelmed by a sense of being out of control.

  Retrospectively, I can see that I had become reliant on successes to bolster my confidence but I was therefore riding a very turbulent journey of ups and downs as I was swept along on the tide. I wasn’t really supporting myself − I was torturing myself about how I was managing my time and myself, and the only person who could come in and stop my mental torment was me. But I didn’t seem to be able to snap out of the never-ending drama of my predicament. I was driving myself mad.

  I scolded myself, too, for not making a start on a bed to get me off the floor and away from the rats but I had been so busy with the goat trap, the archery practice and feeding myself that I hadn’t been able to fit it all in. As the rats began moving around me I felt more dismal than I can remember and fell into a half-sleep, worrying that I didn’t even know how to build a rat trap.

  I awoke clear with the certainty that there was no point in doing a little bit of everything and never getting anything done. My aim for the day was to get the gate on the goat trap functioning.

  As I plodded up the hill I dreamed again of peanut butter with loads of real butter on crappy processed white toast. Since arriving on the island I’d not once had indigestion − usually a constant irritant for me − so I could come off the island and stick to a diet without caffeine, sugar, wheat, nicotine, dairy and alcohol to retain the new digestive state of calm. But all I could think now was just to indulge and binge and treat myself to all the cheap processed food I could eat when I finally got off. I didn’t care if I got indigestion again − it would be worth it.

  By midday I’d finished my thirteen-bar gate on the goat trap. I was exhausted – this trap had better work. Midway through the afternoon it rained and so I halted construction to fill up with water, as I desperately needed more.

  Half an hour’s rain produced fourteen and a half litres of water. ‘Got to be happy with that!’ I grinned, staring at the dark sky and hoping the rain would return. If it rained in the night it would test the shelter but I was fairly relaxed that it was watertight. The beach was chilly and so I sat by the warm fire. I could hear the wind picking up on the beach and causing coconuts to fall from the canopy. As I plopped a fistful of massive snails in the pot I took comfort from my shelter and my fire. It felt like one area where I had indeed taken control and I enjoyed watching the wet storm grow around me from my dry warm space.

  Before it finally got dark the last thing I did after the rain passed was to test-slam the goat gate. This mechanism needed to be fast and strong to ensure the goat was trapped securely. I allowed the heavy gate to swing shut from horizontal and the right-hand post promptly snapped as if it was made of brittle toffee. I felt the sadness and loneliness enter me with the failure but told the camera that I wasn’t bothered. ‘I’ll just replace it,’ I fronted up. But I wanted to cry. I wanted to be saved. I wanted to be looked after. I said none of this to the camera − things were getting too desperate now and no one but me needed to know how I felt. I felt that by now I should have been beyond such self-pity.

  With nothing else to make me happy I took solace in food. The coconut that I was roasting by the fire provided little sweet bursts of comfort. I tried to think positively but I was still very worried about the time I was wasting on the goat trap.

  On day thirty-seven I woke up early and walked round the island. Nineteen crabs and two full pots of snails were my reward for my diligence. It would be a good day’s eating once more.

  Then fortune decided to twist my nipple and spit in my face by allowing my cooking tin can to develop a leak. ‘That really is a disaster,’ I announced, stating the bleak truth. I now only had a tiny tin to cook in − less than half the size of my now leaky one − more like a metal shot glass than a cauldron. Maybe a clamshell would work – it would take longer to heat up but it was worth a try. I was pretty sure I remembered being told that they had a tendency to crack when placed in a fire. My trusty pot had lasted two full weeks on the fire − not bad, I suppose, considering how many cups of tea I’d drunk. Probably over sixty, I calculated, and forty-two meals, too.

  I drank a half-glass of lemon leaf tea boiled in my inconveniently small tin. Only twenty-three days to go, I told myself. I had long ago started counting days remaining rather than days completed.

  For lunch I tried to use a clamshell but, as I feared, it cracked before the water started to boil, which didn’t surprise me. ‘I didn’t need that pot to die today. I didn’t need that.’ I glared at the flip-out screen, exasperated at my misfortune.

  My hands were still covered in sores and my tongue traced a rough filling that seemed to have been partially dislodged. ‘Brilliant − just what I needed.’ I shook my head in resignation.

