Leave No Trace 2

Now, it feels like a mistake

Sten’s flight disrupts the friendly mood. Vili assures the others that Otter will be back when he is hungry and cold. Everyone needs time alone during this difficulty, but it is only by staying close that they will all be safe. Vili notices Lech across the fire from Joey. He tells the two boys to sit together. He tells Alistair to sit by him. Joey gives Lech a playful, no-hard-feelings headlock. Vili puts his arm around Alisair’s chest when he is sitting naked between his legs.

Sten does not return when it is dark. Vili worries a little and stays up waiting for him. Finally, he goes into the tent. The sounds Alistair makes reach the other tents again. In the morning, the Cubs give their Den mate curious looks, but Alistair acts as if nothing interesting has happened. After a sparse meal that leaves the boys very hungry, Vili's worry about Sten boils over. He takes his anger out on the boys. The man reminds them that, until they are rescued, he is responsible for them. He cannot have them wandering about the large island.

Just like an adult would do, Vili blames them all for something one boy did. He tells the Cubs they cannot be trusted. They must give him all their clothes and go in underwear without shoes when they are in the camp. Lech balks at this and so does Denys. There are some more shocking canings to administer.

Tasks are set for the morning and Vili takes his rifle off to search for Sten. A deer would be too handy, but Vili can proudly return with a rabbit for the pot. There is no sign of Sten throughout the next two days, but survival tasks begin to consume them all. The boys call for Sten when they are about the forest. He might be hurt. He might be dead. Vili decides Denys is moving to the big tent.

It starts in Joey MacPherson’s tent with Lech Sikora and David Burns. Joey is thirteen and three years older than the little boys. He tries to groom them with words, curiosity about his obvious maturity, and friendly touching. This is just what Vili did with him in the basement of the church two years ago. He tries to break them down in turns. Impatient, he decides to use his fist.

Joey likes to see the wide-eyed uncertainty in David’s eyes as he lies on top of Lech. Joey likes it when the Lech’s unmuffled sounds announce what he is doing in their tent. Vili has been silent when he does stuff with Alistair and Denys, but Joey senses he has licence to share his grunts and groans about the quiet camp.

Cam Hudon has Ade Opeyemi, who is big for ten, and Cam has his little brother, Devon. He trades for David after Joey brags that a Cub beneath him is almost like his (imaginary) girlfriend Gwen. It is Devon Hudon’s turn to watch while his older brother does friendly things with Ade.

Eventually, Cam trades his brother for another boy. Mike Lafreniere and Ronald Best try to keep up. They have a sense that if they are not Scouts on this long camp out, they will end up as Cubs. Sometimes, just to prove they are in the program, the two twelve-year-olds find a Cub’s broken tail light, just so they can cane a boy like Joeydoes, just to show they mean business.

Ade tells the other Cubs it is like the school he went to in Africa. The beatings become a morning ritual. Vili forbids the Scouts from impulsive violence. “You’re not bullies, you’re Scouts!” If there is an infraction, then Joey will be the only one to cane a boy. Vili stands like some Head Master by the morning fire. Each morning, the eight Cubs hold their breath. “Okay boys, fishing, fire, and forage, let’s get to it;” and the young lungs expel their tension till the long day stokes it up again.

Yes, “it’s very like my boarding school,” Ade assures his companions with a shrug. “Even the boys, who will share a bed at night.” The Cubs exchange experiences. “Yeah, Mike just … Ronald doesn’t do that … Cam doesn’t sock us … We all do it together … Not with the mouth!”

The food that Howard and Vili brought is running out. Someone mentions Sten could make a snare to catch a rabbit. That someone gets no supper, and in the morning, the Cubs stand numbly as that someone gets caned. Suddenly, it is wrong to talk about the missing boy.

Vili thought the campers would be found long ago. It should have been days, a week at most. It is approaching two weeks and there have been no signs of a search. The chain of lakes runs out into the wilderness in many directions, and Vili did not take them to their usual camping spot. He has the map, and if he had the pontoon boat, he could retrace their path. Harold agreed to the island for its isolation. There was less chance of large animals. Now, it feels like a mistake.

Two weeks and everyone is starving now. The boys are lean and so is Vili. Underwear hangs off thinning hips. Earthworms and starchy cattails are added to the menu. The foraging is constant. There is no interest in building log forts. Dead wood is consigned to the fire and they come to eat anything that moves. There is more crying in the night. When Scouts come to Vili’s tent for help, he does not answer.

