Bendigo Strange's

Sometimes being lost is how you find your way

Bendigo Strange
January 19th, 2024
Late in the Evening
10 Degrees

Raising the Old Man’s .22 Smith & Wesson you crack off three shots, as thin orange muzzle flashes cut into the dark, yelling “HEY!” once more, but still no response. No return pistol shots, no shouts back, no truck horn. The only human sound in these woods are your own. Next comes the realization that you can no longer see your breath, nor the darkened ridge lines of the the Ozark hills against a grey sky. Night had arrived in these autumn woods, and with it the threat of rain.

7:37pm. The blue-green illumination of the Timex Indiglo watch cuts the dark like a signal flare. It had been over an hour since you climbed to the top of the hill expecting to find both, your cousin’s 1975 blue Ford F150 King Cab and, more importantly the logging road it should be parked on. Your teenage mind fighting the urge to descended into a state of panic. The road HAD to be here! as you kick at the damp leaves, pacing back and forth, as if you had dropped your wallet. “Maybe you are on the wrong hill!?” as you look yonder to the next. It doesn’t look right, none of this looks right. But regardless you run against a continually fading twilight. In the October 1991 of your youth there are no cell phones in pockets. No GPS “applications”.

Standing in a draw amid the hills, it was as though you had become caught between the swells of enormous black waves, in a trough of blackness. Swallowing hard, feeling the dense weight of the compound bow in your left hand. The strain of the backpack against your shoulders as sweat runs down your smooth face. The heat from your body in stark contrast to the cool damp air.

“Run” your brain urges. “Run until you see a light”, but you have stood still long enough for a chill to settle over you. Then something else arrives. An old fear, like a specter in this flat black night has come for you in these woods. Once and for all. A younger version of you lived in terror of darkness. Once again it’s suffocating feeling has returned. You look up, needing to see even a single star, some distant light. A single light to give hope, something TO SEE. Nothing. Your legs twitch involuntarily as though they are going to go on without you. Then in that moment before the fear gives way to something else, a light arises from within.

A voice, “that voice”. The one that has always been there for you had arrived. “Seventeen years old is a bit old to be afraid of the dark don’t you think?” Your head shakes against the notion. The voice inside continues, “Alright. We’re here for the night, deal with it.”

The boy in you has been been superseded by the burgeoning man. The voice from inside evening up the odds against the darkness. You smile as if saying to the night “He’s here. You can’t beat me now.”

Another voice, this one audible, simply says “Well shit” as the dark green Eastman daypack slides off your shoulders, looking up against a sky that says rain. An air temperature unlikely to get any warmer than the mid 40s.

With your back against a large oak, and pen light between your teeth you take stock of everything your day pack has to offer. A partially filled coffee thermos, A copy of Louis L’ Amour’s “Jubal Sackett, two surplus army canteens of water, one with a canteen cup, half a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, one roll of duct tape, because MacGyver, a ziplock bag of beef jerky, two apples, rope, a spool of trot line, one wool sweater (army surplus), one black cotton turtle neck, one homemade “survival kit” stored in a canvas Jungle First Aid pouch. One box of Winchester Wildcat .22 Long Rifle ammunition. A wool blanket (also army surplus) attached to the bottom of the day pack. No spare batteries for the Mini Mag flashlight.

Having fired three different times the distress from the Old Man’s Smith & Wesson Model 422 he let you take on this weekend’s bow hunt with your cousin, the ten round magazine is now empty. A single round rests in the chamber. Drawing it from the black Uncle Mike’s nylon hip holster you eject the magazine. Fishing out ten rounds from the little cardboard box of ammo you reload the flat semi-automatic, and then sit in the dark. Back against a tree. Gun in one hand, a United Cutlery “Bowie” knife in the other, as if waiting for an attack. Listening and wide eyed.

The cold damp ground makes you feel colder and colder until you realize that, it’s not something that goes bump in the night that is going to kill you but hypothermia. You can not just sit here all night, you have to get warm.

Rummaging through the survival kit and finding what you are looking for, a few minutes later, seated around a candle, a mylar survival blanket around your shoulders and over your head like all the survival books advise. You do feel a little better seeing the lone flame in the night. A fire sure would be nice, “So build a fire” says the voice inside your head” . Twisting the knurled head of the flashlight to the on position, you see a fog has settled in. “While you are at it. Build a shelter stupid.”

The damp night air seems unyielding against any attempt at fire, match after match only results in blackened twigs and burnt finger tips. The voice inside your head finally asks “Why are you not trying to solve the problem?”, the problem wasn’t a lack of big fuel, but small fuel. There simply was not any dry tinder to be found. Or was there?

“Think.”

