Surviving Bear Island (9 page)

I wasn't Mr. Skinny when I started this trip, but I was now.

My clothes hadn't magically gotten bigger, but they hung on me.

And my face? I'd seen my reflection in a puddle yesterday. It looked like it'd been stretched, the way it'd appear in one of those fun-house mirrors.

I scavenged for more berries between my shelter and my kitchen, but they were play food compared to the fish.

At my kitchen I grabbed my gaff, and life vests, and headed back to my sleep shelter.

Energy. It takes energy to make things happen. Sometimes it takes a big push to break through to another level. Rome wasn't built in a day.

His voice just boomed out loud or whispered in my ear with no warning. And the words weren't always things I'd heard him say before. Was he really speaking to me?

When I heard his voice I missed him even more.

And then I thought about home, and if I made it off this island but never found him, just what would be my home? And what was happening at my house now? Was anyone trying to figure out where we were? Would they notice that the kayak wasn't under the deck? Not unless they knew it was there in the first place. Had anyone even bothered to ignore the chain across the driveway and go up to the house? But even if they had, what clues would they find?

My hands had nicks and cuts from yanking and dragging bark-covered branches. The tips of my fingers throbbed, my fingernails packed with dirt and bits of bark. My blistered feet stung with every twist, turn, and squat.

And my shrunken stomach called out for food. I'd worked so hard, but still I had no food, no fire, no gaff. All I had was a cold, leaky shelter. A place to die.

That night I sat perched on a life vest between two fires, still in my raincoat because of the drips and drizzles that penetrated my shelter.

The other life vest and emergency blankets lay in a pile.

An image of my dad bobbing in the waves invaded my brain. I took some deep, slow breaths and tried to picture Dad before the accident. Before the trip turned bad. His quiet smile. Kind of crooked on one side of his mouth. Just like mine.

I knew he'd be proud that I'd caught a fish and built a shelter. “It's big enough for both of us, Dad.” And that I hadn't eaten the Meal Pack bars from his survival kit even though I thought about eating them like three-hundred times a day. And that I'd even thought of trying to go to the Sentinels. I glanced toward the bag holding the combined survival kits.

Dad would take care of what he had. Wouldn't waste anything. At home and on building sites he backed screws out of old boards and reused them. When he cut a tree down for firewood, he used the whole thing instead of just chucking the small branches.

I wondered what he was doing now. Maybe he'd found some of our gear. Maybe he had some matches or a lighter or a fishing pole. Maybe he had the tent. Maybe he had some of our food. The graham crackers and
chocolate bars. The marshmallows. My mouth watered and my empty stomach burned, trying to digest itself.

I picked up the gaff.

Make it better, I thought. Stronger.

“A fish is gonna pull, and I need to be able to pull back.”

I took a lure from the kit and threaded fishing line through the eyehole.

I tied a knot in the line, creating a small loop, then cut the remaining line, and kept cutting and tying until I had five loops through the eyehole. With a piece of rope I tied the lure onto the gaff so the hook hung over the edge.

I ran a piece of rope through all five loops, wrapped it around the pole and tied it.

I wrapped another piece of rope around this rope and tied it.

Then I took a fourth piece of rope and wrapped it around the fishing line, hoping to hold the lure in place in as many ways possible.

I pulled on the hook—it held. I stepped outside and sunk the hook into an alder trunk just inside the ring of light, and pulled. The hook started to bend.

I smiled, then whispered, “That lure isn't going anywhere.”

THE NEXT
day gray puffy clouds scudded across a blue sky. No rain, but the northerly breeze crawled up my sleeves and down my neck. Cold. Just plain cold.

But I'd noticed something. Rain clouds came from the south and stayed until a wind from the north blew them away.

Patterns. Weather patterns. Back in Fairbanks, who cared if it was forty below in the winter when you had a warm house to hang out in or all the right clothes to go outside if you wanted to? You didn't really need to deal with the weather unless you lived in it.

You only needed to pay attention to the things that were threatening you. I mean sure, you paid attention to other things, but you didn't have to.

Out here, I needed to pay attention to everything. Like where I put my feet so I didn't fall. Was the hook secure on my gaff? Was a bear following me? Did I have enough firewood to at least last the night? Little mistakes could turn into big mistakes. Like my dad said, when you're alone in the wilderness, everything is magnified.

I headed for the creek, ready to try my new gaff. At my kitchen, the coals from my cook fire had been scooped out and scattered. A pile of bear scat dotted with blueberries crowded the tree I'd slept under that first night.

We are all potentially food for something else.

Okay, okay, I thought. All part of the cycle. Everything is made of recycled nutrients. Berries, bears, people. And once you're dead, you're just a pile of nutrients.

Like, if I died out here, what happened to my body wouldn't matter. Bears would chew on me. Gulls would peck my eyes out. Bugs would
gnaw on me. Flies would lay their eggs. They'd hatch, and the maggots would feed.

I kicked the bear scat out from under the tree. This was still my kitchen. I wouldn't turn into bear food—not without a fight.

I stopped to look and listen, then stepped out of the forest, squatted by the stream channel and drank.

I forded the first two channels, then walked across the gravel bar to the main channel, anxious to pull a struggling salmon from the stream. I scanned the water for signs of movement. For swaying dorsal fins.

But all I saw was empty water. I squinted at the channel, like if I looked hard enough, they'd magically appear.

“Where are they?” I said.

I glanced upstream. I wanted to fish out in the open. Where I could see. I didn't want to go up the creek, and be closed in by trees and brush. But there had to be some fish up there. That's where they spawn. But there had to be bears, too.