Vili brings Cam and Ronald with him on a walk about the island. Stephen comes along because he is apparently the only Cub who listened to Howard’s endless wilderness lore. “I’m not sure. Otter would know.” These answers are not helpful. That answer might earn Stephen a beating in the morning. All four of them have half an eye out for the missing Cub. They come across a cold fire ring. Vili squats to read the signs. Sten is a phenomenal swimmer. That is why the eight remaining Cubs called him Otter. Vili imagines the missing boy has drowned or lost himself on the farther shore. Such a waste, Vili tells himself, although there was nothing particular to draw him to the boy.

Ronald has the target bow. He is the most proficient archer. The recurve only has a 25 lbs draw weight and a handful of fragile bullet point shafts. The boys have broken half of what they had. Vili cannot recall what happened to the other bows. The man thought everything they needed for the weekend camp had been brought ashore. With fifteen people moving gear, it was hard to keep track and the decision to shoot Howard that night was impulsive.

Along the shore, they see a young moose swimming to the island. When it gets close enough to stand, Vili begins blazing away in desperation. When the moose finally drops, the man sends Stephen back to the camp to fetch the others and their only line of rope. Vili and the two Scouts wade in to keep the carcass from drifting off.

It is inexpertly done, but the moose is butchered in the pink water. Everyone is tasked with carrying joints and slabs of flesh back to the camp. There is significant waste. They do their best to smoke the meat. Vili basks in the boy’s admiration. The Scouts are initiated with blood and the four boys dance lewdly around the fire. The next afternoon, Vili returns to the carcass, but it is gone.

Do Your Best

Sten has a plan when he runs away from the campsite: to get away. To where, how long? Sten isn’t thinking about that. He planned enough to know he cannot take everything. He walks into the woods with his heavy fleece, and inside this, a pair of shorts and his hatchet. Sten retrieves his precious camping pack and puts distance between himself and Vili.

First night, he stays away. Very frightening, alone in the damp cold with insects all about. He can put his hood up and slip his legs up under his fleece. He feels guilty eating a contraband power bar. He is convinced there must be dangerous animals about. Second day he travels further. Boys call for him. Boys he knows are friends, but Vili's strong voice echoes their soprano calls. He should go back. He needs to be there when they all get rescued. The unfair willow wand will hurt again, but it is the inexplicable fear of the man’s tent that keeps Sten away.

The third night, Sten returns to the campsite. He wants his things, to sleep in his bag surrounded by the others. He circles the tents, aching to join the card-playing laughter. The noises from the scattered tents drive him off. He waits for friends to come out and relieve themselves, but the fear that he might drift off and be discovered in the morning is too great. He is alone in the dark night.

It makes sense to stay close. When they are found, the search for him will continue. He will hear the boat and know it is safe to go back. But where to wait? There are places where food grows. Howard and Sten’s father taught him about dandelion leaves, birch sap, fireweed shoots, and some berries. Hunger sets him onto rotten wood looking for larvae and in the loam below, earthworms. Sten needs a fire to choke them down. If the lumps are charred on a stick, he can pretend.. He is too caught up in his misery to feel pride in his self sufficiency.

The barrage of rifle fire that mortally wounded the young moose finally convinces Sten he needs more distance from the camp. In the heat of the afternoon, Sten swims from the island to the opposite lakeshore. To start with, Sten keeps a fragile lean-to shelter near the shore. From there he can keep an eye on the steady trails of smoke rising from the end of the Scout Master’s end of the island. Sten ran while there was still food in camp. In his imagination, his friends are eating well, while the constant hunger makes him cry.

It took five nights for Sten to remember there is a Coleman Emergency Blanket tucked in with the First Aid kit. He is wrapped in it, with his back to the forest, Sten begins to sing in a barely audible voice. “It might seem crazy what I am 'bout to say. ♪♫♬” Sten pauses to listen to the water and the malicious whisper of branches makes him shiver in his wet fleece. “Sunshine she's here ♪♫♬,” another pause, “you can take a break. I'm a hot air balloon that could go to space. With the air, like I don't care, baby by the way.” Sten gulps. His voice is quivering badly. He looks at the flames that blind him to the night’s terrors. His hatchet is gripped painfully in his hand. “Huh (Because I'm happy) ♪♫♬”

