Down The Path Page 6
He stood there for quite a while as the sun wrenched itself up above the horizon and the bird songs slowed down in their intensity. He thought of the misery they had all felt in the city for so long and knew all they needed to do was venture out here for one morning to squelch that, should it show its ugly head again.
As he came back to himself, he realized he had been absent-mindedly scratching at his arms. He looked down at them and noticed that he had spiders on both arms as well as his legs and chest that had stuck their heads in him. He tried pulling them out, like he had done yesterday, but noticed that they seemed much harder to pull out. Grasping them close to his own skin and swiftly yanking seemed to do the trick, but Cooper could already tell that these would leave itchy welts. They must have been in him all night long and he cursed himself for not checking more.
Christopher told him to take everything seriously, but especially everything new. He had violated that rule by haphazardly looking over himself and then falling asleep. If he was to survive, he needed to be much more diligent. He decided right then, that scratching the welts would be his reminder to be more careful. Every time he itched, he would think back to Christopher’s words. This would be his penance.
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It hadn’t taken long to break his small camp and get everything tucked back into its place inside his pack. This was something that Cooper had practiced many times and it was like second nature now, everything had its own place inside his pack and it fit in there nicely with good comfort for his back and shoulders.
He took off walking through the honeysuckle again, hoping that nightfall would find him camping outside this sea of identical bushes. One of the more frustrating things he found with these scrubby plants was that they were just tall enough to not be able to see over. His compass guided him faithfully in the direction he knew he needed to head, but not being able to see more than a few feet in front of him was trying his patience. “Frustration leads to injury,” Christopher’s words rattled around inside his skull. He reminded himself to calm down and gather his wits.
Cooper stopped and sat against one of the piles of rubble to gather his thoughts. He needed to focus on immediate needs before all else. He knew he had enough water for another several days and this wasn’t hard to find; carrying more water than he needed served only to make his pack heavy. He had plenty of food for some time, but would prefer to supplement with forage rather than dip into his reserves. After not eating outside the city yesterday, he knew he would have to eat today, so that was his main priority.
After spending most of the morning fighting through the brush, he came upon a small ditch headed toward the southwest. He found that by walking in the ditch, he could move faster than trying to break his way through the bushes and used this to his advantage. For some reason, the bushes were not growing in the ditch, although they grew on its sides and extended their frail branch tips out far enough to smack him on the face. He was still able to move much faster though and as long as he had his face down, the head high branches didn’t pose anything more than a minor nuisance.
The sun was high in the sky when he first started to notice his hunger. His body had used up all the energy that his small breakfast of salted, smoked carp had given him. He rested against the side of the ditch and wiped his brow. It wasn’t very hot today, but it was taking its toll on him with the load he carried and his hunger. As he rested, he scanned the ditch and saw small mud pipes sticking out of it that had been popping out of the ground for most of the morning.
He had been so enamored with the start of his day that he had failed to pay these much attention. Cooper heard Christopher’s words in his head yet again, “pay attention to everything, because everything matters.” He really needed to pay more attention to things, why was he not remembering these simple rules?
While resting, he strengthened his resolve and pulled out his survival book; scanning through it while resting his legs. He needed to stay sharp to avoid these simple mistakes. He was flipping through the pages, wondering if he should eat now or wait a little longer when he saw movement ahead of him in the ditch.
Walking up a little farther, he could see that it was a crawdad. He had learned about these in school because they were found in the great lake by his city sometimes, but usually they were already dead. The ones he had seen before were also much smaller than this one. The creature that now crawled in front of him was nearly half the size of his hand, and was now climbing up one of the mud pipes in the ditch.
Quickly, Cooper grabbed the crawdad. He wasn’t sure what to do with it right then. He knew he needed to cook it, but now his mind was reeling about the possibilities. Why was the crawdad climbing into the tube? Could it live there? The ones he was used to did not live in tubes, in fact, they rarely ever came out of the water. This ditch, while not dry, was not full of water by any means; it had enough moisture to squish under his feet.
He decided to empty one of the zipper pockets on his pack and put the creature in there for the time being. He wanted to look in a few of these other tubes. Whatever the reason the one was heading inside it, chances are good others had done the same thing. He moved over to the next closest tube and removed it from the ditch, he saw nothing inside it, but the hole appeared to continue into the earth. With a little effort, he had excavated the soft mud and found another crawdad in the bottom of the hole. This one bigger than the last and resting in the water in the bottom of the hole!
After learning this, it took him very little time to gather a dozen of the creatures. There was ample light to scout for dead limbs on the surrounding bushes and in quick order he had the crawdads cooked and in his belly.
This was a major victory for Cooper. He had discovered wild forage that, at least inside this ditch, was in abundance. He continued his journey down the path with a full belly and a confident heart. While he wasn’t collecting more crawdads, having just eaten, he was paying attention to make sure the pipes were still present so he could eat when he wanted to.
