Surviving Bear Island (8 page)

All I needed now were some fish.

FISH.
Thousands of fish, I hoped.

I'd walked in the mist all day and had crossed some small streams, but now I was perched on a rocky outcrop above a big creek at the back of Hidden Bay. The creek poured out of some craggy mountains spotted with snow. Islands of yellow-green seaweed separated several stream channels flowing into the cove.

My empty stomach burned with anticipation. I knew I'd starve if I ate only berries.

Fish, fish, fish. I needed fish.

The rush of flowing water filled my ears. Gaff in one hand, I scrambled down from the headland and walked the shore towards the creek,.

In the disappearing daylight, I checked the first of several channels and found nothing. Not even dead salmon. My dad said there were over nine hundred salmon streams in Prince William Sound. This just had to be one of them.

I crossed two more shallow channels with no sign of fish, and trudged upstream on a gravel bar, my blistered feet burning with every step.

Gulls squawked as they lifted off the ground and flew away from me.

I approached the main channel and stopped. Dorsal fins, small triangles poking out of the moving water, swaying back and forth, pointed upstream. I took a step forward and they all moved across the channel and downstream.

Fish all piled on top of one another.

The school was as big as a full-sized pickup truck. Like Dad said: You really could walk across their backs and stay dry if they didn't move.

I pictured the empty creek yesterday and gripped my gaff harder. I needed to understand this. I couldn't just stumble around in the forest and eat berries until I was too weak to walk. There was so much I didn't know. And this was a chance—a chance to know something. A chance to discover. A chance to survive.

I stood like a statue. I had to do this, and do it right.

When Dad took me dip-netting for salmon on the Copper River the summer Mom died, he had said, “Picture the fish swimming into your net.”

The Copper River was so full of silt that you never saw a fish swim into your net, you only felt it. You try to hold a net the size of a big trash can in the water on the end of a twelve-foot-long pole. You just feel a thump and haul your net out. But it was like pulling a net through wet cement.

Dad had said, “If I can imagine feeling the bump and then lifting, then I'm ready to dip net.” That year we netted thirty salmon in two hours. A week later Mom was dead.

The fish moved upstream, approaching where they'd been before I'd spooked them. In another wave the fish advanced to their original position. I bounced on my toes and that made my blisters burn even more.

Do it and do it right. But how did I know what was right? I just had to feel it. Try it. Imagine bringing the gaff down and tugging. Yanking a fish onto the gravel bar, then pounding it with a rock.

The salmon were headed upstream to spawn—that was their goal. And not up just any stream, but the very stream where they'd had their start as eggs. Well, they weren't all gonna make it. Not if I could help it.

I raised the gaff with both hands, held it over my head, then swung it down, hard. A splash and wave erupted on the water's surface.

“I got one! I got one!” I shouted, as I pulled a fish from the water.

On the gravel bar the fish flopped wildly, and broke free from the hooks. I dropped the gaff, scooped both hands under the fish and flung it away from the water. It hit the rocks and kept flopping and flipping, then became still. I picked up a grapefruit-sized rock, grabbed the fish just above the tail and smashed it on the head. Spasms ran up and down the fish. It broke free and flopped again.

I gripped it by the tail and hit it a second time. It jerked once, then became still. Blood ran from its bulging eyes.

I picked up my gaff. I wanted more. I could scarf down three or four
salmon, or eat a whole school, no problem.

I had the situation under control. I was doing it right. It was almost easy.

I waited. The school of salmon moved back to its original position. I swung again, connected again, and yanked, but then stumbled and fell backwards.

Broken ends of fishing line trailed off the pole.

“No,” I said. “No. No. No.”

I raised the hookless gaff over my head and slammed it down. I stood up and kicked the gaff. I picked it up, stared at the place where the hook should have been, and slammed it to the ground again.

“Worthless,” I shouted. “I'm worthless.”

Then I felt the trembling. If I kept losing hooks, I'd starve. And that would be sad, loserville-sad—to starve when there were lots of fish just because I couldn't figure out how to catch them.

That night, by the fire with a burncooked fish in my belly, I sat with the hookless gaff in my hands, the broken ends of fishing line hanging in the firelight.

I knew I needed to catch more than one fish with one hook. I'd die if I couldn't do that. No room for mistakes. Or at least, no room for making the same mistakes. I needed to learn from this.

Learning life's lessons sure can be hard.

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

Yeah, more of my mom's lyrics. My mom would say that by gaffing a salmon I'd left the yard. But now, if I just tied another hook onto the end of the pole without changing the way I did it, that'd be like staying in the yard.

I set the pole down. I lay back on the life vests and covered myself with the emergency blankets.

I worried about the gaff some more, but no solution came. I'd been so proud of how I'd thought it up, built it, and then caught a fish. I wanted the gaff to work just the way it was, but knew that was impossible. Just like I wanted to have not screwed up on the day of the accident—impossible.

MY EYES
opened, then closed again. Then opened. I saw my dad bobbing in the green waves, then his life vest washing ashore.

Then I saw it all again. I closed my eyes tight, then opened them again and saw the gray morning light through the trees.

Then I remembered the fish, the gaff, the hook.

I shivered.

My head hurt, pounded like someone was beating on it with a club.

