Clay jumped to his feet and began to look around for anything… anything… that would burn. On the leeward side of a small hill, he found a place where leaves had swirled and had stacked up quite deep. He pushed off the upper damp layers and found drier leaves underneath. He grabbed a handful of these and rushed back to his shelter as fast as he could. Using the red coals and the dry leaves, he was finally able to kindle a fire, and, after adding successively larger pieces of twigs and branches and the charcoal from the fire bed, soon his fire burned warm enough to dry some of the firewood he’d collected. Before long he had a good and warm fire by which to dry his clothing and his blankets.
Two hours later, his clothes were dry and he was hiking again. As close as he could figure, he was going nearly due north. The weather had not gotten any better, and he was so thankful that he had been able to start a fire, feeling that perhaps he had saved his own life this morning. Whether that was true or not, it made him feel good to think it to be true. After forty-five minutes of walking among the trees, he was warming up and feeling strong, despite his lack of food.
He passed between two farms that looked to be a half mile apart and noticed that there was a minor state road running by the farms in what he hoped was a northerly direction. He revisited his internal debate about staying off the highways but rationalized that this was a little-used paved road and that it would be much safer than the highway he’d already fled. He wasn’t sure he still believed in luck, but he thought he should be able to gain a mile or two quickly traveling by road and that it was less likely that he would run into troublemakers this far into the Catskills. After arguing with himself and the spirit of Clive Darling for a good five minutes, he gave in to his need for speed and started walking along the highway.
****
An hour later, Clay stopped next to a pond to the east that was within sight of the roadway. In the distance, he could see what appeared to be a farm or some habitation or business — he couldn’t be sure — on the far north side of the pond. The day was dark and gray enough, and he was hungry enough, so he decided to stop and fish awhile along the southern edge where the forest came up to the edge of the water. If trouble appeared or anyone was coming his way, he knew he could disappear quickly into the stand of trees. He wondered at his creeping paranoia and suspicion. What was the reason for this caution? But then he went back to what was becoming for him first principles. It made sense while hiking across strange terrain in a place where hunters or farmers might carry guns to leave himself a way out.
Clay took a few moments to rest and felt the hunger clawing at his belly. He decided to eat the two remaining energy bars, but saved a chunk from the second bar, rolling the doughy material into hard balls to use for bait. Again, he saved the metallic wrapping from the energy bars, but tore off a small section that he then shredded into smaller pieces to serve as something of an eye-catching lure to go along with his bait.
He tied one of the hooks from Veronica’s fishing kit onto the small roll of fishing line, and then threaded a piece of the metallic wrapper from the food bars onto the hook. On went the little ball of energy bar, and then another piece of the metallic wrapper. Clay had no idea if this little experiment would work. The drab grayness of the day might keep the metallic paper from catching any light or the attention of any hungry fish, but it was all he could think of, so he set himself to the task.
Looking around the edge of the pond, he found a small piece of wood, about three inches long, which would serve as a float or bobber for his line. He tied this bobber about two feet up on his fishing line and then, letting out more and more of the line, he threw the hook, line, and bobber out into the pond, holding tightly to the small roll of line. Clay sat quietly for maybe ten minutes, holding the line almost breathlessly. Before long, though, the cold of the day gripped him, and his patience for holding the line grew thin, and he wrapped his end of the line around a heavy rock and stepped into the trees to lay down for a rest.
He found a good straight tree along the edge of the pond that would block him from view if anyone were to look this way from the road. He was still within sight of his line as he collapsed against the tree, tired from the exertions of the morning. The air was really starting to bite with the cold, and he felt the moisture level rising in the air, and he began to sense a wicked cold coming his way. His eyes were closed for what seemed like seconds when suddenly the air was filled with a fine mist, and he grimaced and furrowed his brow hoping that he wasn’t about to get the worst of his current dreads—any combination of rain, sleet, or snow. His earlier good mood and self-satisfaction degraded along with the weather.
He closed his eyes for a moment, silently crying out for wisdom to the spirit of Clive Darling, or the gods of chance and fortune, or even the blessed God of Heaven, anyone who might hazard to hear. Receiving no response, he blasphemed the lot of them and peeked through one eye and saw that his bobber was no longer visible. Crawling to his feet in the mist, he rushed over to his line, pulled it in, and saw that he had indeed snagged a fine fish.
The little ten-inch brown trout was wiggling gamely on the ground, and Clay reached over and picked it up by its jaw, holding it out to inspect his catch. He had never even heard of anyone catching a trout on an energy bar, figuring that they usually ate flies and things that were on the top of the water. But hey, why look a gift fish in the mouth? He chided himself for making such a silly joke but then forgave himself because he was hungry and slightly delirious. Then he looked the fish in the mouth and removed the hook.
He knew enough to gut and scale the fish, which he did with his pocketknife on the flat rock he had used to weigh down his line. After this task was finished, he wrapped the fish in the plastic wrapping from the Mylar blanket—You see, it makes sense to hold onto everything! he thought—and slipped the fish into the side pocket of his pants. He’d cook it when he could get to a place where he could start a fire.