The sun began setting as Cooper found a similar campsite as the one he had stayed in the night before. This site was also a close distance from the ditch that functioned as such a nice path for him, so he would have no problem finding his way back there. As he had been walking, he was snapping off dead, dry branches and lashing them to the top of his pack, so the ends stuck out on either side of his head. He smiled to himself at the site this must present, his bright red hair with sticks poking around on either side.
After pitching his tent and building a small fire, he cooked up the crawdads he had gathered before stopping for the day and filled his belly once again. While chomping down on the chewy, but sweet meat the creatures held in their tails, he decided maybe tomorrow he would try salting some. He didn’t necessarily need more salted meat, but it would be good to know if these creatures took to salt as well as the carp did. They had never had enough inside the city to bother salting them.
He did a thorough check of his body for the parasites that were still rampant among the honeysuckle and this time found a great many. It had taken some time, but he noticed their appeared to be two sizes of them, the smaller of the two easily mistaken for one of the dots on his skin. He picked off all that he saw, and tossed them into the embers of his dwindling fire. After hitting the hot coals, the insects gave off a very satisfying little ‘pop’.
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The next morning brought another explosion of bird song. This was the kind of greeting he was very happy to wake up to. He roused the coals of his fire and tossed a few sticks on to reignite it; deciding to stay for breakfast and set off full of energy for today’s voyage.
Heading off to the ditch to grab more crawdads, he noticed he had missed a few of the tiny spiders again, but nowhere near as many as the first night. It was improvement and that was what he was looking for. His older bites were really starting to itch and he was trying not to scratch them raw, opening himself up to infection. Cooper didn’t like thinking about infections, having been w
arned by Christopher how lethal even a small one can be. Realizing this may be a good use of the red liquid, he made a mental note to apply some to his larger bites when he got back to his camp.
He had been off in his own thoughts when he came upon the ditch and nearly tripped over it. He immediately noticed a distinct change in this tiny ecosystem; his planned meal was walking around outside the pipes. There were dozens of them crawling around, very similar to that first one he saw. He watched them for a brief time and decided they were crawling back into their holes. This saved him lots of time, not having to dig them out. In short order, he had two dozen for breakfast and another dozen to attempt to salt and preserve.
He had gotten very good at picking them up and not getting pinched by them. For such a small animal, they certainly seemed to have oversized pinchers that were truly painful if they were allowed to latch on. He almost felt sorry for them as he noticed them pinching each other inside the bag. The first wisps of smoke found their way to his nostrils from his fire and he knew they would not be pinching each other for long…
After he ate his breakfast and packed his things in their places he set about salting the other dozen crawdads. He didn’t want to cook them before salting, as that tended to lessen the preservative effects of the salt, so he pulled the meat out of the shells after crushing their heads so they didn’t flop about. It was much harder to peel the shells back uncooked, and several of the shells sliced him slightly just under his fingernails. These were very shallow so he didn’t worry much about them, especially after drizzling salt over the meat worked plenty of it back into the small cuts, which hurt considerably.
Feeling fairly confident that his salted meat experiment would work out, he decided to set off. It wasn’t long before his armpit started to itch. Scratching at it, Cooper noticed that he should try to find a body of water to wash off in. The smell he was turning out while scratching at his armpit was not a pleasant one in the least. His fingers brushed against a bump that felt different from a tick bite. It seemed to dangle from his skin. It took great effort to stretch his arm far enough back and at the same time crane his head forward enough to see the far side of his armpit, but there it was; a dangling gray bump. He gave this bump a swift tug, wincing as he pulled out several long red hairs as well.
He could tell this was another of the insect, because it had the same legs and tiny head, but the rest of its body was nearly three times larger! Poking it with his knife to confirm his suspicion, he saw it was indeed filled with his blood. Cooper noted that these parasites were not just hitching onto him for a ride, but actively feeding off his blood and apparently hiding out in his hairy areas as he found several more inflated ones in the various hidden spots of his body.
He pulled them all out and dabbed some red liquid onto them. The liquid was actually a little bit soothing on the bites, even if it discolored his skin. With the pain that came along with the salt, he was trying to conserve as much of this for as long as he could.
Setting out for another day’s journey, he noticed that the sky was beginning to cloud up. He knew he would be walking through all sorts of weather, so he was prepared to walk in the rain all day if that was the case. The clouds were still well off in the distance though, so he assumed he would remain dry for some time. In an effort to always be prepared, he snapped of a few of the dead branches from a nearby bush and quickly slinging his pack to the front, stuffed them down along the side opposite his back. Happy to have some stashed wood to begin a small fire later, he continued walking in the ditch.
Cooper was beginning, finally, to see a change in the bushes. They were no longer all honeysuckle. Another bush was growing in a few places that had dark green leaves on top and silver white leaves on the bottom. He had nibbled on one of the leaves and while it was not bitter, a sure sign of danger, it was fibrous and not pleasant tasting, almost peppery. Well off in the distance to his north he spied a tree growing.