And my throat was dry, like it was coated with sawdust.

A thin wisp of smoke snaked upward from a partially burnt log. I rolled the log over and stirred the coals beneath it. A few red embers glowed, holding a sliver of last night's blaze.

I placed a couple of small sticks on the coals, blew until the smoke started to rise, then headed for the creek.

Small drops of cold rain dotted the cove as I squatted beside the creek, cupped my hands and drank. The peaks at the back of the bay were blocked by a wall of gray, the clouds closing in on me like a pack of hungry wolves.

I headed back to my camp. A couple life vests, the two small survival kits, plus a fire—that was camp.

I rubbed my hands together. If only I could've reached that dry bag with the sleeping bags. Then at least I'd have something to separate myself from the weather. A cocoon I could curl up in.

I really wished I had a tent. Just a small tent—sleeping bag not included—to shed the rain.

On the trip I'd felt cooped up when we stayed in the tent for a couple days during a storm. It had sucked. I wished it sucked like that now.

If you don't have what you want, what can you do to work toward what you want?

“What do I want?” I said. “What do I want? I want to find you. I want to get off this freaking island! But right now, right now, I just want to live. I want to be warm and dry. And I want to eat—all the time.”

My stomach growled. Eat some berries first, I figured. Then build a shelter. Then fix the gaff. And just keep moving around, that'll help keep me from freezing. And keep searching for signs. Any signs that my dad might have left.

On a hillside I found berry bushes, their stems stripped of leaves, a stray berry here and there. And bear scat. Big piles of bear scat speckled with purple and sprinkled with green. Those bears must eat tons, literally tons, of berries. Eating machines.

But the island was big, too big for bears to eat all the berries. I worked my way across the hillside until I found a patch the bears had missed.

The berry juices stung the open wounds in my mouth.

I shoveled them in anyway, but kept my eyes and ears on stand-by.

My dad climbed to the top of a mountain on one of his trips out here and counted nine black bears foraging for blueberries on the mountainside below him. At the time I thought the story was cool. I'd wanted to climb a peak and see that. But now, it freaked me out.

Were any bears moving my way? Was one just out of sight behind a fallen tree? So much to worry about when all I wanted to do was eat.

Eat.

Eat.

Eat.

Not like at home where I used to read and eat, or watch a movie and eat. Eat when I wasn't even aware I was eating.

Especially after Mom died. For a while I just ate what I could. I mean, Dad was down, way down. I'd make him a sandwich when I was making one. And I'd do most of the cleaning up, which was good because I needed something to do.

We had a freezer full of salmon, but he wouldn't touch it. Mom had freezer-wrapped all of it and labeled it with smiley faces and the date, and on the freezer paper had drawn little stick figures of me and Dad fishing. And she'd done all that just a few days before she died. I know it's still
there because every once in a while I'd open the chest freezer just to look at those drawings. Everything was there, behind that chain with the sign that said, No Trespassing.

But out here, you take a good look around. Eat for a few minutes. Take another look around.

Eat.

Look.

Eat.

Look.

And listen.

Always listen.

And while I ate and looked and listened, my mind pounded with one word: Shelter.

Shelter.

Shelter.

Shelter.

I worked my way through more berry bushes that had been stripped by bears, searching for another patch they'd missed. I was dodging more mounds of bear scat when I noticed a pile that was smashed in the middle. My mind flashed to the bear scat I'd stepped in my second night stranded on the island. I found an undisturbed pile, stepped in it and studied the result. It looked just like the smashed down pile. It was a print. A boot print.

“Dad!” I yelled. “Dad.” I kept moving through the bushes calling for him. I mean, who else could've made that track. And he'd be looking for berries just like me.

I didn't see any more tracks and no one answered my calls. Maybe he was just out of shouting distance. And, he would come to the stream because the fish were there.

I returned to my sorry excuse of a camp.

Don't sleep where you eat. Keep your kitchen separate from your bedroom. Keep a clean camp. Don't give a bear a reason to be interested in where you sleep.

I stood next to the smoldering fire. I knew I couldn't build my shelter here—with the fish-smell. Didn't want to be easy prey or I'd never reach the Sentinels.

But I also knew that I needed to stay here for a little while. I mean, a
creek full of fish. If I could stuff my face for few days, build up my strength, then I could make a push for the Sentinels. Plus, this is exactly the kind of place my dad would search for, too. Where there was a food source. That print just had to be his.

Just above the highest strand line, shielded by a band of alders, I discovered an earthen bank about eight feet high. It was kind of dark beneath it because the alders were so thick, but it was a solid wall.

I studied the bank, trying to imagine a shelter.

I DRAGGED
five large deadfalls to the edge of the bank and slid them over, about two feet apart from each other. I gathered sticks and branches, and placed them every-which-way across the deadfalls to make a roof. Something to get me out of this constant rain.

I hauled a bunch of rocks from the beach and built fire rings half-in and half-out of the shelter on the two open-ended sides.

Then I sat inside and tested it out.

Yeah, it was damp and dark. Cold, too.

Just a triangular cave—dirt wall, stick roof, moss-and-mud floor. I hoped it'd feel different with a couple of fires blazing. And I knew I could make it better. Water was already dripping through the roof. But if I spent all my time on the shelter, it'd just turn into a tomb.