Naked and Marooned

by Ed Stafford

  I collected my first load of firewood – all grades, from tiny twigs to big logs; if I ever got an ember I was going to be ready. I placed them in order of size in neat little piles at the side of my cave. I decided upon an area to have my fire and made a fire pit at the side of the cave by building up a flat area of soil and encircling it with substantial rocks. As I was transporting the large stones up into my cave part of the thin goat path crumbled away and my foot followed it down the rock face. My world slowed as I plunged, with nothing stopping me, through the air. In a split second I instinctively I reached out and grabbed the cliff above me to stop my fall and my arm jolted straight under the dead weight of my falling body. The force on my hand was such that it tore the skin off my thumb and forefinger but it stopped the fall. My heart thumping, I looked at my cut-up hand and realised that it was minor compared to what would have happened had I continued falling. Scanning the drop below me I saw that it would have been over two metres on to jagged black rocks. ‘That was another warning shot, Ed! You need to be more carful,’ I muttered to the camera before placing it down by my feet. I was grateful for such close shaves – they kept me on my toes. Then, as if to further emphasise the danger, the camera wobbled, fell over and rolled right out of the cave.

  My final preliminary fire preparations involved collecting bundles of coconut husk and leaving them in the sun to dry thoroughly. These would make the basis of my tinder bundle – a small mass of dry material that I would use to turn an ember into a flame.

  I took a thumb-thick section of one of the darker woods and sat down to whittle it into the shape of a fat Cuban cigar. Working with a small shell, I found it cut quite well into the dry wood; and, reflecting on the usefulness of a simple shell, I realised that it might also be the perfect thing to use for cupping the top of the drill to allow it to spin in my palm. A ready-made ‘bearing block’ − brilliant.

  Now I had three parts out of four for my first bow drill attempt. I had made a bow, a drill and a bearing block. All I needed now was a hearth. I took the fatter half of hibiscus that I had split and carved myself a notch for the ember dust to settle in. It was time to trial the new fire set.

  The first hibiscus string went back and forth . . . and snapped. Crap. The second went back and forth, back and forth . . . then snapped. Bollocks. The third, I pulled back and . . . snapped again. Bloody hell!

  Rethink required.

  The obvious flaw was that the hibiscus bark wasn’t strong enough to be used in this way. The one positive was that the bow would work if my string was stronger. It’s important to stay positive in these situations.

  I looked through the small sections of rejected cordage that I’d collected over the past days and decided that two of the longer lengths might work if I tied them together. After assembly and a couple of readjustments for tightness I had the drill spinning nicely in the hearth board. First proper grin of the day. I have a bow that works. Fire is one large step closer – all I now need to do is carve an ember notch in the hard wood of the hearth board. But that was for another day as the golden hour was fast approaching.

  By late afternoon I needed a break and a drink. I examined the enhanced seep and took a quick sip of water from the top hollow through the straw. The sun seemed too hot for the system to fill and the bottle was empty. Disappointed, I walked back past the kid skin and examined the stiff, unusable, solid mass. It stank and was now covered in flies.

  Resorting to coconut water, and having forced the issue by destroying my first Y-pole to make a fire kit, I set about chopping down a really big tall tree. I’d wanted to make a longer pole anyway as I’d outgrown my first one and used up all the low-hanging coconuts. I knew, however, that it was going to take all my energy to cut it down.

  I dragged myself up the hill behind the cave in search of a tree with a suitable fork in the trunk to use as a long Y-pole. Once I found one, I sank to the ground beside it to try to summon up the motivation to start cutting it down with my clamshell.

  The hand axe I was using now had a dull edge that tore at the wood like a hammer. With feeble mini strikes I worked my way around the tree – ringing the bark and then biting further into the fleshy wood. Every two minutes or so I would collapse on the floor, gasping for breath. I found it hard to decide if the fatigue that was crippling my every movement was due to illness, lack of food, dehydration or even depression. Every movement required a monumental effort. I was incredibly, massively hungry, too, and I conjured smells of baking and roasting in my mind that did nothing but torment me.

