In the morning I slipped out from under the parachute and made my way back to the fish trap. After our fish dinner, I wasn’t hungry and I enjoyed being in these woods far from the dry forest back home, so I quickly walked back to the fish trap without tracking. It almost cost me my life. Why is it the only times I don’t track is when I should be? If I’d been reading the ground I would have been warned, but I was just strolling down to check the trap, thinking the water was going to be freezing, thinking I should probably take my jeans off so my clothes wouldn’t get wet. It was too chilly to walk around in wet clothes. I didn’t need to get sick, and lost, and hungry all at once. I came around a tree and nearly barreled into the backside of a bear. He was investigating the odors from where we’d cooked. Oh man! I backed off quickly and hid behind a tree, then, since Rusty had never seen a bear, I jogged back to our sleeping spot, now fully awake.
“Rusty! Quick! Come see what I found! Bring your gun.”
He was alert in an instant.
“What is it?”
“Come see! But be careful. Stay behind me. Stay quiet.”
This time I was tracking like mad but I hadn’t crossed the bear’s trail when I’d gone to check the trap until the last second. I approached the place carefully, all my senses aware. Now I could smell the distinct barnyard odor of a bear. I slowed and stayed behind trees until I located the bear foraging in the leftovers from our meal the night before, then he followed his nose down to the creek and investigated my fish trap. He shouldered the sticks aside and I watched helplessly as they floated downstream. I watched beside Rusty as our breakfast was caught and eaten raw. I was thrilled and angry at the same time. I’d never observed a bear for this length of time or from this close up, but there was a lot of work involved in cutting and whittling those sticks! It would take hours to replace them.
The stalker in me wanted to try to touch the bear but I knew there was little chance of that happening with Rusty here. The tracker in me wanted to examine the footprints, but I knew to wait until the bear had gone. So we stood silently and watched as the bear cleaned up camp and then waded across the creek and disappeared into the woods.
I turned to Rusty. “Isn’t that cool!” I said enthusiastically.
“That was cool,” he agreed smiling.
“I’ve never been so happy and so mad at a wild animal in all my life. Look what he did to our breakfast.”
“We’ll figure out something. At least we got a good dinner out of it.”
“You were lucky I didn’t try and stalk it. Let’s go look at the tracks!”
“Cass, do you know what time it is?”
“Yeah, it’s daytime. That means we can see the tracks now.”
It was, just barely. It had been nearly dark the first time I’d gone to check the trap. We stepped into camp and I cast around for some good tracks. There were some leading down to the stream, big round front paws and big wide, almost human looking back paws. If a bear was declawed, that’s what Big Foot’s footprints would look like, I thought. I pointed the tracks out to Rusty so he’d remember what bear tracks looked like.
“Do you think it’s worth wading out there to see what I can recover?” I asked.
“No way. It’s cold outside the creek, I don’t want you down in that icy water.”
“Oh well, being able to see a bear that close up made the whole trip worthwhile!”
When we got back to camp I shook off the dew and rolled the parachute up with the snare inside. We started walking up the creek, glad to have a ready supply of water. The food that day consisted of cattails. The young leaves, weird looking sprouts and the roots are edible, so we pulled several plants and harvested what we could use. It wasn’t the best meal we’d ever eaten. I knew other parts of the plant were useful too, but we needed food and we used the parts most easily eaten. I set up the snare but didn’t catch anything. The night was cold and damp and we clung to each other dejectedly. I knew the day had taken its toll on Rusty’s positive outlook and I brooded over it, so we fell asleep with little to say.
In the morning I slipped away to check the snare and was pleased to find a small rodent. It wouldn’t do much to fill us up but it was food. I was trying to guess what it was. A vole? Well, I wasn’t going to be picky, food was food. I cleaned and skinned the animal then started a fire. Rusty woke up when he heard the fire crackling. He watched as I turned the animal this way and that.
“How did you catch an animal that small?”
“It was in the snare.”
“I’m surprised it was big enough to trip it. What is it?”
“Meat.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Are you really that worried about it? To be honest I don’t know for sure what it is. I’m guessing it’s vole but as far as we’re concerned it’s just meat.”