  By the afternoon I had replaced a broken vertical bar on the rustic gate and wedged the top-hinged door open with a six-foot Y-pole. The heavy gate looked strong now and capable of entrapping a goat by slamming securely shut. I then needed to create a mechanism whereby the door would be connected to a trigger. I tied together several thick strands of beach hibiscus and threaded the line from the bottom bar of the gate up and over a high, smooth branch, and then down to a release mechanism at the back of the proposed enclosure. My plan was to connect this line to a pressure plate trigger at the back of the enclosure on the inside. This would then be baited with coconut. To do this I had to climb the tree, an activity that evoked childhood memories of grazed knees and elbows and the thrill of being high enough to know that one slip could result in a nasty fall. I was enjoying myself once more.

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bsp; Once in place, I armed the trap and walked around to the trigger plate and gently pressed down on the wooden plate. The wooden toggle was freed and shot into the air as the weight of the gate came crashing down to slam shut against the gate posts. It worked: the gate was still in one piece and it had a working trigger! Now I just needed to build some walls to enclose the trap like a sheep pen.

  The childish thrill of setting the trap kept me going but my energy was still rock-bottom. Walking up the hill and even back down to my camp left me feeing like there was zero glycogen in my muscles and that I was eating my own body up to provide energy. But the effort was worth it; at last I had a mechanically functioning trapdoor.

  As an experiment I decided to attempt to boil water in a plastic bottle suspended just over the flames of the fire on a line of hibiscus bark. It took an age to heat up to a temperature vaguely suitable for tea but I didn’t risk it actually boiling as I didn’t want to melt the plastic. It was a method that I’d read about somewhere in a book, but, like most such survival advice, it seemed fiddly and inefficient, created more for effect than anything else I suspect. I knew it wasn’t my long-term solution.

  Sipping the lukewarm lemony tea, I decided that I would make three clay pots. I knew that if I hardened them in the fire some might break so I decided I would have to make more than one to allow for this natural wastage. I set down the unsatisfying tepid drink, gathered my hunting and filming equipment together, and set out to find food for supper. Having worked in the forest all day it was refreshing to be able to see distances on the beach and my eyes blinked in the brightness. The light evening wind was soothing on my skin and it was calming to be walking my familiar paths on the alert for seafood. I returned with seventeen crabs and two full pots of snails − another abundance of food − and decided to sacrifice another clamshell to cook them in even with the knowledge that it would crack. It performed a temporary service and, again, I ate well as the light faded.

  To make a trap that contains but doesn’t kill an animal requires that trap to be strong and without any weaknesses that the beast can exploit. Building these stick walls required large quantities of saplings and, less obviously, huge quantities of cordage to lash them all together. It was late morning by the time I had converted a further four large beach hibiscus trees into a pile of strong crude rope.

  By the time I’d carried the cordage up the hill and stripped it to finer, more usable strands it was well beyond lunchtime and time to go looking for some food. On my outing I found an intact plastic jerrycan and thought that it would make an amazing reservoir under bamboo guttering on my shelter. I already had one bucket but it was cracked and leaked − this new one was pristine. I would be able to utilise the 132 square feet of thatch and direct the runaway water into a single container. I could then dispense with clamshells and straw sucking, and this heralded an advance in my striving towards a comfortable, sustainable lifestyle on the island. But it wasn’t a priority and so, for the moment, I let it sit on the back burner in my mind.

  In the afternoon I collected twenty-two trees to make the goat enclosure. Twenty-two trees. ‘Crikey, I’m shagged,’ I eloquently expressed my fatigue as I picked skin off my new knuckle sores and walked back down the hill to my camp.

  In front of my shelter, about twenty feet from where I slept, was a huge hanging dead tree caught up in the vines. This deadfall was tangled and unsightly, and as I’d now made a very smart shelter I didn’t like my one and only view being so obscured. The wood that was hanging there would also make excellent dry fuel for the fire and so, despite my weariness, I attempted to bring the whole lot down.

  As I stood beneath the ngan duppurru (a timely reminder: it means fucked or tangled) mess, it made me think of my Aboriginal friends. What would they make of me now? I knew immediately that they would be all smiles congratulating me on how far I’d come. It was good to remind myself that I was actually my harshest critic and to realise that they would probably be full of praise.

  I could make out the strong cable-like vines that suspended everything from the rafters of the canopy. I tugged from the ground but that was about as effective as a tick on a cow. I then pulled myself up into the mass of dead wood, hoping that my body weight would help to snap some of the main vines, and I bounced and shook the whole mass like an angry baboon trying to make a fierce display in the treetops. My heart raced as I knew I was taking quite big risks. I was standing on, and being supported by, the very thing I was trying to dislodge and bring crashing to the jungle floor. Luckily for me nothing moved. I was totally spent and for ever stuck with my fucked-up view of the world. Adrenaline coursing through me, I laughed out loud at my inadvertent play on words.