  To fell a tree with a clamshell you have to bring it to the point at which it is weak enough to snap. There is no front or rear notch to cut meticulously, and the tree will never fall under its own weight. It’s incredibly crude and you just have to try to judge the point at which you can put your shoulder to the trunk and snap it over.

  When I thought I had reached this point, I put every joule of energy into a scrum-like thrust against the tree. It showed no sign of breaking. Totally spent, I then had to continue nibbling at the ring with the clamshell to further weaken the tree, three strikes out of ten resulting in old sores being reopened on my knuckles and weepy blisters growing larger on my palms.

  If I hadn’t run out of water I would have given up. My energy levels and my spirits were the lowest that they’d yet been on the island and I still needed the most basic of survival requirements – water. My last Herculean thrust resulted in a tantalising series of splitting cracks and then a satisfying ripping sound as the trunk snapped and the tree was felled.

  I sat gasping for a few moments and then rode the tiny positive wave of triumph by snapping off all the smaller branches with my fists, and dragging the mammoth pole down the dense dark hillside and out on to the bright sandy beach.

  As I used the pole for the first time I realised immediately that it was heavy − really heavy. I had unwittingly selected a dense wood and, in order to get the length that I wanted, I’d now got a pole with a very thick cross-section at the bottom. But the green coconuts were my lifeline and so I used all my strength to thrust this bloody caber upwards with both arms to dislodge one of them. And then another. The water felt nutritious, sweet, sterile and replenishing and I valued and appreciated each individual priceless fruit.

  Then, in the sand, I noticed a dark, shiny nut that looked a bit like a squashed conker. Curious, I stooped to pick it up, and smiled. This wasn’t any old bean; this was a burnie bean. Despite their being inedible, Aboriginals say that to carry a burnie bean brings good luck and acts as a connection to Mother Earth. They often decorate them by painting them and they were sometimes hollowed out and used to carry dry tinder for fire lighting. I wasn’t sure if they were indigenous to Fiji or whether this one had undergone an epic crossing of the Pacific Ocean; but if there was ever a time to believe in omens this was it.

  My survival attempts were gently boosted by this peaceful sign. ‘Don’t give up, Ed – you’re doing just fine, brother,’ I could hear Jeremy saying.

  The discovery of the nut was a friendly hand on the shoulder reminding me to relax and look after myself. I scanned the beautiful calm evening at low tide. Warm sun tiptoed through the clouds and I knew that a swim would round the day off perfectly. I padded out over the sharp coral and allowed my body to fall beyond into the cool sandy depths. Today I seemed to have composure. It was day five and I felt assertive and good. I had tackled everything with patience and a positive open mind. The inside of my chest was warm and alive.

  I felt I’d found my feet today. Rather than a fight to gain control over the island, it felt far more like relaxing into the inevitable. I had cried today. I remembered another wise quote: ‘A man’s strength is measured in tears not his fears.’ I have never been too afraid to cry but I could now see clearer than ever that the ability to release emotion could be a strength rather than a weakness. Anything that produced such clarity – a reset button for my mental heal
th – could not be all bad. Crying had made me honest with myself, allowed me to look at and move through what I was struggling with, and helped clean away stress and madness. Suppressing emotions and keeping a lid on frustrations were more obviously masculine characteristics but I felt I had gone beyond such superficial bravado. This was a time for real internal honesty if I was to get through this intact – and that meant owning my emotions and facing my problems head-on.

  The orange glow hit the horizon and cast a burning line across the still water towards my cave. It was the end of day five – a really good day for me. I was carrying the people I loved in my heart but getting on with the practicalities of day-to-day life here, too, without too much of a battle. I felt immensely grateful for everything that I had.