Sten looks over the water to the dark mass of the island. At one end, Stephen and Pack are snuggling down to sleep in their warm bags. They have tents, they have each other, they have an adult. Sten sniffs once. The silence is scary. “Clap along if you feel like a room without a roof ♪♫♬” That line is too close for comfort. “♪♫♬ Clap along if you feel like happiness is the truth. Clap along if you know what happiness is to you ♪♫♬ Clap along if you feel like a room without a roof ♪♫♬ Can't nothing, bring me down.” The singing stops for a moment. Sten adds deadfall to his fire. He waits until it flares up again, “Can’t nothing. My level's too high to bring me down. if you know what happiness is …” Sten thinks it is a very long night.

Fishing would be good, but that means staying on the shore where Vili and the boys can see him. He would rather fish than set his snares. Trapping is theoretical and fluffy bunnies are, well, fluffy bunnies. Sten is not sure he can do it. Fishing was early mornings with his father on the dock. Fishing with his father meant pancakes and eggs filling you to bursting, crisp bacon, sips of dad’s coffee. Early mornings, before the people in the camp wake up. Sten sets the snare wires his father encouraged him to try. He walks along the rocky shore with a Tom Sawyer stick wondering where his father would cast his line.

Sten is not Daniel Boone. He is a frightened eleven-year-old boy in runners, dirty shorts, shivering in a fleece. His days are foraging. The snares are placed wrong or he is too impatient. Fishing consumes his mornings and he loses two precious hooks just to catch a Northern Pike. Nothing is wasted. Sten counts his matches in the waterproof container. He shakes the translucent lighter, wondering how long it will last.

The boy is looking for a better fishing spot. The search takes him over a rise that seems a promising place to camp. At the top, Sten can see the island where rescuers will find the castaways. There are berry patches, good, not good. The fruit will attract bears. Sten knows enough to blaze his trail. He has to stay connected to the others on the island. The river might have better fishing. His body constantly craves protein and fat.

The pontoon boat is stranded on the rocks ten feet from the bank, barely past the mouth of the river. Vili expected it to travel further. The river seems to wash around it on all sides. The current tears at Sten as he carefully steps from slippery cobble to slippery cobble. Harold’s dead body is a shock, but his first fright is the pontoon boat shifting under his feet. Sten’s 70 lbs (wet) climbing the pontoon’s stern is enough to disturb it on the rocks. The boy does not look at the body lying face down on the deck. He grabs the shore line and jumps back in the water. Once he has the boat tied to the shore, he goes to his Cubmaster.

Something has been at the dead man’s body. Sten cannot be sure what. There is the stench. When he hauls on a shoulder and the body comes over, Sten screams. He scrambles away, starts pacing the pontoon deck, arms wrapped around his head so it won’t explode, or so his eyes won’t see what Vili’s gun has done to Howard’s face. The boy is crying. This is too much. Everything is too much. He stops and squats on the deck, rocking, rocking. Sten does not want to think about it. With a swipe of a crusty sleeve across his eyes, Sten goes back to his Cubmaster. His mind refuses to let it register. His mind deletes the horror mask as he considers what to do.

Howard’s Fallkniven blade is on his belt. Sten could use this. He struggles with the web belt until it is free. He has to consider the man’s clothes, but he is almost at his limit. There is Howard’s signature tartan wool shirt. Sten tugs that. There might be more, only the boy cannot handle this. The dead weight goes to the closest exit and gets rolled into the water unceremoniously. All the boy can feel is great relief.

Sten hopes that the boat will be a cornucopia of Swiss Family Robinson treasures. He has survived the forest alone. It must be time for the game to level up. He is disappointed. There is a First Aid kit to supplement the kit his father sent with him. Half the life vests are still piled by an open bench. Sten adds them to the others. No food, no blankets, what odds and ends the rental carries, he places them carefully on the boat’s only table near the stern.

Leave no trace, Howard always emphasized the Cub Scout’s motto, Do your best, was fine, but a person has to think about what that really means. The untouched world is being lost, Howard tells his boys. Leave no trace where you have passed, so those who follow can appreciate the wonder of the natural world as you did. Beneath another bench, Sten finds the maggoty corruption of a half-filled garbage bag. These are things he can use: plastic bottles, sandwich bags, pudding cups and plastic spoons. It was little Bernie who threw out his mother’s Rubbermaid container when a Scout teased him. Crusts of incorruptible Wonder Bread. Nobody gave that a second thought at the time. Sten decides to crumble them in his next pot of mushroom stew.

