by Edward Lang
I also dumped the bullets out of my waist pack and set them against the wall in a convenient hole. No need for those.
Without flares, the flare gun was useless, so I set it aside, too.
Obviously I kept the Craftsman and knife. I was going to need them.
I didn’t want to have to climb down every time, so I tied some rope around one of the larger boulders littering the cave floor. No way I was going to move that fucker with my own body weight.
Then I threaded the rope through my belay device. Now, a belay device is normally used to take up slack in a rope so if you fall, you don’t go far. With two climbers, one guy is the belayer and uses the device to take up the slack so the other guy doesn’t fall far if he slips.
With one climber, it’s a little more complicated – but this isn’t a class on belaying. Just know that you can also use a belay device to rappel down the side of a mountain – which is exactly what I did. I took my picks and crampons with me and left them at the base of the cliff so I could use them to climb back up.
Then I set off into the woods with my empty backpack to go find some dead wood.
As I tromped through the trees, I started to see some hardwoods dotted amongst the firs and pines – which was good. Pine was good for kindling with its high resin and sap content, but the wood burns smoky. Hardwoods burn slower and cleaner.
That raised another question: if I really was on another planet, how come there were firs and pines and wolves ‘n shit? Why weren’t there… I don’t know… giant mushroom trees and oompaloompas instead?
Fuck if I knew.
As I walked through the forest, I also tried to follow the footprints of the abominable snow survivalist from the other night.
However, the A.S.S. (abominate snow survivalist, naturally) was good. He’d done something to cover his tracks – maybe gone up into a tree like I had. Anyway, there was a point where his tracks just disappeared. I searched nearby to see if they picked up anywhere, but the trees were so thick here that he might have been able to move through the canopy aboveground without too much of a problem, if he was particularly skilled and had some rope. That was the only way I could see that he’d disappeared into thin air.
Just to be on the safe side, though, I spent as much time looking up into the treetops as I did looking at the snow all around me.
I was looking up in the air so much that I almost missed the thing that might prove key to my survival.
It was a deer. A big 12-point buck, about 150 feet away.
Except its antlers were the weirdest thing I’d seen on a deer before. They were green and mossy.
But otherwise it was a regular, good old-fashioned deer. It appeared to be eating the berries on the fir trees.
I froze as soon as I saw it.
It saw me, though, too. It lifted its head to stare straight at me… and then slowly walked away.
Well.
SOMEBODY apparently wasn’t very afraid of Jack Harrington.
Which was fine by me.
It’ll make it that much easier for me to catch you and eat you, bud.
Speaking of eating…
I walked over to the tree the deer had been at and double-checked to make sure it had been eating what I thought it had been eating.
Sure enough, it was the same orange berries I’d seen on other trees.
If they weren’t poisonous to the deer, that wasn’t any guarantee that they wouldn’t be poisonous to me. After all, we were talking a completely different animal with a completely different physiology.
Don’t forget ‘completely different planet.’
And even if it wasn’t poisonous, it didn’t mean that I could digest what the deer ate. They were ruminants, with a four-chambered stomach, which allowed them to break down cellulose for nutrients – something humans couldn’t do.
However, that being said, humans are able to eat a majority of what deer consume without it hurting them. Corn, acorns, berries, fungi (non-poisonous varieties), nuts, clover, flower buds… not so much the twigs, leaves, and grasses, though. And there were some things that deer ate that were downright poisonous to humans, like strawberry bush – not strawberry plants like humans eat, but a bush that had tiny, round, red berries.
But it was likely that it could take me days to trap an animal I could eat. (Also no guarantee that animals on this planet weren’t poisonous.) In the meantime, it would behoove me to figure out a source of local plant life I could eat that would keep me functional.
Unfortunately, I was dealing with completely weird-ass plant species that looked like things back home, but which were potentially completely different.
Not to mention that the pickings were slim anyway. I hadn’t seen any cones on any of the pine trees, so pine nuts were out. I could potentially eat the inner bark, the part right under the rough outer layer. Native Americans did it for centuries. You basically had to peel off the outer bark, then the greenish bark under that, and then use a knife to scrape off the white, rubbery, cream-colored bark beneath – without going too deep and hitting the wood. And then you had to cook it. It tasted like sawdust, though, because it basically was – but it would keep you alive.
But harvesting bark seemed a little crazy seeing as there were tons of berries just hanging out all over the place. And if the berries could kill me, there was no guarantee that the bark wouldn’t, either.
So I decided to check out Nature’s bounty. If I was going to check out over eating something in this weird-ass place, might as well go ahead and get it over with.
I plucked off one of the berries and smelled it. No scent, really.
I nibbled at the bright orange skin. No bitter alkaloids, which would have been the first telltale sign of poison – although there were plenty of things that could poison you that weren’t bitter.
I broke the berry apart and nibbled on the insides, which was starchy – it reminded me of a raw potato in texture and taste. Completely bland, which was a good sign.
