by Bear Grylls
On the other side of the dune was what looked like a field of tall grass. Like the beach, it stretched away in either direction as far as she could see. When Chloe looked closer she saw it was actually reeds, tall and thin, growing up out of a lake of dark water.
“We can’t wade through that,” said Bear. “It’ll be full of snakes and the leaves will be razor sharp. We’re heading along the beach. You used to some distance walking?”
“Not really,” Chloe said a little unsurely.
They went back to the shade of the trees and Chloe thought of having to hike in this heat.
“It’s a shame salt water tastes so disgusting,” she said. “I could really do with a drink.”
“It doesn’t just taste disgusting. It’s like poison,” Bear said seriously. “It dehydrates your blood and fries your kidneys. I’ve got a couple of bottles of fresh water in the backpack. But we’ll save those for now. There’s something else here we can drink.”
He smiled and pointed up. Chloe saw green fruit the size of footballs hanging in the trees.
Bear took a canvas sheath as long as his forearm from out of the backpack and fastened it to his belt. Then Chloe watched him shin up the trunk. He gripped the trunk with his arms and shifted his legs up, then gripped with his legs and shifted his arms. It only took two or three movements like that and he was up by the leaves.
At the top, Bear drew out what looked like a very big kitchen knife from the sheath. He slashed with it and the fruit fell down to the sand with heavy thuds.
“What are they?” Chloe picked one up. It had tough green leathery leaves surrounding a large green nut.
“Coconuts,” Bear said as he climbed down. “Exactly the right balance of salt, minerals and sugar for the castaway.”
“Coconuts?” Chloe said in surprise. They didn’t look much like the dried-up hairy brown coconuts she’d seen in the supermarket.
Bear picked up one from the sand and cut the leaves away, then lopped the top off with several swift strokes of the big knife. He passed it to Chloe.
“Take a drink!” he said. While he gave a second coconut the same treatment, she took it in both hands and peered suspiciously into the hole he had made. A cloudy, watery liquid sloshed about inside. Well, she knew what coconut milk tasted like, so she tilted her head back and poured it into her mouth.
Correction. She had thought she knew what coconut milk tasted like. This was about a billion times better. She grinned.
“Pretty good, right?” Bear said. “You can’t beat it fresh off the tree. Now we’ll eat the insides too. It’ll set us up for the march. I’ll chop the coconut flesh up while you clear up.” He looked down at her heap of wet clothes on the sand. “We leave things as we find them out here. Respect the wild and it will respect you.”
Bear chopped the coconuts with his machete as Chloe reluctantly packed her wet sandy clothes into a bag and put them in Bear’s backpack.
“So, how far do we have to go?” Chloe asked as they ate the thick white coconut flesh.
“Well, this beach could go on for a hundred miles or more.”
Chloe stopped eating. She stared along the sand. The beach had looked so friendly and cheerful. White sand, blue sea …
Now she saw it in a different light. Hot sun. Salt water. No food. For a hundred miles.
“Oh,” she said.
5
WATER, WATER, EVERYWHERE …
Chloe didn’t know how long they had walked already. The sand and sea seemed endless.
The only sounds were the wind and the crashing of the waves. Bear pointed out the high-water mark – a ragged line of dried-up seaweed running all along the beach, left there when the tide went out. He kept them to the smooth, firm sand between the mark and the breaking waves. It was easier to walk on than the loose, dry sand further up.
There was other stuff mixed up on the mark too – bits of wood and general junk that must have been washed up, like plastic bags, bottles and toys. Sometimes Bear would find something useful and put it in his backpack. A length of rope, or a fishing net, or several good bits of wood. But his backpack started to bulge and soon they just had to leave things where they found them.
Every half hour they drank a little fresh water from Bear’s bottles. They really needed it. Even though there was a whole ocean a few metres away, the hot sun meant there wasn’t a drop of water in the air. Chloe could feel her face and her hands drying out.
But even though they only took a mouthful of water each time, Chloe noticed the level going down. She wondered how they would fill the bottles up again.
Chloe’s hat kept the sun from roasting her brains, and the brim kept her eyes shaded. But it didn’t stop light reflecting off the white sand straight into her face, and her eyes were stinging.
Then she saw a flash of red plastic poking out of the sand. She tugged at it and pulled out a pair of children’s sunglasses. They were the cheap kind her mum might have bought at a seaside stall, but they would do. They were covered in sand, but she washed them in the next wave that came in, then put them on.
“What do you think?” she asked with a proud smile.
“I think you’ll make a good survivor,” Bear said. “You use what you find, you’re resourceful, and use that to keep you going. Smart.”
But Bear looked a little sad.
“So … what’s the problem?” Chloe asked.
“Well, I’m just thinking about where those probably came from,” Bear responded. “They could have been washed all the way across the Pacific to end up here.”
“Cool,” said Chloe.
“Only if you think pollution is cool. Plastic, polystyrene, rubber – they don’t dissolve. Nature can’t reuse them or recycle them. They just create waste and cause damage to the environment.”
Then he smiled. “But we can still use them to help us – and anyway, they look much better on you than inside a fish’s stomach.”