Hungry as he was, he still seemed dubious.
“It won’t hurt you. I’ve heard that nearly all animals are edible.”
So we ate vole for breakfast. We shared our meager meal and spent the day looking for edible plants, chewing on grass and hiking. I had Rusty set up the snare when we stopped for the night. I showed him the game trail and let him set and test the snare. Next I taught him how to spot a game trail. This was good practice for him. I thought I should really have him make his own snare, but it was easier to just use the one we had.
When darkness fell we found a sleeping spot and curled up together knowing it would be another very cold night. I had barely drifted off when I was awakened by the oddest noise. It sounded like weird laughter and it continued off in the distance.
“Rusty,” I almost whispered, “What’s that?”
“It’s just a bird of some kind.”
“I wonder if it’s loons. The pilot asked me if I’d ever heard loons before. He said there would be some at the lake and that we should go out in the canoe to see them. Maybe the lake is close by.”
“We’ll see in the morning. Try and sleep.”
It was like listening to coyotes back home. I never could sleep with coyotes howling. I wanted to go see them, and now I wanted to go see the loons. I needed the rest though and knew not to go wandering at night, so I lay there listening and before long the woods were quiet again and it was morning.
I slipped out of Rusty’s arms and from under the parachute, then went to check the snare again. Empty. I was hungry after a day of eating nothing but half a vole and some grass. I wandered around in the nearby woods looking for edibles. A big piece of cheesecake would do nicely. I knew we’d run into more cattails along the creek but was hoping for something that tasted a little better. Berries would be nice. Blueberries, or strawberries, or blackberries would be wonderful. Fish, or rabbit, or squirrel. Anything. I thought about cutting more sticks for another fish trap, but it would take me half the morning to do that.
I crawled back under the parachute, found my place, and burrowed close to Rusty waiting for his day to begin. I thought over what had happened since our wedding day, how we came so close to losing each other, once to the plane, again to the parachute jump and again simply because of lost hope. I told myself to always hope. Always. If there was ever a hopeless situation we’d been through it.
Rusty smelled like the woods, like pine, and dirt, and smoke, and cooked fish. After a while he stirred, noticed I was still there, and hugged me close.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Yeah, I’m fine. The snare is empty. I looked around for edible plants and didn’t see any so I came back to bed.”
“To bed, the bare ground is back to bed?”
“It is if you’re here sleeping on it.”
“How far do you think a loon’s call travels?”
“I don’t know, not a mile. It sounded distant but even a distant call would be within a mile.”
“What if it’s another uninhabited lake?”
“We’ll walk around it to be sure. You know, they really need to label their lakes up here. If we started out at Lower Loon Lake it makes sense that this would be Upper Loon Lake. But we don’t know for sure what lake we started out from.”
“I suppose you’re ready to travel.”
“Maybe, I’ll check the snare one more time and take it down.”
While Rusty shook out the parachute I went to check the snare and found it was still empty. Coming back empty handed, he looked at me like it was his fault.
“We’ll keep to the stream. We should at least find more cattails.”
He nodded. We bundled up the snare, the rabbit pelt, and the parachute, then Rusty slung it on his back. We followed the stream. If we didn’t reach the lake by mid afternoon, I’d make another fish trap. I walked along tracking carefully, watching the forest floor for anything edible. Guess I could introduce Rusty to pine cones, I thought. We could make pine needle tea, too. Lists of edible plants were running through my mind as we walked, but I didn’t know what many of them looked like and several of them came with warnings, “do not mistake for poison hemlock” and things like that. So, although I knew the names of many edible plants, I also knew to be wary. While walking along, heading north, and watching for food, something caught my attention. An irregularity. Something odd. I am always tuned to things out of place and most people wouldn’t have noticed it at all. However, being a tracker, footprints are of special interest to me, so when I saw the aged footprint of a person I was brought up short. Could I follow this trail? It had to be at least a week old. It was fainter than the week old trails I’d followed in search and rescue. But, since it was a person’s trail, it had to go somewhere logical.
