Continued from Part 1
Of course, looking back on it, there were many things we should have done, but determination is the deadly bedfellow of ignorance. You know, you hear stories where they find people six hundred yards from their cars, and the poor souls have frozen to death in the middle of blizzards. That’s bloody-mindedness for you. People will walk around in circles thinking they are doing something to help themselves rather than stay in their car and run the engine every half hour to keep warm until help arrives.
In hindsight, we had three options:
Option 1. Dump the canoe and the gear and walk along the banks of the river until we got to the store, however long that took.
or
Option 2. Stay with the canoe and one of us sit on a big rock while the other one walks a mile or two out from either side of the river because roads often run alongside them.
Instead, we chose
Option 3. Keep dragging the canoe, thinking that we would see some houses just around the corner.
After countless bends, nothing. We listened for cars or firespotting helicopters, but heard nothing louder than the sound of running water and wind in the trees.
Our drinking water had run out, but we could rely on the springs we found off in the green patches up on the banks. We filled our bottles regularly, but hunger was setting in. We were underfed when we set out and had since survived on the small fish we had caught on the last day and it was coming up to 24 hours with no food and heavy exercise.
After five hours of walking and dragging the boat, it dawned on us to turn back and walk upstream to the lake where people would be sure to check once they realised we were missing. But thinking hope was around the corner of the steep valley, we moved on in blind faith and hunger. We kept our spirits high by talking about the ice creams we were going to have when we got to the store at the pickup point. Guy chose Rocky Road and I picked Butter Pecan; it seemed as hopeless and wistful as the Hollywood pin-ups soldiers put on the lockers to remind them of home.
After fourteen hours of walking through a river, dragging a canoe across uneven ground on empty stomachs and just as darkness fell, we saw a fishing cabin which we broke into without a second thought. I unscrewed the lock, a simple latch secured by a padlock, thinking the worst that could happen would be for us to get caught and we could explain everything and pay for the damage. This was the first civilisation we had seen in more than two days of river and woods.
It was little more than a shed with a lino floor. It was twenty feet square maybe, with a picnic table, two chairs, two cupboards on the wall, a sink, a plug, a bare light overhead and one window. There was no phone and our hearts sank, but at least we thought we could sleep on the floor there instead of having to put our wet tents up. It got very cold at night. The part of me that will us on to the next bend had finally disappeared.
In one of the cupboards was a single box of Ritz crackers. Not only was it the only food in the house, it was the only thing that wasn’t furniture. I probably would have eaten bait, I was so fucking hungry, but we divided the crackers up, turned on the light and sat to eat. At a table. I can still remember the ecstasy of each mouthful. We looked out the window as we finished them and saw it was dark outside.
Outside.
The word sounded good. Just to think of it meant we were inside, after two days of burned fish, exhaustion and worry to now this: Ritz crackers inside.
We saw a flash of lights over the river.
In a hail of light snacks we ran outside and across the water to a jeep which had pulled up on a clearing along the banks.
We tried to sprint through the river, which was up to our knees, as we waved our arms and shouted.
The door of the car opened, the inside light came on and a man stepped out. We tried to explain our situation, but it came out like:
“River. Dragging canoe. Hungry. We broke in. Do you know the owner? Need a phone. Have you had Ritz crackers, man? We need a lift. Can you give us a lift?”
He had seen the light of the fishing cabin go on from across the valley and he decided to investigate. He gave us a lift to the store and we asked them to give us two of the largest ice creams they did. I ate my Butter Pecan under at the counter, freezing cold and dripping wet, under the neon lights and behind a huge smile.
The next day, my friend’s dad drove us to a point in the river downstream from where we were found. He had made a big row of stones like a wall four of five rocks high, leading out into the middle of the river and a large pile with a white note on it where we wouldn’t miss it. The note said “Cliff - Guy - stay here. Set up camp. Will check every five hours. Time now 5pm Tuesday.”
It must have taken him at least an hour to make. It was half a mile downstream from the cabin where we had been picked up; right around the next bend.
“There comes a time in every rightly constructed boy’s life,” wrote Mark Twain, “that he has a raging desire to go somewhere and dig for hidden treasure.”
But always check the river.
Regular readers will not be strangers to my speed at pointing out my own shortcomings.