After I’d consumed a fourth of the berry, I tossed it to the ground and went about my business. I would give my body a chance to digest it and see what happened. Nausea, cramping, vomiting, diarrhea, unconsciousness, death – yeah, that would pretty much indicate I shouldn’t eat any more of them.
Maybe I’d trip balls.
Frankly, I was more worried about shitting my pants.
Speaking of which, I relieved myself in the woods during my trek. I won’t go into the details – I’ll spare you that.
Naaah, fuck it. If I had to suffer through all this, so do you.
Snow is one of the best ass wipes you can have. No shit. (Ha ha.)
If you use bark, you’re going to rub yourself raw… or leave something back there. Pine needles have oils that can irritate sensitive spots. Leaves are okay, but I couldn’t see a leaf for miles. Any hardwoods around me were bare as a fresh Brazilian bikini wax.
So I went with snow. Cold? Yes. HELL yes. But you’re numb after the first couple of passes. The trick is to pack a good, hard snowball. The worst is to have it fall apart in your hand. Super nasty. But with a snowball sculpted exactly for the process, you can scrape off the top layer against tree bark and have a clean wipe ready to go.
Bet you didn’t think you were going to learn to shit in the snowy woods, did you?
After finishing my business and walking around with a slightly chilly spring in my step, I searched the woods and finally found a fallen hardwood that looked like it had been down for a couple of years. I didn’t have an ax, so there was no way to really chop up any good pieces. I had to settle for breaking up a bunch of the smaller branches and stuffing them into my backpack. Once that was full, I found a couple of pretty big branches that were dry enough to snap by jumping on them. I dragged them, still intact, back through the woods.
Along the way, I gathered up a couple of pockets full of berries. I wasn’t dead yet, which I took as a good sign. And I hadn’t suffered any ill effects – no tripping balls and no crapping
my undies – so it made sense to gather up some more and try them in greater numbers, little by little, until I could conclusively be sure they were absolutely no danger to me.
I had no idea how many calories the berries provided, but since they were starchy, it had to be something. And they would help cut the hunger when my power bars ran out, and until I was able to take down a buck or some other source of protein.
I popped another berry in my mouth and chewed as I walked. No taste, but not bad.
I finally got back ‘home.’ As I looked up at the cave, there was another thing that gave me pause: the cave was set into the side of a mountain, probably with a shit-ton of snow on top of it that I couldn’t see at the moment. And I’d had a pretty recent spate of bad luck with mountains with a shit-ton of snow on top of them.
You know – avalanches and dying and all.
But I was eventually going to die again if I didn’t get some shelter going soon. If this place could actually work out, I could make it my home base for a few days until I found something better – if there was something better to be found, that was.
But right now, I wanted to build a goddamn fire.
I tied my backpack to the end of the rappelling rope. Then I climbed up to the cave using my ice axes and hauled up the backpack.
After the wood was safely in the cave, I considered going back down and getting the branches I’d dragged over… but if I couldn’t make the fire work without smoking up the joint, there was no reason to go down and get more wood. So I decided to try to make the fire first.
I lugged the backpack to the rear of the cave, then went back and gathered up a handful of bird’s nests. They were mostly made of dead pine needles turned brown, interspersed with dead leaves. Perfect tinder.
I put down a layer of nests on the flat rocks, then created a small cone of kindling – basically smaller sticks less than one inch around – that sat over it in a teepee shape. Then I propped up the bigger logs over it all in an even bigger teepee. I wanted to get plenty of oxygen moving up through the wood to feed the fire.
Then I pulled out my waterproof package of matches. Thank God I’d brought them along. I could have started a fire by striking metal on stone, but it could have taken ten times longer.
I struck the match on the strike pad glued onto the container, then put the flame under the birds nest tinder. A couple of seconds passed, and then the dead pine needles caught fire. A few more seconds, and the tinder was really going good. I blew on it gently, and within 60 seconds the kindling was going, too.
I have never been so goddamn happy in my entire life as I was at that moment.
Well… I’ve never been so happy when I was alone. There were plenty of moments I’d had with Katie that would have surpassed making the fire.
I just wished she could have been there with me. Then it would have been perfect.
The small area began to fill up with smoke, though. To create a chimney effect and get the air moving, I took one of the pieces of burning kindling and held it right up near the crack in the ceiling. The heated air rose up through the crack, which meant that it had to be replaced with more air. At first, that was the smoky air all around me – but then fresh air from further back in the cave started to draft in.
After just a minute, the smoke from the fire began going straight up (more or less) into the crack, and fresh air got pulled into the back of the cave, which really got the fire going.
I took off my gloves and warmed my hands by the flames as I watched the logs start to catch fire. Once they were really going good, I had a regular blaze going, and I added more wood to the fire.
Time to go back down for the rest of the dead tree limbs.
I rappelled down the side of the cliff, stomped on the smallest parts of the branches to break them up, and refilled the backpack. Then I climbed up with my picks and crampons, hauled up the pack using the rope, and stacked the firewood back away from the opening where it wouldn’t get wet. Then I did it all over again.