I examined the footprint. I used my fingers to press it down and make the shape more distinct. It was small and narrow. A woman. A small footprint should have a short stride. I began looking for the next track, and the next. Rusty saw the transformation take place. He saw me slip into tracker mode, noticed the shift in my thinking and then my actions. He saw me switch from his little, enthusiastic, outdoors guide and wife, and turn into a wilderness detective. The trail took study. The ground was good, but the woman was light, and she moved easily in the woods. I felt like I was tracking myself. In many places the trail had been erased completely. It would appear faintly in the shelter of a tree and disappear where the tree had shed rain onto the tracks. I found a few tracks here, and a few tracks there, then followed the woman through the woods and down to a lake. A lake! Yes! But the footprints led to a rocky shore and vanished. I studied the shore for more footprints but didn’t find any.
“Do you think she got into a canoe or something?” I thought aloud, “The pilot said we should get out in the canoes to see animals and birds. But you’d think there would be tracks going from the canoe as well as to it…Unless she was going some place in the canoe. Let’s backtrack her.”
We followed the tracks back through the woods until we reached the spot we started at. I then carefully tracked the woman back to her original starting place. It wasn’t far. Her footprints cut through the woods and led to a small cabin which appeared to have been vacant for many weeks. We found the front door unlocked, and the inside neat and orderly. We could tell the place had only been lived in for a short time. We then looked around for evidence that this cabin may have been rented from the same company that Rusty had used to book our honeymoon cabin. The fact that it had only been occupied for a short time, and had a wooden number five on the front door, helped confirm our hopes. That wasn’t much to go on. However it did give us hope of finding four more cabins, so we made our way to the lake and walked around it, keeping an eye out for buildings. Where the beach was rock we followed the margin between rock and vegetation hoping to catch footprints again. At last we found a path leading from the lake to cabin number four. Even though all the footprints on the path led away from the cabin we went up and knocked. An older woman answered the door. The scent from cooking came floating out the open door. Oh man! How could she do this to us? I didn’t know what to say. I was too busy being hungry! Rusty slipped into detective mode.
“Good afternoon,” he said calmly, “I was wondering if you could help us. Can you tell us who is in charge of the cabins up here and how to find that person?”
The woman stared at us open mouthed. “Normally there isn’t anybody. The pilots hand out all that information when we land. But there was a man here going from cabin to cabin telling us to watch for a young couple. That was days ago. He was supposed to stay and watch for them, and he asked everybody to send them to cabin number two. It’s the one with a dock. Are you the couple everyone is looking for?”
“It’s very possible,” he said, “Thank you for your help.”
The woman looked as if she really wanted to hear our story but that would have to wait. Food and information were more important. If there were people searching for us they needed to know our location.
We went down to the lake, following the shore until we came to a dock, and then took the pathway to cabin number two. Before we reached the porch a man burst out of the cabin.
“Well, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle!” he exclaimed. “Never in a million years did I expect to see you two alive. When they sent me out here I thought it was pointless. Who could find this place? Who had the know how? Not city slickers from California, that’s for sure. Searchers found the plane but there was no sign of you two. They sent out dogs, did flyovers of the crash site. Nothing. Come on in.”
“We weren’t on the plane when it crashed. We bailed out over some lake south of here,” Rusty said.
“The pilot?” I asked, “Did the pilot make it?”
“Who, Pete? Shit. I think nothing could kill old Pete. He’ll live. Again. I’m surprised he’ll still go up, as many times as he’s come down the wrong way. He’s laid up pretty good but he’ll make it. Twasn’t ‘til just recently we were able to talk to him. Come in. You folks need help. You’ve been run through the mill.”
“I think we’re fine. No injuries. Just a hell of a long time looking for this place. There will be time to talk later,” Rusty said, “We haven’t eaten much the past day or so and we’d like to wash up. Where can we get some food and a shower?”
“Cabin one. It’s all yours. I need to get some information from you whenever you’re ready. I’d like to head back to town in the morning. If you want a lift out, you can fly out with me. If you need medical attention I can get a plane over today.”
