When Survival Isn’t Enough...Chapter 4

The sun was just hoisting itself over the nearby mountain range as John opened his eyes. The sky was a clear deep blue and somewhere nearby an American Tree Sparrow was singing it’s morning song. There was a heavy dew on the ground again and as he slid out of his debris hut there was less stiffness in his body than he’d experienced since the plane crash. He stretched carefully until he felt his muscles and joints sufficiently warmed up to begin the day.

Going to the mound of ashes of last night’s fire, he stirred it until he found a few small glowing embers. Using the back of the small saw blade on his multi-tool, he carefully scraped at a piece of birch bark until he had a small pile of fine shavings. Laying these gently on the small pile of smoldering coals he blew gently at first at the base of the pile of bark shavings and then as the smoke increased he began to blow with more vigor until a small flame leaped up and began to quickly consume the rest of the bark. At this stage, John began adding larger twigs until the flame was strong and steady and then he added a couple of larger wrist sized pieces and went to check on his bank lines.

As he neared the first line, he could see it moving around and quickly pulled it hand over hand until with a swift yank he jerked the mid-sized trout to shore and dispatched it with a swift blow to the head with a palm-sized rock laying nearby. His other two lines had also caught him a fish apiece while he slept and miraculously they had stayed on the line. Using a slender willow branch, he fashioned a crude stringer, and then carried them back to the fire. Sitting cross-legged on the ground, and using a piece of birch log, he carefully split the log into planks using wedges that he carved with his knife. After this was done, he used the awl from his multi-tool to drill small holes in the planks and then using some small sticks he carved out pegs.

After cleaning the fish, he then opened them up and pegged them to the planks which he then propped up at a sharp angle around his fire. All the while he was doing this, he was keeping a sharp eye out for bears. One thing that he knew he must do, and soon, was to establish a separate kitchen and cooking area at least a hundred yards away from where he slept. The smell of cooking fish and the drops of grease and the cleaning of the fish could not be hidden from the keen nose of a hungry bruin. Sooner or later he would have a visit from a big, uninvited guest and he wanted that meeting to be as friendly as possible.

While the fish was cooking in front of the fire, he also put on some lake water to boil. Then, John reached into his little shelter and brought out the steel head of the hatchet that he had carefully cleaned, re-hardened and re-tempered the night before. In the morning light it looked like a treasure to him and he hefted it up and down feeling it’s comforting weight and then looked it over carefully from side to side all the while drawing in his mind the exact shape and length of the handle that he was going to carve for it.

The boiling over of his water pot interrupted his reverie and he quickly reached over with the pliers on his multi-tool and pulled the pot off the coals. The fish was also nearly done and so laying the hatchet head on his jacket he got up and pulled the three fish boards away from the fire. The water was too hot to drink so he carried it with the pliers to a shallow area on the little beach of his lake and set the pot in the water, being careful that the lake water stayed a good couple of inches below the rim. The lake was calm in the morning air so he felt safe leaving it there for a few minutes by itself to cool down.

He sat down again by the fish board and tenderly used his knife to pull apart the delicious meat. It was done to perfection and so he quickly whittled the bark off of a couple of twigs and made a pair of chopsticks. Then, after a brief prayer of thanks, he began to eat. He chewed and swallowed slowly at first enjoying each morsel as it went down and then as his hunger was somewhat satiated, he began to eat at a more regular pace. With the first fish done and under his belt, he went down to the water’s edge and retrieved his pot of now cooled water. He drank deeply, slaking his thirst and went back the fire and polished off the other two fish. This done, he drank the rest of the water, put some more on to boil for later and set back to further contemplate the hatchet handle project.

He was too far North for Hickory, but he knew that an acceptable handle could be made from Birch if he could find the right tree. On the back of one of the fish boards, he used a piece of charcoal and drew a line around the head of the hatchet, then taking his time, drew the outline of the handle as well. It was going to be about 14 inches when finished with a slight curve forward at the bottom for a more secure hold.

By now the sun was high in the sky and so he gathered up all the fish scraps and took them a fair distance away to the other side of the small lake and scratched a hole in the ground with a stick he found nearby and buried the remains. He would have liked to have burned them first but he was anxious to get started on the handle. He scraped dirt over the top of the hole and then put a large stone on top of that. Satisfied that the scent of the dead fish was buried sufficiently, he took a bearing off a distant mountain peak and headed into the forest.

It took him several hours but he finally found what he was looking for. It was a large birch tree that had been snapped off close to the ground by a wind storm. There were several large pieces that had splintered from the trunk when it fell and were standing upright on the stump just a couple of feet off the ground. Laboriously, he used the small saw from his multi-tool and sawed off three pieces that he thought might be right for a handle and then marking the position in his mind as well as he could, he headed back the way he came. He got turned around a few times working through the thick underbrush and small stands of Alder. However, he soon made his way out into the open where he was able to view the mountain peak that he had sighted in on as he left the familiar area of his little lake and so made it back safely by about five in the afternoon.

There, he more carefully examined his pieces of birch. One had an almost invisible split running lengthwise and so he set it aside, but the other two seemed to be about perfect with a long, straight grain running end to end with no knots. Choosing one of the two, which he judged to be the better, he used his pocket knife and began to shave long curls off of the wood. The tree had been dead for some time and so the wood was rather hard and seasoned but had not yet started to rot. By eight o’clock he had a pretty good shape roughed out and he brought it up to the hatchet head to get a visual on what it might look like finished. Then with a satisfied smile, he began carefully carving and smoothing the entire handle. This done, he found a rough rock and using it like sand paper he began to vigorously sand up and down the entire length until it was smooth.

By now the handle fit tightly into the eye of the hatchet and John decided it was time to mount the head. He had found the two small steel wedges in the tool box of the plane and so using one of his fish planks he pounded on the foot of the axe handle until the head was driven on as far as it would go and then using a part of the broken landing gear strut as a hammer he pounded in the wedges.

By now it was getting late and he was feeling weary from the long trek. So, he scrounged around the lake and managed to find a couple of beetles under a log and re-baited a couple of his fishing lines and cast them out, hopeful that he would be successful again in procuring some more needed protein.

Sliding into his small shelter, he pulled his jacket over him, adjusted his hat to cover his eyes from the still brightly shining sun and drifted off to sleep. Tomorrow, he would begin looking for a place to build a more permanent and stable structure. He had just drifted off to sleep when he heard the unmistakable grunt and sounds of a large bear on the other side of the lake digging up the remains of his fish dinner.

You may not be in a situation like John today, where you are alone and a large predator is prowling your premises, but we are all under siege from a more formidable enemy. The Bible says in I Peter 5:8 That our “adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about seeking whom he may devour.” However, we do not have to live in fear because we are also told in I John 4:4, “…Greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world.” So when you pillow your head tonight remember that as a child of God, you are under his care and that you are safe. So sleep well and fear not!

Thanks for reading!

PS.  Friend us at our Facebook Page – WayPoint Survival.  Check out our videos on YouTube at WayPoint Survival.  Make sure to click the subscribe button so you can help us get more viewers: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpgGLHAPVIm5se3T7I1-pEg?sub_confirmation=1 You can also check out the website where you can sign up for training in survival and bushcraft skills at www.waypointsurvival.com.

James B