Rappel down.
Break wood.
Stuff backpack.
Climb cliff.
Haul up wood.
Stack it.
Repeat.
I was going to have to figure out some sort of pulley system to get the damn wood up in the cave. All this hauling was getting old… but for right now, it had to be done.
Every so often, I would go back and add more logs to the fire when it needed it. What was great was that the back of the cave was actually warming up, to the point that I could have removed most of my cold-weather gear and been okay.
I was going to get that sucker up and running and sit there bare-ass naked at some point, I promised myself that.
By the time all the wood was hauled up, I had more than enough to last me for the night.
I had no more water left in my metal water bottle, so I packed it with snow down by the base of the cliff. Once I was back in the cave, I set it by the fire on the rocks. The snow gradually melted, and I had my first taste of cold water on whatever the fuck planet this was.
Tasted like H2O to me. Delicious.
I sat there in the rear of the cave with my jacket and fleece and boots off, feeling the glorious heat rolling off the fire. I pulled out a protein bar from my limited supplies, along with a couple of berries, and ate and drank like a king. Albeit one with very small rations, and a pretty fucked-up castle.
But it was my castle.
I felt great. I felt alive.
I realized part of me should be freaked out, but for the first time in a year, all the grief and sorrow and chatter in my head had gone away – at least temporarily.
But I would take ‘temporarily’ any day of the week.
What it came down to was this: I was going to die unless I did something about my situation… and I realized I didn’t want to die.
I had been okay with checking out last night, up in the tree… but in the light of morning, I’d decided I wanted to stick around.
That’s pretty huge when you’ve been more or less contemplating suicide for the last twelve months. In fact, my coming out to Denali alone was more or less a subconscious plea to the universe to take me out and end the suffering.
Apparently the universe had obliged… sort of.
But it had also thrown me into a situation where I literally had to choose every minute whether I wanted to keep on living.
And, to my great surprise… I did. I wanted to keep on living.
Nothing like the threat of imminent death to focus the mind and get it off lesser problems. Of which there were a whole slate coming up.
But for now, I luxuriated in the warmth of the fire, chewed that protein bar for as long as I could make it last, and sipped that water like it was the finest bourbon in the world.
As I gazed into the fire, my survival-minded brain began to make a to-do list of the most pressing concerns.
I had shelter, fire, and plenty of snow to thaw out. That was good.
Now I needed food.
The berries were apparently nonpoisonous. If I didn’t start puking my guts out in the next 24 hours, I would consider it a raging success and start eating more of them. But I needed protein and fat.
So far, I hadn’t seen any wildlife beyond wolves and deer. No rabbits, no squirrels, no mice, no birds – which was pretty fuckin’ weird. But, hey – maybe having two moons in the sky changed everything.
The deer was the obvious choice to hunt. That buck I’d seen could supply me for over a week.
Figure he was 170 pounds. A normal hunter would have field dressed him – gutted and skinned him – and maybe gotten 50-60 pounds of lean venison off him.
At a pound of protein per meal, that was roughly two weeks worth of meals.
But I wasn’t a normal hunter. And I didn’t have a damn thing to supplement that protein with except some weird-ass berries.
So I was going to be making use of the internal organs – especially the heart, liver, and kidneys. And I would have
to eat more of the fat than what a normal hunter might. If you only eat protein and no fat, you run into a problem: protein poisoning, also known as rabbit starvation.
Rabbits are the leanest game animals out there, with only about 8% fat. If you had to subsist only on rabbit and nothing else for a winter – as some settlers and Native Americans had to in centuries past – you’re screwed. Rabbit actually takes more vitamins and minerals to digest than the vitamins and minerals you get out of it.
After a week of eating nothing but super-lean meat, you develop diarrhea. After a couple of weeks of that, you’re a goner.
That’s why the Inuit could subsist on a diet of seal meat for months at a time: plenty of blubber, or seal fat, kept them from developing malnutrition and protein poisoning.
Luckily I had the berries. The carbohydrates in them would counter any problems with the protein.
That is, if I didn’t die from them in the next 24 hours.
Good times.
The question was, how to get the deer?
I could craft a bow out of a good hardwood sapling, and I could use a section of my rock-climbing rope for the string, but I had to be honest with myself: I was not a good shot. I had never been much of a bow hunter, and I was too much out of practice. I might be able to eventually develop the accuracy to take down a deer, but if I had to do that in order to kill the first one, I was probably going to starve to death before I got good enough.
No… a better option was a snare. And I knew exactly the bait to use.
Hell, I had a pocket full of it.
7
After popping a couple more berries and finishing my water and power bar, I got dressed again in my cold weather gear. I gotta tell you, it felt a hell of a lot better to be sliding into it toasty warm than the opposite.
I also let the fire die down. I was looking forward to having a sizable amount of ashes in the future so I could bank the coals and keep them hot overnight, but right now they only had to last a few hours until I got back. I could easily restart everything with some more tinder and kindling. In fact, I probably wouldn’t even need that.