“No!” I said quickly.
“Cass, you really want to stay after all we’ve been through?”
“Yes! I want to canoe and I want to see a moose and I want to see how loons make that weird noise. I want to track the animals around the lake and…”
“Okay, I get the point. We can stay.” Then to the officer, “It’s hard to keep this girl down.”
We walked over to cabin one and were met with a nice cozy, romantic getaway cottage. There was a kitchen, living room and bathroom downstairs, and a loft with a big, soft bed. The place was fully stocked, ready for our use. We dug into the first junk food we could get our hands on, cookies. One whole package of cookies down and we were ready to get cleaned up. We then took turns showering in the little bathroom downstairs. I didn’t have a hairbrush, hairdryer, clean clothes or make-up. I’d worn holes in my socks from hiking five days in the same pair, but I was happy and comfortable. I hoped to be able to sleep indoors after so many nights in the open in survival mode. It wasn’t unusual for me to feel claustrophobic after a time of survival. It wasn’t a fearful feeling, just too closed in. I liked to see the sky above me. In the end, though, the warmth of the cabin won out.
I found meal kits in the freezer. Not really instant meals but something that could be prepared with minimal fuss and mess. I pulled out enough for two and started figuring out the stove controls. There was a knock on the door and Rusty let in the officer we’d spoken to earlier.
“Have you eaten?” I asked, “It’s just as easy to cook for three.”
“Sure, if it isn’t any trouble,” the guy said, “By the way, I’m Bryce Buckner. Some people call me Bryce and some people call me Buck, just depends on the situation.”
“Just like Strict,” I said.
“Strict?” he asked.
“Yeah, he’s our search commander. His name is Lou Strickland. He reminds me of a combination between my grandfather and a drill sergeant in the Marines. So, when he’s all business we all call him Strict. But he has a hard time thinking of me like he does the other officers so more of the grandfather in him shows through and I end up calling him Lou a lot.”
“You do a lot of search and rescue in California?”
“Yeah, a lot. If I wasn’t on my honeymoon I’d probably be out there looking for some lost tourist in the Angeles Forest.”
Buck looked at Rusty. “What about you?”
“Don’t look at me, I’m a detective. We wouldn’t have made it here without Cassidy’s know how. She found food where I would have sworn there was none. She knew the lake was north of where we were and she found the cabins. All I did was carry the pack and gun. We didn’t even fire the gun. She wanted to save it for defense.”
“You see anything to make you think you needed it?” Buck asked.
“We saw a bear but we just observed it from a distance. There was no reason to shoot.” Rusty said.
“It stole our breakfast though and that was two days ago. We haven’t had much to eat since then,” I added.
“Look, I’ve got these reports I need to fill out. If you can just give me the information I need I’ll be out of your way.”
“We don’t mind. We know the drill, the paperwork involved. And we haven’t had news since the plane crashed so it’s nice to talk to someone. We had quite an adventure since we bailed out,” I told him.
“I bet,” Buck said.
“No, really, you wouldn’t believe it. I barely do and I watched it happen,” Rusty added.
Usually Rusty avoided talking about my near misses and I was surprised that he was willing to recount it all for Bryce. I was glad he was ready to talk about our close call. It meant he had come to grips with it. The two men talked while I cooked and occasionally Buck would steal glances my way.
Dinner tasted a little preprocessed but we exchanged search stories with Buck and helped with his paperwork. Finally he stood to leave.
“Okay, one more thing. The guys that own this company are a little worried about the legal aspects of your plane crash.”
“They’re worried about getting sued?”
He shuffled his feet, looked at the floor.
“They don’t have to worry about that. We’re not after their money. They can put their lawyer fees into buying new parachutes. Is there a town nearby?”
“Yes, but there’s no road to it. The people that come up to this lake do it because they think it’s remote. They get flown in and they only see the other campers up here, so it feels remote to a tourist, but there is a town about five miles east of here. Don’t try to get to it on foot.”
“Why not?” I asked. “All we have are the clothes on our backs and we need to arrange for new plane tickets so we can get home again. I’d hike five miles to be able to do a little shopping.”