Sten is discouraged after his first excitement. There is so little here to help him. Even the two bows he finds fail to lift his spirits. He never learned to use one. The arrows are blunt for targets. Sten tests the draw. With an arrow knocked and pointed back to the threatening forest, Sten feels a little more protected.

The pontoon boat is going nowhere until the river rises and it is dislodged from the rocks. The Bimini top is still in place. It is hardly a tent. When it rains again, the wind will drive in from the sides. Still, the boat is better than the open forest. The only problem Sten sees is that it’s hidden from the island where the rescue will go. Unless they find the pontoon boat on the river first. The logic suits the boy’s pressing need.

While the campers smoke moose and gorge themselves, Sten fishes along the river, sets his snares, forages in wider circles, and practices his archery. He breaks a priceless arrow and switches to crudely rendered practice sticks. The hatchet fells enough long saplings to make a flimsy bridge from shore to boat. Sten needs a way to build a fire on the boat.

It is serendipitous that the rental boat holds a portable propane barbecue. There is no propane. The Scouts would scorn such stuff. There is a scattering of tools in a box near the pontoon helm. Sten takes the barbecue apart. He does not know how the boat is built. Wooden deck, he thinks. He guesses the fuel is at the back, close to the outboard motor (he’s afraid to try that, and he’s stranded on the rocks). Safety first, Sten hunts for flat rocks he can lug to the boat. He makes a hearth cemented with mud, and sets the barbecue on it. Sten has fire and a grate to grill his fish. He can make fish or grub stew in his mess kit. Different things can make tea to warm him in the cold.

The tartan shirt is worth a try. It is far too large for Sten. After a few days, he decides he prefers the fleece. He tailors the heavy wool to suit his needs. The arms become leggings to warm his calves. With a little trimming, the remaining blouse becomes a knee-length kilt held up by Howard’s army belt. The hunting knife hangs heavy (reassuring) off his slender hip. With his fleece (and fire), the nights are not as cold.

The tension eases on the pontoon boat. Sten has a stack of whittled stick-arrows. Each one has a tuft of dried cattail on the end. When the wolves try to cross his moat, he will shoot fire arrows at them. Propped against bench cushions, flames flickering friendly, Sten’s body reawakens to the need for private stimulation he has not felt since Howard inserted Bernie in his tent the first night. This touching is a whole new thing to Sten.

A snare traps a rabbit, but Sten has been so discouraged by the trapping that he has not been checking snares. Some small predator has eaten most of it. Sten takes what is left. First stew tastes good. The boy does not mourn for fluffy bunnies anymore. He starts checking his snares more carefully. Another animal comes his way.

Sten is not sure what he should do when he sees the black bear. He is on the shore close to his pontoon boat. The two-year-old has twenty pounds on Sten. If he lifted up, they could meet each other eye to eye. The recurve bow is in Sten’s hand, essentially useless to him. He is an eleven-year-old boy, and he does not want to star in a remake of The Revenant. The bear smells carrion on the pontoon deck. It is only the smouldering fire that makes the young bear hesitate. It places a paw on Sten’s bridge, then turns to look at the boy. Howard said something about making noise. Sten is afraid his tartan kilt is a matador’s cape. He knows he is supposed to challenge, but his throat is locked. Sten silently spreads his arms wide, half ready to run. The juvenile seems undecided for a moment, then ambles off on a path that keeps we’ll clear of Sten. The boy does not notice the warm urine soaking his kilt until the bear has vanished.

There are tin snips in the tool box and the box is thin steel. Sten spends an afternoon fashioning an arrow head that looks more like an arrow head. He has the broken target shaft and duct tape from the toolbox. He experiments with that to make a deadly shaft. One cushion is sacrificed to make a practice target. Sten is getting better. The first few times, his hunting arrow falls apart. Eventually, he works it out.

All these challenges sustain Sten through the days, but he is miserable. He blames Vili. He blames his friends back on the island. They all have each other, and Sten imagines he is forgotten. He always returns to the top of the rise to see if smoke still rises from the island. Being left behind is his greatest fear. One afternoon, Sten is so lonely that he builds a fire by the water. He wants them to know he is alive. He stays all through the night, and then follows his tree blazes back to the pontoon boat on the river.