  I’d had quite a hard job staying positive today but I had managed to do so – which was reassuring. With all the crabs, I was pooing for Britain, too, so I couldn’t really work out why my energy was still so low. ‘I was hanging,’ I noted, referencing ‘hanging from my chinstrap’, an army expression whose meaning is pretty obvious. You are so tired that you can only stand up because you are hanging from the chinstrap of your helmet. ‘Chin-strapped’ is another expression.

  The whole experience was still so much harder than I’d expected it to be.

  The warmth of the fire had kept me snug all night. Lying in a foetal position I faced the shelter and allowed the radiated heat to blanket my bare back. Apart from the necessity of waking to stoke the fire, my sleep had been deep and replenishing. I became aware of the bleating of the goats close to where I slept. I blinked open my eyes and craned my neck round, keeping my body still, to try to catch a glimpse of the herd. They were scattered over the hillside and slowly making their way across my front porch to the beach. I lay still for a while, observing the relaxed grazing and ambling of the close-knit family. The patterns of their movements seemed to be based around edible vegetation and they were on a morning breakfast walk. As the main group exited on to the beach I silently rose from my patch of dirt, lifted my bow and arrow from its home in the thatch, and crept after the group with killing on my mind.

  The beach was bright and exposed and the goats spotted me as I stepped into the open. The herd, which by this point was grazing on the grasses on top of Snail Rock, became alert, and moved purposefully up the headland and back towards the high tree line. They weren’t frightened, just wary, and they continued to graze as they moved off, heading northerly along the tree line until they were out of sight and out of range.

  As my eyes once more adjusted to the morning gloom under the canopy I could see two remaining goats in my camp. ‘Come on, Ed,’ I urged myself, ‘observation is sensible but you are now armed and have to take your opportunities.’ When I was as close as I thought I could get before being noticed, I drew the bowstring back, notched an arrow and took aim at the breast of the nearest animal. With a silent release the arrow shot through the air and hit a goat. Less encouragingly, it simply bounced off the tough hide. I had fired from twelve metres away and it was clearly too far as the arrow was decelerating by the time it struck. The flight was like that of a table tennis smash − initially fast but soon slowing to a floating harmlessness. My internal computer fed me the results of the experiment in real time. The arrows needed more weight and I had to get closer to my objective before firing. At that distance with my arrows I would be lucky to pop a water-filled balloon.

  The sleep had done me good and I extrapolated the positive feedback from the hunting experience to thrust me into the new day with vigour. It had been a buzz. I had actually struck a goat! That was a big step in the right direction.

  While collecting breakfast I found a washed-up Japanese soybean oil can of about ten litres and immediately recognised it as an amazing, huge cooking pot. It was so good in fact that it made me laugh to myself about having settled for such a small rusty tin for so long. Under my shelter I used the big-headed nails to perforate a line around the centre of the can to remove the top half. I was lef
t with a square about the size of one of those luxury tins of assortment English biscuits and it was in pristine condition. I even saved the last dregs of soybean oil to fry with. Oil-fried snails! I could not wait for the luxury of fried food. In my glee I lost concentration and badly gashed my palm on the razor-sharp serrated edges of the can and had to bandage it quickly with the material salvaged from my flip-flops. It wouldn’t get me down, though − not today − but it was a lesson and I was grateful for the wake-up call.

  After frying about five snails in oil and indulging myself in the sheer pleasure of chewing each fried morsel slowly – my God, they tasted terrific, vaguely like bacon − I spent the afternoon lashing the poles that I had cut yesterday on to the back of the goat trap to form the enclosure. After eleven trees the day was gone. I hadn’t come as far as I would have liked and raised my eyebrows in acknowledgement of the familiar length of time that everything was taking. I stepped back and appraised the trap. I had built two-thirds of one rear wall and had another two to go. Exasperated, I flopped down the hillside into camp.

  I was happy to ignore the discomfort from my gashed palm because I was so happy with my new cooking pot. I ate crab soup for supper for the first time in a few days and was grateful for the return of fatty broth. There was more of it than ever now, of course, as I had no restriction on how much water to add and the discovery made me wonder again whether someone was indeed looking after me. Perhaps I’d not been abandoned after all.