“Look, my office is in Taylor and I’m flying out tomorrow. Fly out with me and I’ll make sure you have a way back.”
“You think I’ll get lost looking for a town?” I asked, “A town that’s due east of here?”
“No, but I’d rather not set a precedence. You hike out of here and some other yahoo is going to try it and I’ll never hear the end of it. I can get you a ride back. If Charlie can’t do it the guys that own these cabins will certainly find a way. They owe you anyway. A five mile plane ride is chump change after what they were worrying about.”
So that’s what we did. Not wanting to go into Taylor smelling the way we did, that night I hand washed our clothes as best I could and let them dry overnight in front of the heater. They were still a bit damp in the morning but smelled better, and they dried out fast once we put them on and moved about. We boarded another small plane and got whisked over the mountain to a quaint, little town. Bryce took us to his office downtown and we visited all three stores in the four block downtown area. We bought toiletries, clothes, new backpacks and a camera. I was especially glad to find a camera. Now, if I saw a moose, I’d be able to take a picture of it. And I really wanted some pictures of my honeymoon even if it was just the last five days of it. I took a picture of beautiful downtown Taylor and then another of Upper Loon Lake from the air.
When we got back to the cabin Rusty took the toiletries to the bathroom.
“What do you think, Cass, should the beard stay or go?”
“I bought the razor for me, not you. Keep the beard for now. If you put on that plaid flannel shirt and get in the canoe you’ll look just like a local. Kelly will get a kick out of a picture like that. It’ll make him want to come up here for his anniversary.”
Later I took a picture of Rusty in the canoe, and another one of him with the remains of his parachute.
“Save the parachute if you can. I have plans for it if we can bring it home with us.”
The cabin was wonderful. It was snug and warm and outdoorsy feeling. We spent toasty evenings in front of the fireplace eating dinner at the coffee table just like we used to before Rusty got our dining room table back home. We went out in the canoe and discovered that loons usually make that weird noise when it is too dark to see them. We saw one moose while in the canoe, and I quickly snapped a picture in case that was my only chance. It was wading in the shallows at the north end of the lake. It reached into the lake with its mouth and pulled up plants so it was nicely distracted. I beached the canoe and then stalked the moose on foot. I didn’t want to get too close because I didn’t know the normal disposition of a moose. It was big and, if it turned on me, I could be in trouble. Each time it put its head into the lake I was able to get closer by several feet. Rusty watched me from the canoe with a disposable camera. I was fascinated by the moose’s size. It was taller than my horse! I’d freeze while it looked around and then step carefully closer while its head was under water. It brought its massive antlers up out of the lake dripping with water and aquatic plants. I snapped a picture. This was so cool! Moments like this were what I lived for. The moose was maybe ten feet into the lake and I was on the shore crouched in the brush when a group of older teenage boys came paddling up in a canoe.
“Hey, Bullwinkle!” they yelled at the moose.
The animal grunted and turned, storming up the shore, and rushing right past me. I took a quick picture as it came my way and then dove for cover. It tromped through the brush and then disappeared into the woods. I was disappointed, and elated. I’d been this close to a moose! I returned to the canoe beaming and Rusty was shaking his head at me, his normal response to my minor close calls.
“Did you see that? If I wasn’t jumping out of the way I could have touched it!” I said excitedly.
“I think jumping out of the way was the wiser choice,” he said.
“Next time, you try it,” I urged him.
“I’d rather watch you,” he replied.
“I won’t take you scouting unless you learn to move silently. Sneaking up on animals is good practice for you.”
Rusty and I went back to the tracks and I showed him the moose’s big hoof prints in the dirt. I tracked the moose a little way through the brush. I liked to get a feel for how different animals moved through the woods. This big guy didn’t let anything stop him. He barreled through whatever was in his way, so it didn’t take me long to give up and head back to the canoe.
We paddled around the lake watching the odd way the loons swam with just their heads sticking up out of the water. There were ducks, geese, and coots on the lake too. Deer came to the lake regularly. Unafraid of the campers, they wandered between the cabins. The campers either ignored them or ran around taking pictures of them. I had tried stalking the deer but they were on the move and just trotted off when I approached.
