Hedge of Thorns: Wanderings

The bear shambles out of the water and along the far bank as I haul my find into the shadows. There, a few moments of sawing remove branches too small to bother with. Next, I score through outer and inner bark, peeling both away from the heartwood. The medicinal strips of pink inner bark, cut into four-inch lengths, fill the bags I’ve brought.

My stomach grumbles. Bark flakes, wiped from my hands to the legs of my jeans, patter to the needle mulch. The willow poles are a springy resource, fit to be the makings of a travois, but do I want to drag one with me for the rest of this journey? While I weigh the pros and cons, I eat two biscuits and slurp some water from one canteen.

Time to move on. Rather than make the travois here, I lash the poles together along with the bundled hunting blind, and pull the leather shirt over my head. Shouldering my pack and the other gear, I head northwest toward the burn zone.

Ten minutes of having the load knock against trees, and tangle in the underbrush is as much as I can tolerate.

Dropping the pack, I undo the bindings and rig a rope harness that will let me tow the gear behind me. The burn zone boundary is an acrid place, black and choking. I should have brought a kerchief to breathe through. Here, there is no cover.

Elk tracks pock the ashy surface, heading south. The game has fled, toward land I know better than this. I may be able to bag something on the way home.

In some places the ground is warm beneath my boots, and I keep sharp watch for smoldering areas. The late afternoon sun makes me sweat under the leather shirt, and I pause to strip it off. What a miserable place to make camp.

Instead, shaking off the bad idea, I press ahead. There’s an hour or two until dusk, and urgency to learn the fate of Glenoma builds. Ground level breeze lifts the ash and swirls it away. It’s difficult to pick out the burned-over trail. In several places the only way forward is to circle fallen, smoldering tree trunks.

When the remaining sunlight is a red gash low on the horizon, I halt and assemble the hunting blind. I drive the pegs deep, stabilizing the dome on a landscape alien as Mars. Once our nation planned attempting a landing there. It’s probably good that it never happened.

I shrug into my leather shirt, toss my pack into the blind, and follow it. This once, I’ll eat where I camp. There’s no place sufficiently sturdy to cache my food anyway. With my bow and quiver propped against one of the support poles, I gobble four biscuits and drink the rest of the water in my first canteen.

Hedge of Thorns: Wanderings is an episode of a serialized short story that posts on Friday.

Check the menu on this blog for other, previously posted serialized stories, here.