  ‘Morning – day six!’ I’d been here almost a week. The number of times last night I’d just thought, ‘Will somebody please turn the lights on!’ But the nights were black. I had a couple of sores on each foot and so I tiptoed down to the water’s edge and bathed them in the sea, rubbing the dirt out. They would be fine, I was sure – they were definitely toughening up.

  I approached the enhanced seep and my heart sank: I could not see a level on the plastic bottle. Then I looked closer, I had not seen a level because it was completely full. I gently squeezed the bottle to double-check and the water tension over the lip of the bottle broke and water flowed down the sides. The improvements had worked! I had made a wick system using a bit of washed-up cordage, a broken clamshell and a discarded plastic bottle and I had a full 600ml bottle of fresh water to show for it!

  I decided to decant the water into a bigger two-litre bottle and then I drank the contents of the two small rock pools before reassembling the wick system. I smiled because I had just drunk fresh water and had a reserve that I could carry with me and drink when I was thirsty. What an amazing step forward! Good fortune, when it came my way, made me happy, but this was better. I had thought through a problem, invested my time and effort into resolving it and it had paid off.

  ‘That’s a good start to the day,’ I beamed into the camera. ‘Yes!!’

  For good measure I gulped down the contents of the big green coconut that I had collected the previous night with my new pole. My hands stung as the cuts opened up again with the force of each strike on the rocks. Struggling to swallow it fast enough, I almost choked on the vast quantity of liquid that shot out down my throat.

  As I look down at my pitiful grass skirt I suddenly felt ridiculous. That had to change. I needed to get off my bare arse and make myself feel better by making some new clothes. I decided that my grass skirt was so bad it was like walking around with a big sign that told me that I was a laughing stock. ‘IDIOT FAILING HERE!’ it said to me every time I looked at it.

  ‘There is only one person here, Ed, to alter the state of play. There is only one person who can make you feel better and give you the boost you need.’ I physically hauled myself from the floor and decided to do something to make myself feel better. Not something to help me survive, or something to improve the filming, something just for me, to try and make me feel more happy. When people teach survival skills they rightly focus on the needs of the body but, in the case of long-term survival, the needs of the mind cannot be overlooked. And remember: I knew that my ordeal was going to end after sixty days and that, if I had an accident, there would be a boat for me within twenty-four hours. How much more mentally taxing must it be to be marooned with no certainty of rescue?

  From the moment I came to the decision I knew that remaking the grass skirt was all I wanted to do. I also knew that this time I was going to make a good one, a good-looking one, one that would last. I sourced some new beach hibiscus and clam-shelled the stems down. I beat them until the bark slipped off like fresh woolly socks off well-talced feet. I strung up my waist band between two trees and I set about attaching the individual strands that would make up the skirt.

  As the skirt built in thickness I tested it by trying it on. I wanted it to be below the knee so that the strands were heavy enough for it to hang well. I wanted to pack the strands so closely together that it would not reveal anything and allow me to feel comfortable and civilised. After about three hours of intensely focused and yet calm and constructive time, I had fashioned a skirt I was very happy with.

  Like a new haircut, the skirt made me feel irrationally pleased with myself. I had made something that not only worked but looked good, and the process of making it had been very meditative, too. I felt as if I could really start to get on with things now. I had back the armour in which we all live every day and I was glad for that familiar sense of protection.

  On inspection, there wasn’t much more water in the still. I began to understand the daily pattern. I got the most water in the early morning and the least in the afternoon. I realised that as soon as the sun hit the rock face the seep began to dry up each day, so I needed to take advantage of the first morning drink and the second drink at the end of morning before the sun had come over. I was surprised how long it had taken me to work this out. I must always either drink or decant both volumes of water in the morning, otherwise it would evaporate in the afternoon.

  Everything I was doing at the moment was on the energy from thirty snails a day and a few mouthfuls of gelatinous coconut flesh. The coconut water had some calories, too, but not many, and with the adaptations to the seep I should now be getting 1.2 litres of fresh water a day as well. It hadn’t rained properly, apart from spitting on morning two, and so when it did I would get the opportunity to collect more water.