I was thrilled when we were out in the canoe one day and I saw a short wet head appear out of nowhere. Whiskers danced around on its furry face. What was it? I never saw more than just a wet head, lots of whiskers, and tiny ears. It swam at the surface briefly and vanished.
Our five days went by quickly. We were granted an extra five days to make up for time lost after the plane crash, but Rusty had to get back to work. We reluctantly packed our meager possessions into our new backpacks and were ready to meet the plane when it landed. Word had gotten around and many of the campers were there to see us off. We ended up in a storytelling time on the dock. Not wanting to cast fear, I didn’t want to tell them that our plane had crashed because everyone would be taking the same kind of plane out of there. Mostly I told them about our trek north and of the different ways we had found food. The young people liked hearing about the bear, and they told us about the animals they had seen at the lake.
At last a red and white pontoon plane swooped out of the sky and skimmed across the lake sending loons and ducks scampering for the reeds. It putted over to the dock where a man jumped out and hooked a rope over a post on the dock.
“Are the two Michaels present and accounted for?”
“Right here,” we said.
“Are you sure you want out? You have five more days due to you.”
“We’d love to stay,” I said, “but we both have commitments back home. We have to go.”
We loaded up into the little red and white pontoon plane and once again were whisked up into the big blue sky and flew off to St. Paul. I was glad we had bought new clothes. Just thinking about boarding a jet in the clothes we wore on our trek north made me cringe. Something must be wrong with me, I thought. I was actually looking forward to getting home where I would have soap, a curling iron and make-up again. I had a blast on my honeymoon, plane crash and all, and was happy with the way we had come through our ordeal. I was confident that we would have found more food and could have survived for weeks if it had been necessary. I was also pleased to be able to take pictures of the old corrugated metal “airport” and its floppy windsock, but wished there had been a chance to photograph the parachutes and the bear.
The airport at St. Paul was busy. People rushing here and there, running to catch flights, so may people. This was the hard part of coming back to civilization for me. The crowds. Everything felt so crowded and busy. I felt pressed from every side and took Rusty’s arm as he made his way through the masses to our gate. I was on sensory overload, forced to just follow. I fell into my seat on the airplane with a sigh of relief.
“I wonder if our bags were inspected.” I contemplated out loud to Rusty. “If they were, I bet they were really wondering about us. Two sets of dirty clothes, a snare, an old parachute, my hunting knife and some basic toiletries. I hope my knife makes it through the trip. It’s been through some interesting times with me.”
“Maybe you should leave it at home if it means that much to you,” he said.
“If I’d have left it at home we wouldn’t have eaten for five days. I used it to make the snare, and to cut plants to eat, and whittle the sticks down for the fish trap, and to start fires. We wouldn’t have even had a fire without the knife along. Sometimes you can get a spark off the magnesium stick with a rock but you can’t count on it.”
“Maybe we need to get you a cheap, new fangled knife that you don’t care about losing for trips like this.”
“No, I think my hunting knife leads a charmed life or something. I’ve had that knife since I was twelve, and it has never been lost, and it is always there for me.”
“I wish some of that would rub off on you. You could use a charmed life.”
“Maybe I’ve got one. Maybe that’s why I’m still around. How do you know if you’ve led a charmed life if you don’t test it every so often?”
“I’d rather not know. Stop testing it.”
LAX was just as busy as St. Paul had been, even at eleven o’clock at night. We landed uneventfully and made our way to the baggage claim. The convenience stores, newsstands, and bakeries were all closed, and I gazed forlornly at the cases where cheesecake had been sitting all day long just waiting for me. Now that I was here the bakery was closed. We picked up our two backpacks and headed for the Explorer, left in long-term parking. I felt sorry for it sitting here in downtown L.A. while we went off on adventures without it.
The drive up the 405 and the 14 was uneventful and the house was cool, dark, and quiet when we finally entered in the wee hours of the morning. We set down our packs and both gave a sigh of relief.