Despite the damp and cold, Clay made sure to carefully wrap up his line and put it and the little hook back into the little emergency fishing case. All of his stuff stowed again in his backpack, he washed his hands in the pond and then headed into the forest to find a place to build a fire and warm himself.
****
Sometimes errors of judgment—whether from ignorance, pride, or even stupidity—pile themselves on top of each other until they are left to be catalogued and surmised only later by the people who find the bodies. Other times, men’s lives are spared by luck, or chance, or divine providence, and they live to compile and analyze their errors themselves. In either case, when individuals reckon themselves lost, lacking a map, they often turn inward for the answers. They stumble forward with limited information, having finite senses and reason, and the hope that springs eternal in their breast either leads them further into, or out of, the wilderness. They attribute everything behind them to happenstance and everything before them to be subjects for their cunning and skill. And, all the time, the world spins on. We, of all people, can forgive honest strivers their mistakes and blunders, but nature and reality are often less forgiving. Some mistakes you only get to make once, and most of us are too limited to know exactly which of our own errors might turn out to be fatal.
****
The ground Clay traversed grew increasingly rugged, and the fine mist turned first to tiny sleet pellets, and then into snow as he trekked through the forest. He was looking for something—he knew not what—but some kind of natural shelter of rocks or trees wherein he could hide from the wind and snow. He didn’t like his chances of building another lean-to and fire bed in this weather, and he knew he felt better and warmer when he walked, so head and face down he trudged into the forest looking up now and then to see if his place of rest had been found.
All of this time, Clay had thought he was walking north, but he was actually walking east-northeast—away from his goal, and deeper into the forest. The snow started to stick and his thoughts stuck together too, but he had a fresh fish in his po
cket and water in his backpack, and he believed that all he needed was shelter in order to find his happiness again.
A couple more miles and he crossed a snow covered road of some sort. Small, probably a logging road or a fire road, he thought. It didn’t seem to head anywhere better than where he already was. He guessed (wrongly) that the road headed back west so he just crossed over it and kept walking back into the forest on the other side, maintaining what he thought was his northerly route. After a while, walking as straight as he could manage in the conditions, the wind died down and the flakes turned into the big wet kind. The Inuit have a name for this kind of snow, but Clay didn’t.
The whole country began to look beautiful and peaceful to him, and he paused for a moment to look at it more closely. The hills rose around him, more sharply here, and he marveled at the charms of the place. He recalled, very vividly, a memory of the distinctive and poignant quiet he had known in the winter, in the woods, in Ithaca. Cheryl had been at his side as they watched the flakes fall and one caught on her nose as he bent forward to kiss it off. Now, Clay looked out over the countryside and saw the snow settling in the branches in their beautiful crystalline purity and grew lost in the moment even as God looking down from his heavens would have seen him lost in the white of the world.
He saw a remarkable hill a hundred yards to his right, and it struck him that this might be just what he was looking for. As he got closer, he made out at the top of the hill some huge rocks and boulders, and he ran toward it and shouted into the sky. He skipped most of the way with his hands thrust into the air in victory, like Rocky ascending the steps of the Philadelphia Art Museum.
Coming up to the low hill, he climbed it quickly and confidently and found a small, somewhat sheltered area behind a large rock. He clumsily attempted to cross himself in celebration—not even knowing why or what that genuflection really meant. He wasn’t religious, but if he got through this and found his way home, he promised to praise Clive and Veronica and all of the other gods for the rest of his life.
He rested for a few minutes, tasting the cold with his tongue and embracing the vitality brought on by adrenaline and the chill now bracing his back, then he pulled off his backpack and set himself the task of trying to start a fire. He gathered together some twigs and a few scattered needles and leaves and piled them along the base of the rock. Then he pulled off some lint from his wool blanket, just as he had done the previous night, and confidently arranged everything in order so that all would be at hand when it was needed. He fished the matches out of the pack, noting that he only had seven or eight left. “This ought to be easy,” he said to himself aloud and immediately regretted it. Though he was confident after the previous successes that all should go well for him again, he’d already learned not to take that success for granted.
Striking the first match, he had barely touched it to the small roll of wool fibers when the breeze, swirling around the rock, blew the match out. Clay cursed, and then tried again. This time the match blew out immediately, never even reaching full flame before it was snuffed out by the wind. Clay turned his back from the direction he thought the wind was coming and struck the third match only to have it blow out when a stiff, frigid blast snuffed the flame again.
He never started the fire. His hands were too cold to fully cup around the flame and his fingers too stiff to do anything more than the perfunctory motions of striking. He tried every possible combination of wind blocks with the remaining matches, but each, in turn, was blown out by the wind. Clay slumped back against the rock, cursed loudly once again, then huddled into himself trying to think of what to do next. His stomach ached in response to his hunger and his mind was muddled by the cold.