  The afternoon sunlight in the cave was uncomfortably hot and it made me wonder if I could use its heat to light a fire. I’d found a glass jam jar and I held it in the sun over a dry coconut husk and attempted to focus the light passing through it. But the bottom was not conical or smooth enough, and it soon became evident that I could not produce enough heat to make anything combust. It was like trying to light a cigarette with the warmth of your armpit and so I quickly accepted the failure and moved on.

  In a day of experiments I also tried the bamboo fire-saw method (a further fire-by-friction technique from Asia that is different to the fire plough method) but eventually concluded that the bamboo was too dry and too old. The sections were too brittle to allow me to apply sufficient force and I gave that up as well.

  For some reason I decided to try and make a woven mat out of coconut palms. I’d watched villagers do this on Komo and perhaps I thought that if I sat and applied myself quietly to this task it would calm me and that I would also have a useful covering to sleep and sit on. The trouble was that I couldn’t make it. I tried to remember how they did it but the leaves kept unfurling and I got more and more frustrated. All I could do was make the smaller roofing tiles for thatching a shelter. At least that would be useful later on if I built a house.

  I’d failed to make the palm leaf mat and that made three failures out of three. As anxieties crept back in, I sought out my stone circle and had to fight hard to stop unravelling. Tears of desperation, bordering on panic, welled up. I felt so sad and so alone. I did the only thing I could in the circumstance: I sat down and reminded myself of what I was doing, why I was doing it and who I was. I hadn’t been abandoned here. This was my choice and I had to take that hardship squarely on my shoulders. Slowly I regained control and eventually got myself to a place where I was once again solid enough to stand up, brush the cave dust off my bottom and go and collect some firewood.

  At the end of my first week it was time to test my physical fitness by doing a number of exercises that I would repeat every week for the duration of the project. I would do maximum chin-ups and press-ups with no weight. I would take two melon-sized boulders and do squats and shoulder presses. Lastly, I would sprint down the beach, touch the rock at the far end and sprint back. In my heavy-legged state I wasn’t looking forward to what seemed a complete waste of energy.

  My run was predicta
bly laboured. I had measured it out as forty-five paces there and the same back, and so estimated that the distance was a 140-metre sprint. That was largely arbitrary as it was a record of relative speed in relation to the speed I started at. Would I get slower and slower as the weeks passed?

  Balancing the boulders on my bare shoulders and wedging them against my head for balance was the trickiest exercise and as I sank down to do a squat it felt such an alien movement to be attempting in my situation. I managed eighteen.

  Dark rain clouds out to sea slowly folded and rose with the thermals and I willed them towards me. I’d not had any rain since I’d laid out the clamshells and I desperately wanted the rains to hit my island.

  I collected six more palm leaves to cut out the wind that I predicted would come, and some more grass, too. Nothing could have been more important to me than being warm and snug at night, except perhaps having a plentiful supply of water.

  With darkness only about twenty minutes away, the wind picked up and it started to spit with rain. Static noise filled the cave as heavier rain started to fall outside. This was fantastic for me but I had mixed emotions as I noticed that half of the empty fireplace was already wet, as well as the front lip of the cave. Thankfully the rest of the cave was dry.

  The rain blew off all too quickly and my field of giant clamshells had hardly started filling. But then the white noise crescendoed again and I could see the levels of my mini swimming pools rising once more from the dry of my cave.

  In total it probably rained heavily for only forty seconds before it passed. I gingerly climbed down the now wet rock face and knelt before the clamshells with my straw and an empty two-litre Fiji Water bottle. Not wanting to spill any water when transferring it, by bending over the shells and sucking the water up into my mouth with the straw I could then blow it back into the bottle. Suck – transfer – blow was the routine. In five minutes I had half the bottle full. Considering it had rained for less than a minute I couldn’t complain about that. I had my first full litre of fresh rainwater and I was chuffed.