A cramp ran through my abdomen. I took a step upstream. My chest felt raw. Like I was breathing in tiny fragments of glass. The next couple lines of my mom's song about leaving the yard ran through my head.

It might be scary, especially at the start.

You've gotta take that step. You've gotta have some heart.

Where the gravel bar ended and the channels came together, the water ran deep. I backtracked a ways, crossed the side channel and followed it up to the same spot on the stream bank. In the beach grass I saw the rotting remains of bear-killed salmon.

Make noise to let the bears know you are there, especially if you can't see very far. The last thing you want to do is surprise a bear in a tight spot.

“Hey bear! Hey bear!” I called as I continued upstream, using the same phrase my dad used.

The beach grass ended and I entered the forest. The rush of the water seemed louder, echoing off the trees. My mom's lyrics about having heart kept popping into my head.

I'd taken like ten steps up the creek and was ducking under a fallen tree, when I heard a big splash. I jumped backwards, the back of my head
slammed into the tree and I fell on my face. My teeth dug into the wounds in my mouth, and I tasted blood.

I rose to my knees.

“Hey bear! Hey bear!”

I stood up and rubbed the back of my head and spit bloody saliva. If a dead tree could take me out, I really didn't stand a chance against a bear.

There were no bears to be seen, but I made out the shape of a fish at the bottom of a deep pool. I raised the gaff and slammed it into the water but missed the fish, which moved but stayed in the pool. I nosed the gaff into the water and tried to ease the hook under the fish and pull, but the fish kept evading me.

A steady ache settled into the back of my head. I spit more bloody saliva, rinsed my mouth with creek water, and kept crawling over and under downed trees, bashing through brush, and shouting “hey bear,” hoping to find a better spot.

I rounded a bend, and a flurry of movement burst upwards. My heart jumped to my throat as a bald eagle took flight from the bank.

I just assumed every surprise movement was a bear. I mean, how could I not? I wanted to be ready. But why did I have to jump backwards? And why did my heart have to beat so hard? Could I teach myself to relax?

To be alert but calm?

Well, I had the alert part down. I was like one of those smoke detectors that beeped when you boiled water. We had one of those. The fire department gave it to us. It was supposed to be really good. After a couple of days my dad took the battery out of it because we couldn't boil water without it beeping.

I rounded another bend. In water about four feet deep, half a dozen salmon, all facing upstream, sat in the bottom of the pool. The water ran shallow over small rocks where it flowed into the pool from upstream.

One fish sprang forward and powered over the rocky area, then disappeared upstream.

Perfect, I thought. Fish runs over shallows and I snag it like a bear.

So I waited, crouched by the shallow spot, ready to gaff the next fish to attempt the run.

I don't know how long I waited, maybe five minutes, and none of those fish moved. My fingers were going numb, so I rubbed my hands together.
I didn't want to put my gloves on and get them all slimy if I gaffed a fish and had to grab it.

So, I just kept waiting, rubbing my hands, wiggling my toes because they were getting cold too.

“Come on, fish,” I said softly. “You know you want to try it.”

Still, no fish.

How long would a bear wait for a fish? A bear might not wait. A bear might just go into the water and try. Stick its head under and go for a fish.

Think like a bear, I thought. I knew I wasn't gonna dive in, but maybe I could get one in the deep water. This water wasn't quite as deep as the pool downstream where I'd bashed my head.

So I moved to the side of the pool. I focused on the closest fish, raised the gaff parallel to the water and swung it down. The fish scrambled, four of the five disappearing downstream, the fifth jetting up through the rocky area.

“I just can't win! I gotta catch a fish!”

Patience. Remember what you do and don't have control over.

“Shut up,” I shouted. “Just shut up!”

I have control over how I act, not over how the fish act. They're trying to survive, too. But I needed one. At least one. If I didn't eat something besides berries soon, my belly button would be touching my backbone.

Okay. So the gaff only works when the fish are close to the surface. Yeah, I'd learned that, twice now. But to not try was worse than trying and failing. But I couldn't just try the same stupid thing over and over.

You can't learn nothin' if you don't leave the yard.

I glanced upstream. There had to be another shallow spot up there. A spot to snag a salmon.

I climbed over the rocks and continued upstream. The brush was thicker. In a couple of spots I had to part it with my hands like I was swimming the breast-stroke. And everything was damp, and the water started working its way up my sleeves. I tried cinching my cuffs down on my raincoat, but the Velcro kept loosening up on its own.

And the creek was a narrow, deep channel. I just hoped it'd spread out again.

I heard a branch snap, and this time I didn't jump out of my boots or slam my head against any hard objects but just stopped and looked.

A wall of black fur disappeared into the brush in front of me. I stared at the spot. I wanted to keep going upstream. I had to eat, but didn't want to be eaten.

I kicked at the moss covering a log until it came free, then stomped on it. Then I saw movement on the other side of the creek, branches waving in the wind, but there was no breeze. More black fur, then a bear was at the edge of the creek. A small bear, a cub.

I took a step back.

The cub lapped some water from the creek, its nose resting on the surface. It was cute, made you want to sit down and play with it, but I knew it was a death trap. Mothers protected their cubs.

I turned around and picked my way downstream, glancing over my shoulder every couple of steps. Alert but calm, I thought. I didn't freak out and do something stupid. I was starting to really get this. If you didn't threaten something, or act like you were super nervous, then whatever else was around mellowed out too.

I broke out of the forest and walked along the stream bank through the beach grass, relieved to be out in the open. I'd rather starve than get attacked by a bear.