Taking a spare bandana from the pack and cutting into strips with your Swiss Army knife, then rubbing candle wax on the advertising pages from the paperback before tearing them into strips, you make a loose and airy bundle of paper and cloth. Two long strips of duct tape split lengthwise, then crisscrossed at the bottom and brought to the top to hold the shape. The end result looks like a small silver and red onion. You pry the soft lead bullets from a couple of .22 shells and pepper the whole thing with gunpowder. Forgoing matches this time, you dig out the yellow Bic lighter, saying a prayer before touching flame to the improvised fire starter, “C’mon baby. Light.”

The light from the fire emitted a soft orange glow in the mist and fog, but enough to light the surrounding landscape enabling you to busy yourself with collecting enough wood to last you through the night. The big bowie knife acting as a hatchet to hack dead branches from fallen trees, until a pile of wood is waist high.

Tucking an acorn under the corner of the space blanket you make a field expedient grommet, loop a length of white nylon trot line around the bulb in the mylar, before tying it off to a nearby rock. The space blanket now transformed into a poorly shaped combination of A frame and Lean-to. A relatively straight stick about three feet long, it’s end wrapped in duct tape to prevent poking through the survival blanket props it open.

Exhausted from the whole ordeal you sit in front of the fire, the camouflage Hi-Tech hiking boots off as you warm your socked feet in front of the fire. The survival kit stored in a zip lock bag inside the canvas pouch, yielded what feels like “life saving medicine”. A magnesium fire starter wrapped in aluminum foil. The ever present emergency fishing kit. More matches. A small First Aid Kit. An ancient bottle of water purification tablets. A small pen knife. A length of copper wire. But it was the two packets of Lipton Cup O Chicken Noodle Soup mix, and four packets of Bigelow’s Constant Comment hot tea that bring the life.

The folding handle from the canteen cup extended away from the fire, the water comes to a boil as you dump a packet of soup in. Using the blade from your Swiss Army knife to stir, you mix it all together, waiting just long enough for it to be consumable. With no spoon you drink the hot soup down, gulping at the short flat noodles. A sudden warmth filling you as though it was the first time in your life.

Finishing off the soup, along with a few pieces of beef jerky and an apple, you sit cross legged in the doorway of the makeshift shelter sipping coffee from the wide mouth Stanley thermos you got last Christmas. Your watch reads 11:17pm. It won’t be light for at least another seven hours. A part of you wants to sit up all night out of fear, but the fire eases that some as a full stomach lulls your body into rest. Initially the plan was to sleep on top of a pile of leaves under the shelter, but the day kept them damp. Plus you think about a tick crawling in your ear, and that ends that idea. So instead, using your foot as a rake you scoop leaves along the outside perimeter of the shelter to insulate it. Gone are the sweaty hunting shirts from earlier as they hang near the fire to dry . Dressed in the turtle neck and wool sweater you appreciate their dryness. Thanking God for actually having packed them in the day pack. Crawling inside the shelter, next to a piles of wood that line both walls, you lay your head down on the daypack, pulling the surplus grey blanket over you. The compound bow atop the pile of branches. The .22 Smith & Wesson close by you lay there. Alone in the dark.

Sleep is hard won. Around 1 am you wake up from a terrible dream and shivering. The fire has burned down to coals and small dark orange flames. An armful of wood returns the fire to it’s former glory. As you go about laying a small log on the fire, the silence of the night is broken by the HOOT! of an owl in the tree above. You gather your heart and eyeballs off the ground, putting them back in place. Who needs sleep after all.

3:30am, you lay awake. Listening to a far off sound that you can’t quite place. A noise moving through the woods and coming closer, and closer as though a small army was kicking leaves as they marched. It arrives and begins it’s tapping sound on the roof of the shelter. The rain has arrived.

It doesn’t come violently and does so without any wind., the clouds above finally unable to hold any more moisture. If hypothermia wasn’t a threat before, it is now. You throw the large pile of the wood that is still outside the lean-to on the fire. It’s no good to if it’s soaked anyway. A large rolling heat begins to fill the shelter, warming it completely. A half hour later the ran stops, and you fall asleep.

Feeding the last pile of wood to the fire, the dark finally gives way to morning, and a world shrouded in fog. Squatting by the fire, drinking hot tea from the canteen cup as a lone Lipton noodle floats near the bag of Constant Comment you hear something new. “Not rain” you think. You hear it again, then again, as your eyes go wide with recognition. Stuffing everything into the small pack as fast as possible and picking up the bow, you run.

A mile away and, in the opposite direction you had been traveling last night, comes the sound of a lone truck horn. A truck horn that belongs to a light blue 1975 Ford F150 King Cab Pickup Truck. Your cousin’s pick up truck.

End