Drive - A Memoir 90th Installment
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I didn’t want to turn around – ‘a half baked, frozen boy.’
“Did
anyone hear me say I WAS HUNGRY?” Neil spoke starting low and
increasing volume until he shouted the last words. We took inventory
of the little items we saved before – Russ had a small package of
nuts, Don had a six ounce can of Vienna Sausage that contained eight
fully cooked and ready to eat “Delights" that we quickly
divided – nine nuts each and two little weenies. I had the crème
de la crème – a still cold and damp seven ounce giant Hershey
chocolate bar.
It
took ninety seconds to inhale our meager dinner, and as we divided
our dessert I was winging it, making up a sing–song word poem.
“We need
marshmallows and Graham crackers like summer days
We are in the
woods with nothing and full of despair
We have the
chocolate bar that is divided four ways
We could make a
S’more with this chocolate square.”
“Stop talking –
I heard a noise,” Russ hissed.
I
stopped talking. We were dead silent as we stared out into the dark
for a very long time. The trouble is, the longer you stare and
listen, your senses sharpen and your imagination goes into overdrive.
I was getting real nervous; we had talked about Mountain Lion and
Grizzly Bear earlier that day. Was this it? Was this the end of four
little boys that hiked into the mountains? Nothing. We saw nothing!
We heard nothing! We were just freaking ourselves out. Well, the only
way to make sure you don’t hear scary sounds in the dark forest is
to make more noise in the camp. We started talking a mile a minute
and quite loudly; all of us seemed to want to chase away any noise
with more noise.
“Should
we sleep in the trees?” shouted Don.
“Mountain
Lions can climb!” I answered loudly.
“Should
we build a fort out of branches.” cried Neil.
“A
Grizzly could walk right through anything we could build,” I said
more guarded. As it turned out we just threw the rest of our wood on
the fire, went together to the dead tree and hauled back more wood.
We assigned each of us with a watch schedule and to keep the fire
blazing. Three of us went to sleep, soon the sentry went to sleep
also, and then it was morning and Russ, Don Neil and I awoke lying by
the smoldering ashes of a fire killed by the dew. We were out of
food; it took us two days to hike in; we didn’t want to starve if
it took two days to hike out, and we didn’t want to spend time
trying to catch something to eat again. We decided to tighten our
belts and hustle our way out of the mountains in one day thinking
that down hill is twice as fast as up hill. We
500 more words tomorrow
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