Just then, something smooth and shiny in the sand caught Chloe’s eye. It was the end of a half-buried clear plastic bottle.
“So I guess this won’t make you happy either?” she said as she pulled it free. “Now that,” he said, “will come in handy. We’ll take it with us.” He put the plastic bottle in his backpack. “Another quick drink, then we need to keep going.”
“The fresh water will run out soon,” Chloe pointed out as she took the half-empty water bottle from him.
“It will. That’s why we need to keep alert and our eyes peeled for a water source.”
They kept walking. Chloe felt a lot better with the sunglasses on, but she couldn’t help worrying about the drinking water.
Soon Bear stopped suddenly, and pointed ahead.
“Look, there’s water running down the bank over there. Let’s see if it’s fresh water.”
They raced ahead and sure enough there was a small stream that wound its way from the dunes towards the sea. Bear knelt down and put his finger in the water to taste it. And then he smiled.
“It is fresh. We need to make use of this. We might not find another one of these for a while,” Bear said. He pushed his water bottle under the surface and it filled with lots of glugs and gurgles.
“Is it safe to drink?” Chloe asked anxiously. She thought of the lake water back at the Camp. That looked clear and clean, but they had all been told not to drink it. Animals weed and pooed in the forests, and the rain washed it away, and sooner or later it all ended up in the lake.
“In an ideal world we would boil these in order to one hundred per cent kill any bacteria, but look over there,” Bear said. He jerked a thumb at the dunes. “Remember the reeds? Reed beds are a natural filter. By the time the water’s come through the reeds to the beach, it’s been washed pretty clean. It’s amazing how many communities use natural systems like reed beds to clean up their mess – nature is a great inventor, if you look after it.”
He checked his watch, then looked around.
“We can take a break here. You rest, a
nd I’ll see if I can spot anything from up there.”
He dropped his backpack on the sand, and set off to the high dunes at the rear of the beach. Chloe strolled along the stream, down to where the clear clean water soaked into the flat wet sand left behind by the sea. She stood and watched the waves coming in, going out – in, out … it was very peaceful.
Eventually she turned to go – and couldn’t. Something was holding her fast.
She looked down. Her feet had disappeared into the sand – she was sinking! Water began to trickle in over the tops of her boots.
Chloe gasped and gave one of her legs a hard tug to get it free. Then the other. But both her legs sank down deeper with a loud sucking noise.
Chloe started to panic. She pulled at her leg again. Then the other. Nothing was budging. If anything, her legs were sinking even further, as the sand and mud sucked at her limbs.
In a moment she was jerking her whole body from side to side. Instead of pulling her feet free, she fell on her bottom. She put out a hand to steady herself, and then she felt that start to sink as well. She yanked it out immediately.
Chloe’s heart began to pound and her mouth went dry at the thought of what might happen. Sinking into the sand, getting it in her mouth, her nose, clogging up her lungs …
“Bear!” she screamed. “Help! I’m sinking!”
6
CIRCLE OF LIFE
“Stay calm!” Bear came pelting down the dune towards her. “I’ve got you! Just try to stay as still as you can!”
Chloe trusted Bear but it took all her self-control to stop struggling. She could feel the cold, wet sand creeping slowly up her legs – she was still sinking.
Bear skidded to a halt a couple of metres away from her.
“You’re in quicksand,” he said. “The sand’s so wet it can’t hold your weight. Lean forward, and lie flat on your front.”
“What?” Chloe exclaimed. “No! I’ll get sucked in!” She thought again about getting sand in her nose and mouth.
“Trust me,” Bear said calmly. “Lean forward so that your body is flat on the sand. Your weight will be spread across your whole body instead of pushing down into your feet. It’ll help the sand support you, and then you’ll be able to crawl free.”
He lay down and reached out a hand. “Look, it’s okay. Just crawl across the sand towards me.”
Chloe tried not to panic as she lay forward. As soon as she put her hands and arms into the wet sand, she could feel it sucking at them. But she crawled forward until she was flat, and even though the sand still pulled at her buried legs, bit by bit she felt her feet working loose. She wriggled towards Bear’s outstretched hand, until at last his fingers closed around hers.
With one movement, Bear pulled her up and away from the quicksand.
“Good job!” he said with a huge smile. “You kept calm, which is the hardest thing to do. The more you struggle, the more the suction pulls you in.”
Chloe took a few deep breaths. Her heart was still pounding and her front was plastered with wet sand. She tried to brush it off, but it clung to her.
“Just let it dry,” Bear said. “An hour or so and it’ll fall off.”
Chloe just nodded. She couldn’t quite make herself speak.
“And I found our lunch,” Bear added. “You’re going to need some food inside you after that.”
They walked carefully around the quicksand and further down the beach. Chloe’s legs were shaking but she kept going.
Something white and flat, the size of a tea tray, was lying just above where the waves broke. Chloe thought that was what Bear was showing her, until she saw the expression on his face as he picked it up.
It was just more washed-up rubbish – a piece of polystyrene packaging. Apart from being covered with wet sand, it looked just like it would have when it came out of the box.