After thinking about investigating the tree over lunch, he decided best to stick to his path, which had now widened slightly and seemed to have more water in the soil because it squished more when he walked. He had even come upon several small pools, no deeper than a finger, but deep enough to splash himself and rinse away some of his filth. The rain appeared to be heading away from him now, so he couldn’t count on that to rinse everything off.
10
The next few days brought much of the same. The only change in his routine was that sometimes his ditch would abruptly end into a small rise of land. He would continue over this same land of cracked, flat rock and on the other side, another ditch would begin. It was puzzling, because the ditches weren’t connected, but it gave him something to think about while he trudging along in the wet landscape.
He had noticed that every time one ditch ended, it hit another ditch and took off at a right angle. He could always pick up his path on the other side though. The other side also had ditches running in the different directions. Testing a theory, he crossed the flatrock that was parallel to his path and found a nearly identical ditch on the other side, again running parallel to his.
He thought on it long and hard, but couldn’t come up with a reason for these to exist other than some sort of path from long ago. It seemed to help his brain though to have something to chew on while he trudged along on his wet path.
He knew he should be coming up on the river sometime soon. Since moving into the ditches, his pace had picked up tremendously. He had come to several small creeks, but he knew these could not be the river he was looking for as they were much too small to be added to a map and he could easily walk across it. The creeks were nice because they tended to have a few trees lining them right along the edges. Being spring, he had not expected to find food on them and his expectations had been correct.
The City did not have many trees, but the only ones that produced nuts suitable for roasting and eating always dropped them in the fall. Most of their trees were what the elders called ulms and were good only for shade during the heat of the summer. Most of the trees he had seen here looked like the ulms.
He had asked Christopher many times how he would know the right river, and he always replied that he was a sharp lad, it would be obvious. Since nothing he had seen yet looked obvious by any stretch, he would always fill his canteens and continue in a southwesterly direction.
Cooper was actually enjoying himself. He had taken to standing in front of his fire and holding his clothes, as well as his body, in the smoke. This seemed to keep most of the insects away. He had found the areas of the ditches that had more water were harboring the annoying ‘squitos’, very similar to the ones back home. Much like back home, the dirtier you were, the more the squitos wanted nothing to do with you.
On day six he awoke feeling slightly different. He had a slight headache and felt not well rested. It had rained the night before and, even though he stayed very dry in his tent, he blamed the rain for not allowing him a restful night of sleep. He had been pushing himself harder each day as he grew more comfortable on this journey. At least in this environment, he had an ample food supply and plenty of water, there was no reason to not try to cover some ground.
As he pulled himself out of the tent to a gray and rainy sky, he noticed the birds were not singing this morning. Probably the rain, he thought. Not much to sing about when you’re soaking wet.
His headache and exhaustion made his pack feel heavier than usual so he decided to travel slowly, perhaps take some sketches of the plants he has seen to show the city residents and elders upon his arrival back home.
Since he was planning on traveling slower, and because he did not have much of an appetite, he skipped breakfast. He had some more salted crawdads he could eat while walking or always stop and cook some fresh ones when his hunger returned.
The sun was high in the sky when Cooper saw the horizon change. So far, the view on his journey had been sky over the tops of the bushes, but now he could see something else; a dark line that was certainly no
t storm clouds. Walking further he ran into another small rise where his ditch ended. Climbing to the top of the rise yielded his biggest surprise yet. It was a wall of trees. Trees like he had never imagined. Thick as the bushes, you couldn’t make out where one of the tree tops ended and another began. They all just ran into each other!
He had a ways to walk before he got there, but this excitement caused him to increase his speed. So much for taking things slow today. His legs still felt heavy and he was tired, but this was the first major change he had seen in the landscape since his journey began.
As he got closer, the trees seemed to grow larger. His head was still pounding, having not been able to shake the pain in his temples that started when he woke up. Trying not to focus on his headache, he pressed on. Shortly before he hit the tree line, the honeysuckle seemed to fall away and give rise to very thick green grass. It was no taller than his knees and he could not tell if the crawdad pipes were underneath the grass.
Finally he could see it. It was the river! There was no doubt in his mind this was it, Christopher had been correct; he knew it when he saw it. Silently sending yet another thank you out to the shiny headed man, he continued on to where the grass ended and entered into the forest.
Thinking about it as he approached, he should have expected this. He had seen sparse trees around the much smaller river, but few other places. It made sense that a larger river would have much larger trees.
He was overcome with joy having reached his first real destination. It validated so much for him. The maps were correct in showing where the river would be and it was heading nearly straight west, just as the map showed. Several days travel west, the river should take a hard turn to the south. In his mind, Cooper imagined clear sailing south and an easily identifiable trail to lead him back home. He was all smiles staring out across the river. As he wiped his brow, still grinning, he barely noticed the heat coming off his forehead.