He went through his options. Back to the forest road… but where did it lead? That road seemed (to him) to be heading in the wrong direction, and what if it just went on interminably into the forest preserve? There was no “pro” except that it was a road and that the walking might be easier. Look for another answer. Back the way he came? All the way back to the pond? There was a house or something there! But what were the chances he could find his way back? He looked over the low rocks in front of him and couldn’t even see the footprints that had followed him the last few yards up the hill. He’d come miles, and if he did find his way back (which was doubtful), who says that he’d find any help there? Besides, Clive had infected Clay with an onset of paranoia, and in his cold and cloudy thinking he figured he’d just as likely find trouble going backward as forward. Keep walking? That seemed to him to have the greatest promise. The geography was getting more rugged, which meant he could find a good shelter or a cave. To his thinking, he might find a home or cabin or safety and warmth by accident walking towards home and Ithaca as easily as he would find it going in any other direction.
Climbing back down from the hill, he was a much different man than the victorious one who had taken it by infantry charge only minutes earlier, and he was met with the enormity of his defeat upon clearing the base of the hill by a frozen gale of snow and cold that caught his breath away with its intensity. For the first time the words formed in his brain, and the reality of it crystallized before him. I might die.
The next few hours were away and beyond all that Clay had ever imagined a blizzard could be, and lightly clothed and almost past shivering, he struggled forward against the wind and piercing snow, step by frozen step. His mind was not functioning properly, and he heard voices around him but could not find the strength to search for them. He heard Clive say “Nor’easter,” but some part of his mind knew that Clive had never said “Nor’easter” to him, and that Clive was somewhere in Nova Scotia drinking cocoa by a hot fire. He heard Veronica lecturing him about fleeing and cowardice, and he knew that, too, had not happened, but in his mind the manifestation of this lecture was as certain as the blizzard, and crueler and infinitely angrier. He heard Cheryl, but could not make out her words, and his mind visited Jack London’s books and Andy Taylor’s Mayberry, and tales of political intrigue and philosophies of the imminence of death. His mind seemed to swirl out of control and rise up from his being and surround him on every side.
He did not know, and had no way to figure, how long he had been walking, and he began to keep time by how far down he still had feeling in his legs, and how much of his face and hands still reacted to stimuli from his brain. Still, he kept struggling forward. Once, he discovered that the thing that always seemed to happen in the books about blizzards or climbers on Mt. Everest was actually true. Without knowing how he had gotten there, he was lying down. He began to feel warmer and sleep started to steal through him. His mind was of two parts—the one side against the other—arguing in his head that he should both go to sleep and get the hell up and start walking. The dreamlike state that was stealing upon him made everything light and beautiful even as the small voice in his head screamed that his body was shutting down and that if he went to sleep he would never wake up.
Struggling to his feet was like pressing against frigid death, and he noticed through the snow that the day had grown darker and that night was falling. How long had he lain there in the snow? Doesn’t matter now, keep walking or die, the man with the red beard on the bike had said. Dusk and then night fell like a weight, and his mind started to slip in step with his feet, and coming upon a particularly steep decline, he tumbled forward, rolling head over heels down a slope, where he came to rest against something that his brain had trouble identifying. Looking up to the sky and darkness, he saw in what may have been a single, blue shaft of moonbeam what seemed like an infinite regress of netting. Was it the bridge? No, it was lighter in texture, in weight, and it held him as he leaned against it. Not cables, but what? Chain-link. Rising into the heavens and curving out over his head in a series of barbed-wire overhangs. Chain-link, and a sign hanging on it. It took him a few seconds to realize that he had stumbled into a fence and that maybe he was saved.
Crawling to his deadened and icy feet with the help of the chain-link sav
ior, he got himself upright and tried to read the sign but could not manage it through the snow and ice and dark. He tossed his backpack to the ground and found that he had not the dexterity to open it with his frozen hands so he managed it with his teeth and then reached in and took hold of his flashlight in his paw of a hand, and, struggling to get it to come on, he finally achieved it and shone the bright light at the sign…
STAY AWAY!
Military Facility
Stay 500 Yards From This Fence!
Trespassers May Be Shot
He looked again and saw that the fence was topped with loops of razor wire, and looking around now with an increase in attention born of adrenaline and fear and the possibility of salvation, he noticed that there was no light in any direction. There was only the faint gray-blue light that snow gives off when there is some moon to be seen. He could not see the moon and he could barely see at all. There! Maybe he imagined it— in the distance the outline of a building maybe a hundred yards away inside the fence. Something institutional.
He started to stumble down the fence line and tried to shout but found it difficult. After fifty yards or so he came across another sign that repeated the warnings and the threats of death and worse if he did not stay five-hundred yards from the fence. Another fifty yards and he came upon a section of fence that had obviously been demolished by a succession of falling trees—damage from Sandy or maybe the Nor’easter, if that is what this was.
Disregarding the warnings, because being shot, at this point, seemed to him like a deliverance, he stumbled through the opening in the wrecked fence provided by the toppled trees, and steadying himself against one of these trees, he bowed his head, trying to gather together the strength to make it to the building he could now see in the distance.
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