“Do you know how this got here?” Bear asked in a quiet voice. “Someone got their new microwave or TV, but they couldn’t take the time to put this in the trash properly. It’s so light one gust of wind could blow it down the street and into a stream, then it could float into a river, and then get washed out to sea. So here it is now, thousands of miles from where it started.”
Chloe looked at the slab of polystyrene. “But if it just floats, why does it matter?” she asked innocently.
“Because it doesn’t just float. It breaks up and those pieces block up the stomachs of fish and animals, and strangles them from inside. It absorbs poisons and spreads them wherever it goes Polystyrene never breaks down naturally. And it literally kills the ecosystem.”
“The … what?”
“The ecosystem,” Bear repeated quietly. “The way all the different animals and plants in an area live together. Plants grow, small animals eat the plants, big animals eat the small animals, big animals die, they decay into the ground and fertilise the plants so they can grow. It’s the circle of life – where everything depends on everything else.”
Chloe stood there silently, looking at the polystyrene. But with eyes that now understood. It looked so harmless – but it wasn’t. She wondered how many hundreds of animals could be poisoned by that one slab.
Chloe thought of the rubber bands she had flicked at those tin cans back at Camp – and just left there. She hadn’t really thought about what would happen to them. Would they rot, or would they just stay there until some animal ate them and got strangled from the inside?
“But it’s impossible to clear all the rubbish in the world,” Chloe said as Bear shoved the polystyrene into his backpack. “Even if you pick up one piece there’ll be a million more bits.”
Bear started walking again.
“I once saw a turtle with a plastic straw up its nose. About this long all the way up, with just a tiny bit poking out at one end,” he said, holding up his fingers about ten centimetres apart. “We do good things not because we can save the world all alone. We do good things because it is right, and because we can. I once saw a seal that had been deformed by the plastic rings from a four-pack of cans,” he went on. “When it was a baby it had got one of its flippers stuck in a ring – and it kept growing. The plastic cut into its flesh, right down to the bone.”
Bear paused.
“To that seal it would have made a difference if someone had picked up just that one bit of rubbish.”
Chloe was quiet. It was a horrible thought.
Bear changed the subject and pointed ahead.
“Anyway, I promised you lunch. Over there.”
She looked where he was pointing.
“Ice cream?” she said in surprise.
Dozens of small, green ice-cream cones were walking across the sand …
7
UNDERWATER WORLD
Closer up, Chloe could see that the ice-cream cones were shells. Very short, spindly legs stuck out of the wide end.
Bear picked up a shell and the legs vanished. Chloe peered into the shell. Something was moving in there.
“These are hermit crabs,” said Bear. “They borrow abandoned shells because they don’t have their own. We’ll keep them for lunch.”
Bear took out the fishing net he’d found washed up, and a short piece of rope, and folded the net into a bag. They dropped a dozen or so of the pointed shells into the net bag and used the rope to tie it closed. Then they walked on, with Chloe carrying the crabs.
Eventually Bear stopped walking. There was a cluster of palm trees at the top of the beach and a clump of rocks sticking out of the sea about ten metres from the shore. The sun was almost overhead.
“We should stop for a couple of hours,” Bear said. “We’ll have our lunch, and sit out the hottest part of the day.”
Bear looked up to check that there weren’t any coconuts likely to drop down on them, and then they sat in the shade of the palm trees.
Chloe was happy to rest – walking on sand was so tiring and her legs really ached.
“The next priority,” Bear said, “is fire.” He picked up a dri
ed-up palm leaf and started to tear it into long strips. “Get all the leaves you can find and do this, will you?”
Chloe was surprised.
“Aren’t we hot enough?” she asked.
Bear smiled.
“We’re hot, but not hot enough to cook shellfish properly. We don’t know what these guys have been eating, so it’s best to cook them properly to kill off any bugs.”
While Chloe gathered leaves, Bear sifted through the driftwood he’d collected in his backpack until he found a short, flat piece. He dug a small hole in it near to one edge with a knife. Then he cut a V-shaped notch in the side so that the bottom of the V just touched the hole.
Next he selected a thin, straight piece of wood about as thick as a marker pen.
“How are you doing?” he asked, and Chloe showed him the leaf strips that she had made. He piled them all together, then laid a couple of larger pieces of wood on top of them.
Last of all he put the flat piece of wood on the sand, with the notch right up close to the strips of palm leaf.
Bear then spat in his palms, and smiled when he saw Chloe’s disgusted look.
“It will help protect against friction blisters,” he said. Bear held the thin stick flat between his hands, and put the tip of the stick into the hole. Then he started to rub his hands back and forth so that the stick began to spin in the hole.
“This is a fire drill,” he said as Chloe watched in fascination. “The friction of the drill tip is going to create heat. It will start charring the base plate, and then the embers will drop through the V into these strips of husk.”
“Cool!” Chloe replied quietly.
“Then, when we have enough embers, I need you to crouch down and blow very, very gently …”
He kept spinning as he spoke, working his hands up and down the drill stick. Before long, thin tendrils of smoke started to drift out of the hole. The tip of the drill had ground up a small layer of the wood into powder that glowed red.
